Chapter 14. Creating your own themes

You can create your own themes for OTRS to use the layout you like in the web frontend. To create own themes you should customize the output templates to your needs.

More information about the syntax and structure of output templates can be found in the Developer Manual on http://doc.otrs.org , especialy in the chapter about templates .

To create a new theme called "Company" perform the following steps:

  1. Create a directory called Kernel/Output/HTML/Company and copy all files, that you like to change, from Kernel/Output/HTML/Standard into the new folder.

    Important

    Only copy over the files you actually change. OTRS will automatically get the missing files from the Standard theme. This will make upgrading in a later stage much easier.

  2. Customize the files in the directory Kernel/Output/HTML/Company and change the layout to your needs

  3. To activate the new theme in OTRS the database has to be changed manualy and the new theme has to be added to the theme table. Below is an example of how to do this with MySQL:

    linux:~# mysql -p
    Enter password:
    Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
    Your MySQL connection id is 26 to server version: 5.0.22-Debian_2-log
    
    Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.
    
    mysql> use otrs;
    Reading table information for completion of table and column names
    You can turn off this feature to get a quicker startup with -A
    
    Database changed
    mysql> INSERT INTO theme
        ->     (theme, valid_id, create_time, create_by, change_time, change_by)
        ->     VALUES
        ->     ('Company', 1, current_timestamp, 1, current_timestamp, 1);
    mysql>
        

Now the new theme should be useable in OTRS. You can select it via your personal preferences page.

Warning

Do not change the theme files shipped with OTRS, these changes will be lost after an update. Create your own themes only by performing the steps described above.