Joomla subtemplates: Create color variations

Question

I have created a template for Joomla 2.5, now I would like to create several variations of the same template which have different colors. I would like to select in the template settings which color the template should use.

How can I do that?

Answer 1

To add parameters in your template, you firstly need to add the following code to your templateDetails.xml file:

<config>
    <fields name="params">
        <fieldset name="advanced">

            <field name="template_colour" type="list" default="default" label="Colour" description="">
                <option value="black">Black</option>
                <option value="red">Red</option>
                <option value="green">Green</option>
            </field>

        </fieldset>
    </fields>
</config>

Once done, upload your CSS files to the template folder and give them specific names which are the same as your option values, such as green.css, red.css and black.css.

Then, open you index.php file and search for the code that is beimg used to import the CSS file. You can then add in the following code:

<?php
  $colour = $this->params->get('template_colour', 'black') // black is the default
  $doc = JFactory::getDocument();
  $doc->addStyleSheet(JUri::root () . 'templates/' . $this->template . '/css/'. $colour.'.css');
?>

What this does it, is get the colour value and applies it which then imports that specific colour css file

Hope this helps