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Confusion with Survey Themes

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5 years 6 months ago #174370 by bulgin
Confusion with Survey Themes was created by bulgin
I'm finding LimeSurvery to be unparalleled in it's power and flexibility - which is a great thing. It's clear a number of people have put their heart and soul into it and it shows. But every once in a while I run across something that just makes me think . . . duh! What were they thinking?

For example, on the backend in Survey Themes there are couple of buttons - Extend and Reset. Do they mean "save a copy" for Extend and Install for Reset?

I noticed that I was trying to determine which theme was running on my install and there is no apparent way to discern that.

1) How do I know which theme is running?
2) Does Extend mean make a copy?
3) Does Reset mean Install or reinstall?

I'm asking because in my attempt to determine which theme was running, I must have clicked reset too many times and now I have multiple installs of the same theme. . . I think.

As well under available survey themes I now see "extends_extends_fruity-me" and "extends_fruity".

I'm assuming I can install other themes available out there in the after market place by importing, but I'm afraid to take that route until I can figure out how to use the backend to even know what theme I'm currently using and what those two buttons mean.

Thank you all for the great work I'm sure this is just a matter of applying great efforts to other more important tweaks on this great software.

Thanks.
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5 years 6 months ago #174387 by holch
Replied by holch on topic Confusion with Survey Themes
Which survey theme you use you can define for each survey. You'll find that in the general settings of the survey itself.

manual.limesurvey.org/General_settings#General_settings_panel

There you set your theme/template. There is a little bit of confusion at the moment. Before the themes were called templates, in one of the recent versions things moved to themes, but there seem to be still some residuals left that say "template".

I answer at the LimeSurvey forum in my spare time, I'm not a LimeSurvey GmbH employee.
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5 years 6 months ago #174388 by holch
Replied by holch on topic Confusion with Survey Themes
You can use the themes as is, or you can create your own theme. The best way to create your own theme is to "extend" an existing standard theme that comes with Limesurvey. Do not change the themes that come with LS directly. Of course you could create a theme from scratch, but that is probably a lot of work. You could also copy an existing theme and make your changes there. But this means it would not get any updates.

So the best way to make smaller changes is to extend one of the existing themes. So whatever you change is applied based on the orginal theme. You only need to change those bits, that you change, everything else will be used from the underlying theme.

I answer at the LimeSurvey forum in my spare time, I'm not a LimeSurvey GmbH employee.
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  • bulgin
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5 years 6 months ago #174389 by bulgin
Replied by bulgin on topic Confusion with Survey Themes
I understand all that.

My question is "how" do I know "which" them is "on" and which are "off".

The backend has no method of determining this like in most systems. See attached screenshot.

Does the "reset" button mean "this is the one in use and click to change?"\

What does "resetting" a theme mean?
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5 years 6 months ago #174390 by holch
Replied by holch on topic Confusion with Survey Themes
All themes that are in your list are "on". They all can be used. You should be able to choose them from the theme picker dropdown on a survey level (or for the default theme on the general settings level).

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  • bulgin
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5 years 6 months ago #174393 by bulgin
Replied by bulgin on topic Confusion with Survey Themes
Thank you - I think you mean all themes are "available". Only one can be in use (on) at any given time, correct?

Thank you for pointing out that I can choose from the picker - I didn't know that.
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5 years 6 months ago #174395 by holch
Replied by holch on topic Confusion with Survey Themes
No, not really.

There can be only ONE theme as default theme set in the general settings of your Limesurvey installation.

And for each survey there can be only ONE theme set.

But if you have several surveys running, they can all have different themes.

I answer at the LimeSurvey forum in my spare time, I'm not a LimeSurvey GmbH employee.
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5 years 6 months ago #174411 by tpartner
Replied by tpartner on topic Confusion with Survey Themes
Note that "Extend" does not mean "Copy". When you extend a theme, you are only creating a child theme. All files are still served from the parent theme unless they are copied into the child theme directory.

Cheers,
Tony Partner

Solutions, code and workarounds presented in these forums are given without any warranty, implied or otherwise.
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