Develop custom themes and user templates

Themes contain all main and sub templates for page chrome, layout containers, channel boxes, list items; and the public graphics and stylesheets for the layout. Your theme folder must be in usr/themes/.

All templates are written in simple Mustache syntax, all main and sub templates are in yourtheme/templates folder, using .mustache as file extension.

There are currently four template types: box templates, item templates, container template, layout template and the global site template:

• site.mustache: page layout including HTML head, can use those template tags:

  • {{{title}}}: the configured title
  • {{{themeurl}}}: base url of the theme (used for CSS/JS links)
  • {{{version}}}: PubwichFork version info
  • {{{headerinclude}}}: necessary content for HTML head, included by PubwichFork (e.g. Feed URLs)
  • {{{content}}}: insert layout containers and its content
  • {{{info}}}: short info about PubwichFork usage
  • {{{footerinclude}}}: necessary content, included by PubwichFork

• layout.mustache: use this only if you know how many layout containers are configured. If layout.mustache is not available, it is generated automatically by PubwichFork (recommended). It can hold various {{{containerX}}} tags, X is the container number, starting with 1, e.g.

  <div>
    {{{container1}}}
  </div>
  <div>
    <div>
        {{{container3}}}
    </div>
    <div>
        {{{container2}}}
    </div>
  </div>

• container.mustache: layout containers, each of them holds various boxes of the aggregared data channels. The container uses:

  • {{{number}}}: number of container, starting with 1
  • {{{content}}}: insert content of container

Box templates

Box templates control the way aggregated content from the Service classes are displayed. There are a few file name patterns that you can use to define them, from globally used box templates to more specialized box templates:

• box.mustache: applies to all boxes, must be defined
• #ParentClass_box.mustache
• [#ParentClass_]#ServiceName_box.mustache
• [#ParentClass_]#ServiceName_#MethodName_box.mustache
• #ServiceId_box.mustache

The patterns include all parent classes of the service, except the Service core class itself. PubwichFork always uses the most unique pattern.

For compatibility issues with older versions of PubwichFork themes the patterns include all those combinations extended by the configured service id for each channel, e.g. #ServiceName_#ServiceId_box.mustache, as well as the template definitions by similar method names in functions.php located in the theme folder. It is not recommended to use this now deprecated template definitions.

• #ServiceName_#ServiceId_box.mustache: in functions.php the method need to be named #ServiceName_#ServiceId_boxTemplate()

Box templates support following template tags:

• {{id}}: configured service id
• {{class}}: CSS classes generated from service class names and its parents
• {{{title}}}: configured title
• {{{url}}}: configured URL for the service
• {{{description}}}: configured description
• {{{items}}}: aggregated items of the Social Web service, each item is is rendered by own item template

Item templates

Item templates control the way each Service class item is displayed. Each service has its own default templates, but using the following template names, you can redefine them, it uses the same patterns like the box templates.

• #ParentClass_item.mustache
• [#ParentClass_]#ServiceName_item.mustache
• [#ParentClass_]#ServiceName_#MethodName_item.mustache
• #ServiceId_item.mustache

The same goes for the support of the old template name patterns and the support of functions in functions.php.

Check the service overview for documentation of template tags that can be used for for each service. Additionally, you can check files (located in app/services/) and look for the populateItemTemplate or processDataItem methods.