Themes and Layouts

gpEasy is a great CMS for small websites, but small websites still need customization options and flexibility. Below, you'll find information about how you can use different themes or a single theme to create a website solution fitting your needs.

The Basics

For simplicity's sake, we'll think of your website as two elements: content and style.

• The content or your site is any text type on a page, images you insert etc.
• The style is determined by the theme you choose to use. It determines the colors and position of page elements.

Install a Theme

Whether you want to install a community developed theme or one of your own, theme installation is easy.

Direct Installation

Direct theme installation is only available for themes hosted on gpEasy.com.

To begin, log in to your gpEasy installation and locate the "Download Themes" link in your admin toolbar (under the "Appearance" heading). This will open a popup window displaying available themes on gpEasy.com. Browse through these themes or perform a search to find a theme you'd like to install.

Once you've found a theme you like, click on the title to bring up the theme details and installation options. If you gpEasy installation support direct installation, you'll see an "Install" link above the "Download" link. Clicking the Install link will close the popup window and take you the installation dialog within your website. Following the 3 steps in the installation dialog will download the theme, check the package and install it on your system.

If you've made it this far, you're ready for the next section: "Using a Theme".

Install Package

Follow these steps for installing a theme if if you've developed your own theme or decide to download a theme directly from gpEasy.com.

If you download a theme from gpEasy.com, you'll need to first unzip the package to a folder on your computer. The unzipped folder (we'll refer to this as the "theme folder") will contain at least a template.php file, addon.ini file and one or more sub folders.

Using your favorite FTP program or preferred method for uploading files to your server, upload the theme folder (as noted above) to the "themes" directory of your gpEasy installation. The template.php file of your new theme should be located at /your_installation/themes/theme_folder/template.php.

Now that your theme is on your server it's ready to use. See "Using a Theme" below.

Using a Theme: Introduction to Layouts

A "Layout" is a customized theme.

Once you have installed a theme using one of the above methods, you can use it for any number of your pages. To begin, navigate to the "Layouts" admin page (a link can be found under the "Appearance" heading in your admin toolbar).

The bottom portion of the Layouts page displays all of the available themes. Locate the theme you just installed and you'll notice a number of links associated with it most likely representing different colors or variations of the theme like: Blue or 2col. Click on any one of these links to view the variation of the theme.

While previewing the theme, you're given two options:

• "Use this theme in a new layout"
• "Use this theme in a new layout and make it the default"

Both options will create a layout of the selected theme that you can then use for you site. The second option will automatically make the new layout the default layout for your site.