New theme

[MrBowmanXD]

A new theme built from scratch or using a template suggested by Denny. (Suggestions accepted)

[denny]

I got the two current themes from html5up.net so probably worth looking around on there and seeing what ones look good to you. Usually the simpler templates are too simple, so you probably want the ones that will work on a site with more features, more stuff happening on the page.

[MrBowmanXD]

I would like to create a theme to learn more about front end. Any tips to what the theme could be like or what features it should have? I can pick a theme but havent picked one yet

[denny]

I think if you don't have any specific ideas for what you're building a site for then it can be quite difficult to get started sometimes. You mentioned in one of our other conversations that you might build a portfolio site to help you look for webdev work, and I think that's probably a pretty good project in itself - lots of different CMS features you could use, lots of different ways you could want it to look.

I'd advise you to start out small, and build outwards from there later. ShinyCMS has a lot of features, which is great, but can be a bit overwhelming when you're getting started. Maybe just put a blog together initially, and use that to write about the process of building the site? It's a bit meta, but hopefully it will be something you're excited about so you'll have some thoughts about it at the front of your mind!

In general I would say that for personal development projects, where the main point is for you to learn how to use a new system, the main thing is to get started. If you think of a better way to do it in a few months, then you can change things whenever you like and however much you like - but personally I always found getting started is one of the 'sticky' points in a project, where I can waste a lot of time just sitting and thinking - often to a depth that in hindsight isn't actually that useful a lot of the time. 🙂

[MrBowmanXD]

Hello, i think the "Editorial" theme from html5up.net would be a good fit for a blog. I was thinking about using it as a theme. What would be the best approach to using this theme? (i need to search how you implement a theme but the "Editorial" seems really complete for a blog). I can document the process of aplying a theme in order to have a reference for future implementations.

[denny]

I had to go and check, and I've got to admit that there's currently not a huge amount of documentation to help you build a theme and get your own site started. 🙁

Here's the partial dev notes about the process (note that a lot of the stuff about Heroku is out of date - they don't have a free tier any more, which makes it a lot less tempting as a way to get started):

https://github.com/denny/ShinyCMS-ruby/blob/main/docs/Developers/Notes/new-site.md

Have a look at that and see if it makes sense, and ask any questions you want/need to ask!

[MrBowmanXD]

I am using "railway" to deploy my personal projects. I will try to launch the portfolio/blog. Thanks for the availability.

[MrBowmanXD]

Hello, had to use "git@github.com:{your-username}/{your-site-name}.git" instead of the "git push --mirror https://github.com/{your-username}/{your-site-name}.git" command. One question, wich file is the config file that i need to fill out for production please? (For example for database connection?)

[denny]

Config for production is mostly in the Site Settings and Feature Flags admin section, with some things (mostly passwords and similar secrets, such as your database details) in ENV (or wherever your deployment platform keeps that - it's in Settings -> Config Vars on Heroku, various .env* files on a Linux server).

[MrBowmanXD]

In the spirit of this issue i will try to incorporate the theme "Editorial" from html5up.net. Now how do we incorporate this theme? (Going to investigate the theme files to see how to build a theme and i have some doubts with the license of the "editorial" theme.)

[denny]

All of the themes on HTML5up.net are CC-licensed: https://html5up.net/license

There are more details of what that means for you and me here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

But the short version is it's okay for us to use it and to base work on it, as long as we give credit to the person who originally made it (by including a link to their site). As I've already used and credited some other themes from there, you'll just need to add the theme name to the list, in docs/Licensing/index.md

[MrBowmanXD]

Was thinking on building a small theme for me (freelancer offering services with blog) like a tech website. With my front end skills and ai it might be possible i think.