Installing a theme
How a theme reaches your site, what changes, and how to undo it.
How a theme reaches your site
You install a theme from the gallery, and it brings two things with it: the look, and the settings it needs your site to have. Remove the theme and both are undone.
Your own CSS is not touched. A theme’s styles never mix into whatever you write in the code editor — yours stay yours.
The order styles are applied in
| Order | What |
|---|---|
| 1 | Rolea’s own styles |
| 2 | The theme’s stylesheet |
| 3 | The theme options you have tuned |
| 4 | Your custom CSS |
Yours comes last, so it always wins. If a theme leaves something almost the way you want it, you can correct it in your own CSS.
Who can install
Only the site owner: whoever created it. Other administrators can still change the appearance by the usual means, and can tune the installed theme’s options, but they cannot replace or remove it.
Trying it before installing
Every theme’s page has “Preview on my site”. It opens your site, with your real content, as it would look installed: the stylesheet and the settings the theme asks for. Nothing is saved.
Only the site’s administrators and founders see it; for the rest of the community nothing changes while you look.
Installing
From the theme’s page in the gallery. If you have several sites, you pick which one. Before anything is applied, a dialog opens with two blocks:
- Required changes. The settings the theme needs. They cannot be changed while the theme is installed: in the panel they show up locked. Removing the theme returns them to their previous value.
- Suggested changes. The designer’s recommendations, all ticked by default. You can untick any of them, one by one. Whatever you accept is written into your settings and you can change it later.
Before anything is written we keep the values you had, so we can give them back if you remove the theme. If a theme asks for no settings at all, the dialog says so.
Tuning the theme’s options
Many themes leave colours, sizes or fonts up to you. They are tuned from your site’s panel, under Admin → Site → Themes.
What you pick is stored on your site and affects only your site. Leave an option alone and the designer’s value is used.
Updates
A theme does not update itself. Your site stays on the version you installed even after the designer publishes a newer one. When you want the new one, you install it from the theme’s page, and you see the version number and what kind of change it brings before confirming.
Changing themes
A site runs one theme at a time. Installing a new one replaces whatever was there: the settings the old theme had made are undone, and the new theme’s are applied in their place.
Removing the theme
From the same theme page. We ask you to type your site’s subdomain to confirm. It takes effect immediately:
- Your site returns to Rolea’s own styles on the next page load.
- The settings the theme changed go back to the values you had before installing it.
- The colours, sizes and fonts you tuned for that theme are discarded. Install it again and it starts from the designer’s values.
- Your custom CSS, JavaScript and HTML stay exactly as they are.
If something goes wrong
Add ?noskin=1 to the end of any address on your site — for example yoursite.rolea.es/admin?noskin=1 — and the page is drawn without the theme and without your custom code, for that visit only. It is how you reach the panel if a theme leaves something unreadable or invisible.
If the theme itself is at fault, tell whoever designed it: every gallery entry leads to its author, and their fix arrives as a new version.