Themes separated from extensions (+ Theme Chooser and Easy Install)

[rufuspollock]

Note: this is still a stub idea

What: ability for people to create themes (and install them) without having to know python (similar to wordpress)

Why: simplify ability to do basic theming of CKAN and separate simple theming from real extension. (Also get rid of all those theme extensions)

Implementation Suggestions

If we just wanted css we could use the simple css editor in the config section [this is already provided by CKAN]

References

https://pythonhosted.org/Flask-Themes/

[marks]

Big +1 as a programmer working with CKAN APIs but doesn't specialize in python. This will also allow more separation of labor so I (and other CKAN instance admins) can allow front end designers who don't know Python to create themes and even tweak it through a simple CSS editor in the config section

[wardi]

+1 sounds like an easy extension (maybe core, even?) to let users add template directories and static files with configuration options.

We should call it "ckanext-theming" :-)

[rossjones]

Would you deprecate the 'extra_template_paths' config option at the same time? I am guessing that this can be used to override ALL of the template is you've copied them elsewhere and modified them.

[wardi]

@rossjones Oh, you're right, extra_template_paths already does half of this. Maybe we should have a extra_static_paths for the static files?

[rossjones]

@wardi extra_public_paths exists I think.

I don't really like the naming of either of these :(