Theming: Why So Few Themes, or Customization Available?

🍱 Features & apps
1

Of course, it is wonderful to have the functionality that Nextcloud provides, but I was curious why there is so little available in the area of Theming? Most projects which are more successful have options to customize the look and feel of the functionality to fit better with existing online presence.

Do changes to the look and feel of the theme really come down to manually changing theme files in the themes directory? Is there not an app that is a front end, or gui to the complexity of the themes files themselves?

I’ll monkey with the theme directly, if it is necessary, but would hope there was an app for that. It would certainly help with community involvement if modifying the base functionality to fit one’s own needs were more easily accomplished.

I’m hoping I just missed that information somewhere.

Thanks for any thoughts, suggestions, direction…

2

Are you already aware of the available theming parameters which are described here?!

https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/latest/admin_manual/configuration_server/theming.html#theming

3

Yes, I am familiar with that, but had missed the fact that there is a revenue stream referenced by “Nextcloud GmbH provides branding services” which is an incentive not to make theming and customizing more accessible to end users. That is sad… for the project as a whole. Easy and no-cost access to such tools encourages and helps secure more widespread acceptance of a platform.