Creating Theme Packages

This guide describes step by step the workflow of setting up and publish a new theme. It assumes you're familiar with Visual Code Studio and working on a system with a Bash shell or similar — like macOS or Linux.

The Local Package

1. It's a good practice to start developing a new package outside of the Automad packages directory. Therefore change to some directory outside of Automad where you want to develop your new theme. Let's assume you want to put your package into a directory called dev within your home folder.

   cd ~/dev
   

2. Create new skeleton theme in your dev directory using Composer.

   composer create-project automad/theme-skeleton my-theme
   

3. Change to the new theme directory and edit the composer.json and theme.json files. VS Code is used here as the editor. At least change the vendor and theme name.

   cd my-theme
   code composer.json
   

   Also edit the name in theme.json.

   code theme.json
   

4. Now change to your Automad root directory. For example ~/Sites/automad-site.

   cd ~/Sites/automad-site
   

5. Edit the composer.json file of the Automad installation.

   code composer.json
   

   Add the following snippet to Automad's composer file (note the path to your package).

   {
       ... 
       "repositories": [
           {
               "type": "path",
               "url": "~/dev/my-theme"
           }
       ],
       ...
   }
   

6. Still in the Automad directory run the following Composer command.

   composer require my-vendor/my-theme:@dev
   

   Now let's create a repository for your theme.

Create a Git Repository

When developing is done, it's time to publish your work.

1. Init new Git repository and commit files.

   cd ~/dev/my-theme
   git init
   git add .
   git commit -m "First commit"
   

2. Create a first release tag for your finished theme following the semantic versioning scheme.

   git tag -a 1.0.0 -m "my version 1.0.0"
   

3. Create a new repository on GitHub.

4. Now, add its URL as a remote to your local repository and push changes. When creating a repository, the URL will be printed on the GitHub page.

   git remote add origin /remote/URL/of/your/new/repo
   git push -u origin master
   

Register Your Package

Now it's time to submit your theme package to Packagist. After succseffuly registering it, it will automatically show up in the package browser.