Announcing a new OJS 3 theme and expanded theming documentation

OJS 3.0 supports a powerful templating engine that allows well-resourced organisations to produce professional, highly-tailored publishing platforms, like this example from The Finnish Scholarly Journals Online. But we're always working to make it easier for journals of all sizes to publish an online site that fits their needs.

Today we're announcing two more additions to our theme ecosystem: expanded technical documentation on theming OJS and OMP, and a new OJS 3 theme that can be used out-of-the-box by anyone regardless of their technical skills.

A technical guide for creating OJS 3 themes

We've released the first version of our technical guide describing how you can code your own themes for OJS 3+ and OMP 1.2+ . The guide is intended for technically proficient programmers who wish to customize the look and feel of their journal or press using PHP, HTML and CSS code.

The documentation provides an overview of our theme architecture, how to quickly override templates, and how to introduce simple CSS changes. For those who want to go further, it describes how to create your own themes, take advantage of the new APIs for child themes and theme options, and even deliver custom data to your templates.

We hope you'll find it useful. Please let us know in the forums if there is anything missing that you think should be included.

Introducing a new OJS 3 theme

Manuscript is a new child theme for OJS 3.0.2+. This theme provides a clean, simple style with a boxed layout that mimics a paper document.

The theme really shines when you configure your journal without a sidebar, benefiting from generous spacing that brings focus to the main content. But it looks great regardless of whether or not you use the sidebar.

Just like the default theme, you can tailor the colours to match your journal's branding.

If you are using OJS 3.0.2, you can install the theme by going to the Settings > Website > Plugins page in your admin area. Click on the Plugin Gallery, find the Manuscript theme in the plugin list, open the plugin details and click on the Install link you will find there. You'll then find the plugin in your plugins list and be able to select it under the Settings > Website > Appearance options.

Be sure to let us know about your themeing work in our Community Showcase!

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