Overview

VIVO uses Freemarker templates to create its web pages.  These templates can be modified to alter VIVO's appearance.  Most VIVO sites alter VIVO's default appearance.  VIVO has a "Site Info" capability that allows a few presentation elements to be modified from the Site Admin menu.  Modifying other elements involves creating a theme and modifying that theme.  Here we describe simple modifications that most sites want to make before they go into production.  For a detailed description of theming and templates, see Creating a custom theme

Create a Theme

VIVO comes with a standard theme, called wilma.  wilma is in the folder in vivo/installer/webapp/target/vivo/themes.  

To create a new theme, choose a name for your new theme.  In these examples below we will call the new theme fred.  

Copy the wilma directory and its contents to a new directory called fred.  fred must also be in vivo/installer/webapp/target/vivo/themes.

Your new theme will contain CSS files, image files, and Freemarker templates.

Run the Maven install to deploy your new theme to the Tomcat container. Restart the VIVO Tomcat process. You can then go to the Site Admin page and choose Site Information, to select your theme as the current one.

Modify Header with Logo

Now that you have a theme, we can modify the templates in the theme to change VIVO's look.  Let's start with the header.  VIVO begins each page with an identity block.  You can find the template in fred/templates/identity.ftl

Modify Footer

Add Your Colors

Additional Theming

For more information on theming, see Creating a custom theme