Themes

16 Sep 2016

Themes are more than just a way to customize a site looks.

A theme can provide:

• Template files
• Static files
• A configuration interface
• An example site
• A function library

A theme can be extended by another, and multiple themes can be combined together.

Basics

Themes are declared in site.nix. Local themes are used by proving a path, but is possible to use remote themes, like themes of the styx-themes directly.

To use a themes, it is just required to add it to the themes list:

  themes = [
    styx-themes.generic-templates
    ./themes/my-theme
  ];

Themes at the beginning of the list have lower priority.
In this example, the styx-themes.generic-templates is combined with the ./themes/my-theme theme.

Example sites

Themes of the styx-themes package provide an example site that can be previewed locally by running a single command:

$ styx preview-theme showcase

The list of themes in the styx-themes set can be listed with the following command:

$ styx preview-theme
Please select a theme, available themes are:               
- agency                                                   
- generic-templates                                        
- ghostwriter                                              
- hyde                                                     
- nix                                                      
- orbit                                                    
- showcase

Configuration interface

A theme can provide many configuration options that can be used to customize it.
These configuration options can be used and changed in the site conf.nix. An interesting feature is that these options can be typed, and if they are styx will automatically do a type check when building a site.

Documentation

Themes that are part of the styx-themes are documented in the styx documentation that can be launched with the following command:

$ styx doc

It is also possible to generate a documentation for the themes used in a site. In site root run the following command:

$ styx site-doc