Is working from an existing theme a must, or can I start from scratch?

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I just installed Concrete5 to investigate its capabilities, and it seems that the available themes are fairly limited compared to other CMSs. I'm used to coding sites in HTML5, CSS of course, and Bootstrap 4.

My question is, can a Concrete5 site be started completely from scratch, or is an initial theme mandatory?

I also wonder if a site created in HTML5 and Bootstrap 4 can be "Concretized" without an unreasonably high workload to tweak it properly?

Essentially, I need a bit of flexibility in design, and I'm wondering how much Concrete5 limits the design process.

Thanks much for any insight!

 
hutman replied on at Permalink Reply
hutman
You can absolutely build your own theme!

We have a very basic starter Bootstrap 4 theme package on GitHub - https://github.com/hutman/concrete5-bootstrap4-theme... if you want to check that out and customize away as needed.

You'll just need to download a zip of the repository, put the bootstrap4 directory and all it's contents into your packages folder, and install through the dashboard. It's VERY basic with just one full width template, but it has the easy parts of setting up a bootstrap4 theme.

You can learn more about building/customizing themes here - https://documentation.concrete5.org/developers/designing-for-concret...
tallacman replied on at Permalink Reply
tallacman
This is a very good starter. I use it.
okapi replied on at Permalink Reply
okapi
Very useful, thanks for sharing!
tallacman replied on at Permalink Reply
tallacman
you can take an html theme you like and put it in the Application > Themes folder, change the index.html to default.php.

Activate that theme and it will work. You'll have to a change any references to images, css and js files to the relative path for your theme to display properly.

There is a video that shows how to do all this on youtube... somewhere...
JohntheFish replied on at Permalink Reply
JohntheFish
Elemental Cloner is a good tool to get a new theme starter
https://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/elemental-cloner...

(but the starter is a bit more complex than a bare theme because it includes all the block designs of Elemental)
stewblack23 replied on at Permalink Reply
stewblack23
Here at Stewart Design Agency we specialize in custom built C5 themes. Here is a blog we wrote on how to create a custom theme using Bootstrap 4 and node.js.

https://www.sdagency.net/blog/bootstrap-4-concrete5...