What I write below Is a pick of a brief explanation of how to change your default theme colours from wiki dot phpgedview dot net with nothing changes within it.....(Thank you for all wiki.phpgedview.net's team).
There is probably more that can be done, so feel free to add to this short how to.
Tools
You will need a good scipt editor, do not use Notepad it leaves random characters in your script that can mess things up, there are some good free ones like Notepad2 and Crimson Editor which create clean code. EditPlus is very good and uses little system resources, but it's not free.
If you have a WYSIWYG HTML editor this can be handy too, but not really necessary unless you want to redesign the whole page. NVU is a great open source one.
If you have something like Dreamweaver then you should know what you are doing already, and maybe you can give the rest of us some tips :) Really you only need to open the web page in your browser.
Firefox is good for this because it has some good extra features in the right click menu for this sort of thing, such as the View Background Image function. This tells you what image you are looking at and where you can find it. Always check your work in Internet Explorer if you use Firefox though, some things look different in other browsers. It's a good idea to keep them both open and refresh them both as you go just to keep an eye on things. Another very handy little utility is ColorPix.
Steps
The first step is to copy and rename the theme you want to modify so you have something to work on. The example here uses the Xenea theme in the themes/xenea directory, but the principle involved should be similar for the others. All the files you need to change are in the theme directory. They are header.html, toplinks.html, style.css and theme.php. Copy the xenea theme directory to another directory and give it a name that suits you, eg: xenea_grey, don't use any spaces in the name, use underscores _ instead.
Servers do not like spaces in directory names. Besides renaming the themes folder name you will have to find it in theme.php and rename it in there too. If you open theme.php in your script/text editor you should see.
on about line 23. Change this with find and replace to;
Theme changes
Now, run the ColorPix utility over the web page and find the hex code for the colours you want to change. Just place your cursor on the page where you want it, and read the six digit hex code from ColorPix, something like #FFFFFF, which is white, it will be a combination of numbers and letters. Then search the four files named above for the corresponding hex codes.
Most of them have names in the files that make sense so you should get a clue what style changes what part on your page. Use your text editor's find and replace feature for this, so you only need to type the codes in once. Don't change every single instance with replace all, do them one at a time, then save the file, refresh your browser and see the changes as you go. If you don't like the changes or make a mistake, you can just undo the change and save the file again, refresh your browser and it will be as it was before.
You can also change graphics or just comment them out in the script so they don't display, Pretzy recommends placing an underscore in front of the image's name so you can go back later if you change your mind or wish to enable the image again.
There are default background colours set in the files mentioned and this is what you see now if you comment the images out.
You should now be well on the way to making your theme any colour you like, and if you don't like the end result or totally mess it up, don't worry, just delete the folder and start again.
PhpGedView will use its default theme if it can't find another. If you kill that one too, just copy it back from the zip file you downloaded to install it.
Tools
You will need a good scipt editor, do not use Notepad it leaves random characters in your script that can mess things up, there are some good free ones like Notepad2 and Crimson Editor which create clean code. EditPlus is very good and uses little system resources, but it's not free.
If you have a WYSIWYG HTML editor this can be handy too, but not really necessary unless you want to redesign the whole page. NVU is a great open source one.
If you have something like Dreamweaver then you should know what you are doing already, and maybe you can give the rest of us some tips :) Really you only need to open the web page in your browser.
Firefox is good for this because it has some good extra features in the right click menu for this sort of thing, such as the View Background Image function. This tells you what image you are looking at and where you can find it. Always check your work in Internet Explorer if you use Firefox though, some things look different in other browsers. It's a good idea to keep them both open and refresh them both as you go just to keep an eye on things. Another very handy little utility is ColorPix.
Steps
The first step is to copy and rename the theme you want to modify so you have something to work on. The example here uses the Xenea theme in the themes/xenea directory, but the principle involved should be similar for the others. All the files you need to change are in the theme directory. They are header.html, toplinks.html, style.css and theme.php. Copy the xenea theme directory to another directory and give it a name that suits you, eg: xenea_grey, don't use any spaces in the name, use underscores _ instead.
Servers do not like spaces in directory names. Besides renaming the themes folder name you will have to find it in theme.php and rename it in there too. If you open theme.php in your script/text editor you should see.
$theme_name = "Xenea"; //-- the name of this theme
on about line 23. Change this with find and replace to;
$theme_name = "Xenea_Grey";
Theme changes
Now, run the ColorPix utility over the web page and find the hex code for the colours you want to change. Just place your cursor on the page where you want it, and read the six digit hex code from ColorPix, something like #FFFFFF, which is white, it will be a combination of numbers and letters. Then search the four files named above for the corresponding hex codes.
Most of them have names in the files that make sense so you should get a clue what style changes what part on your page. Use your text editor's find and replace feature for this, so you only need to type the codes in once. Don't change every single instance with replace all, do them one at a time, then save the file, refresh your browser and see the changes as you go. If you don't like the changes or make a mistake, you can just undo the change and save the file again, refresh your browser and it will be as it was before.
You can also change graphics or just comment them out in the script so they don't display, Pretzy recommends placing an underscore in front of the image's name so you can go back later if you change your mind or wish to enable the image again.
There are default background colours set in the files mentioned and this is what you see now if you comment the images out.
You should now be well on the way to making your theme any colour you like, and if you don't like the end result or totally mess it up, don't worry, just delete the folder and start again.
PhpGedView will use its default theme if it can't find another. If you kill that one too, just copy it back from the zip file you downloaded to install it.
Still None Awesome so far » Be the 1st Awesome to How to change your default theme
Post a Comment
Let others appreciate you trough what you said