HOW-TO: Customize OJS

[jmacgreg]

Hi Jamie,

You're right -- the PDF is not currently available as we'd move the documentation from Docbook to the wiki so that community members could update it freely, and I simply forgot to take the link down. I'll do so now. The community update experiment hasn't been all that successful, and we're contemplating moving some "canonical" documentation into an upcoming comprehensive Userguide, at which point it'll be available as PDF (and regular HTML) again; I'll most likely keep the info on the wiki as well, in case others do want to contribute.

Kol_Jaf, if you've created a custom theme as a plugin, you can upload it to plugins/themes. But I have a feeling this isn't what you did -- most likely, you created a new stylesheet, I'm guessing. Could you tell me exactly what you've created, and what you hope to change theme-wise?

Cheers,
James

[martynas]

Hello everyone!!

I read the customization wiki but I didn't find what I was looking for and I was hoping to find some help here.

I would like to add a container div that will hold the header, the content, the sidebar & the footer, so it's easier to create a fixed layout that is easy to manipulate and style. I was wondering if there is a way to do that.

Thanks in advance

Hi,

I'm new in OJS. I was searching to how to change header.tpl that div container will hold the header, the content, the sidebar & the footer. I tried to find posts on this forum, but I could not find.

If someone could link me to these posts or even to customized header.tpl file to download, I would be very appreciate.

[emfitz]

Hi there, I'm a CSS novice but would like to make some basic changes to our journal (colour, changing to a sans serif font, etc). Right now it's using a theme (Vanilla). I've reviewed all of the documentation in the wiki, but am still unclear about how to modify the stylesheets.

Is the only place to upload new stylesheets in the Journal Management dialog (at step 5.6)? Just as a trial, I downloaded the Vanilla .css, and then tried to upload it as a journal style sheet, but it looked distorted (even though I hadn't made any modifications). I would have assumed it would look the same as the theme, if I did this, but it didn't.

I've asked our IT dept who did the OJS install, but they're not very helpful unfortunately I'd like to understand the basics of this myself, if possible?

Any help or advice would be much appreciated!

Thanks, Emily

[asmecher]

Hi Emily,

The upload area in Journal Setup 5.6 is the best place to upload a stylesheet. Note, though that it'll be applied *in addition* to any theme you have selected, and since stylesheets can contain relative sizes, applying the same stylesheet twice may have unwanted effects -- think e.g. about a rule that says "increase fonts to 120% of their current size." Applying it twice will increase it yet again.

It's best to upload a stylesheet that contains only the changes you want to apply, rather than unnecessarily (or incorrectly) duplicating a bunch of other styles. If you're OK with the vanilla theme, but want to override some colours, just include those colours in your uploaded stylesheet.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

[emfitz]

Thanks for your quick reply! I guess I'm not quite clear on what I should name the style sheet I upload. Say for example, all I want to do is change the fonts in all sections of the Vanilla template to sans serif fonts. How do I go about this?

Also - a slightly unrelated question - is there a way you can alter the order and/or content of the items in the main menu bar (Home/About/User Home) etc?

Apologies if these are really basic questions, but I've been reading http://pkp.sfu.ca/wiki/index.php/Customizing_OJS and it doesn't really make sense to me, since it describes many different style sheets potentially used at any one time, but I can't see or access these from what I can tell.

Thanks so much for your help, Emily

[asmecher]

Hi Emily,

I'd suggest getting a hand from someone who has experience writing stylesheets. You won't be able to re-arrange the links (that'll require a template modification) but changing fonts in headings should be easy -- it's just a matter of identifying the divs in question and writing a rule for them. However, if you don't know how to write CSS selectors, it'll be Greek.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team