Building a theme
We are going to build a theme that puts into practice much of what you learned in the Theming Basics section. This tutorial demonstrates how to override Elgg's primary CSS view, how to extend and override views to change the HTML structure of pages, and how to interact with the menu system. We do not cover overriding or adding to Elgg's JavaScript libraries. If this is required for your theme, then read Lesson 7 in Chapter 8 for an introduction to adding JavaScript libraries or visit the Elgg wiki.
The tutorial is divided into five sections, as follows:
Plugin structure. This covers creating a theme skeleton and provides an overview of working with the primary CSS view.
Layout. We demonstrate working with the default page shell HTML to create the layout of the site.
Moving the search box. This section describes how extending views can be used to change the default structure of a page.
Sidebar box styling. Theming one of the CSS objects is the focus of this part.
Moving the...