Themes

Moodle has a powerful themes system that allows for a variety of effects through the use of XHTML and CSS.

• Themes may be configured at site level, course level and/or user level.
• Each page is individually-addressable via CSS, allowing you to pinpoint exact items.
• Our CSS class naming system uses simple English, is consistent and easily understood.
• New modules can tell Moodle what styles they need and automatically include these in the stylesheet.
• Themes can be based on the standard theme, which is very plain but functional. You simply override styles you want to change by adding to the stylesheet in your own theme. This means that if you upgrade Moodle later and new styles are needed, your custom theme will still work without any changes, because the new classes will be defined in the standard theme.
• Themes can also be based on any other theme. This allows you to easily create families of themes, or variations on a theme. For example you might create a spectrum of pastel shades for use in different courses, but with the same basic layout and logos. You may also want to create a family of differently-coloured themes for accessibility purposes.

Creating your own theme

If you plan to work on your own theme please create a new one (with its own named subfolder) and use Moodle's [what] feature to base your theme on an existing theme such as standard. If you just modify one of the delivered themes it will be overwritten by the next Moodle update.

Installing your own theme

Once you have your own theme created, you should follow these steps to install it on your site:

1. Zip the theme folder using winzip or similar
2. Upload the .zip file into the theme folder moodle/themes/
3. Unzip
4. note: make sure the new theme folder and its contents are readable by the webserver.

if you are using Mac OS X, make sure that the files have Group and Other privileges set to  'Read & Write' (select File> Get Info> Ownership & Permissions) otherwise Moodle may not be able to display the newly installed theme.

1. Choose your new theme from within Moodle Admin>Appearances>Themes (version 1.7 +). For older versions, the path is Moodle Admin>Configuration>Themes

Theme system changes across Moodle versions

Moodle 1.5 themes are quite different from previous versions and so a theme upgrade is required. A theme upgrade is also required for the transition from 1.5 to 1.6, since the XHTML structure has been reworked for improved accessibility.