If you are planning for Magento theme customization you might be struggling through many thoughts like how to make this possible. The fact is there is no rocket science, you simply have to install your Magento theme and wait for the result that is exactly similar to the demo theme.
Well, now let’s talk about the most important aspect of this write-up that is custom theme development. There are various things you might want to customize your Magento themes like menu text, footer text, slider image, web layout, or brand logo. You may think of making small or big changes. The issue comes when few of them are nearly difficult to develop without a thorough understanding of both front-end development and the theme design.
Performing this task is not easy as it seems, it requires to be done through professionals and experts. A magento theme development company is all you need to approach to get this done.
Now let’s quickly understand more about this Theme Customization in Magento and here we go.
Table of Contents
Steps to Theme Customization in Magento
What is a Magento theme?
A Magento theme is a set of files that instruct Magento on how to present your store to customers. It is a set of CSS, HTML, PHP, XML, and image files which together contribute to the appearance of your online shop. In simple terms, a theme is an important element of Magento. It uses custom templates, images, styles, or layouts. Themes are specially designed to customize or override view layer resources, provided by modules or libraries.
Build a Theme Directory
To build a directory for your Magento theme, Just navigate to: <your Magento 2 root directory>/app/design/frontend. By following the frontend directory, form a new directory as per your theme vendor name: /app/design/frontend/Cloudways. Make a directory for your Magento theme within the theme vendor directory.
/app/design/frontend/Cloudways/m2-theme.
After you’ve created this design, you’ll need to declare your Theme Customization in Magento. As a result, in your Magento backend, set your theme to the latest existing theme.
Declare your Magento theme
The very next step is you have to create the theme.xml folder under app/design/frontend/Cloudways/m2-theme/theme.xml and utilize the code. Under the <title> tag, you just have to include the title of your theme. And, do specify the parent theme in the <parent> tag, for fallback purposes. This is a sample thumbnail picture that appears in the Magento admin on our theme page. The thumbnail picture can be found in the app/design/frontend/Cloudways/m2-theme/media/m2-theme-image.jpg.
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Also, it’s pertinent to note you have this similar thumbnail in the exact location. If you keep your file in the wrong location then you will definitely get an error, when you open your theme page in Magento 2.
Make Your MagentoTheme a Composer Package
For this, you need to attach a composer.json file in your theme directory: app/design/frontend/Cloudways/m2-theme/composer.json
to register the package on a packaging server. Now, You can find this file in the theme dependency information. Magento’s primary open packaging server is https://packagist.org/. Please enter the following code:
Add Registration.php to Create Your Custom Magento Theme
Simply make a registration.php file in your theme directory to sign up your theme with the Magento framework: app/design/frontend/Cloudways/m2-theme/registration.php and then use the respective code in your registration.php:
Configure Image Properties in Your Theme
All you need is view.xml to configure catalogue image sizes and other images. If the product picture sizes in your custom Magento theme development vary significantly from the parent theme sizes, then you’ll need this file. This view.xml file specifies the sizes of all storefront product images.
For eg, you can define a size of 350 x 350 pixels for the category view product images. From the directory of your parent theme, copy the view.xml file to your theme’s directory. You can view the corresponding configuration.
Declare a Logo for Your Custom Magento Theme
If you want to declare a theme logo for your Theme Customization in Magento, create Magento_Theme/layout directories and join the following code to a default.xml file. The default.xml file path is /app/design/frontend/Cloudways/m2-theme/Magento_Theme/layout/default.xml. You can also change to a different file format such as png, jpg but you have to declare it. The size of logo should be 300x300px and you open file <theme_dir>/Magento_Theme/layout/default.xml
Inheritance of Theme
Theme inheritance performs a major role. It enables us to extend themes efficiently and lessen maintenance efforts. You can utilize an existing theme as a basis for custom Magento theme development, or store design upgrades like holiday decorations. You can include overriding and extending files instead of duplicating large theme files and altering what you need to modify. Custom Magento development is the service for creating unique solutions on top of Magento.
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Theme inheritance is based on the fallback mechanism. This assures, if a view file is not existing in your custom Magento theme, the Magento system searches through the default themes’ module files or library. The fallback mechanism is completely distinct for static files like fonts, CSS, JavaScript, images and other theme files.
Theme Styling
Magento applications use a model view controller architecture pattern. Here, major emphasis is at styling, which mostly involves editing the CSS.
Following are the three different methods for styling the website:
- Server Side Compilation
- Server Side Compilation Using Grunt
- Client-Side Compilation
Let us tell you though these are three different methods but the outcome is the same in all three methods.
Customize Theme Layout
When your basic theme structure is created, you can seamlessly customize or override any layout and set up a new design layout for the new theme.
The layouts can be distinguished by below:
- Base layouts: Layout files of modules
- Page layout files: Magento_Catalog/view/frontend/page_layout
- Page configuration and generic layout files: Magento_Catalog/view/frontend/layout
- Theme layouts: Layout files of themes.
- Page layout files: app/design/frontend/mageice/icecube/Magento_Catalog/page_layout
- Page configuration and generic layout files: app/design/frontend/mageice/icecube/Magento_Catalog/layout
Apply and Configure Magento Custom Theme in Admin
Once you’ve added your theme to the file system, you can seamlessly activate your theme and utilize it for your website. Further, move to the Magento backend, then go to Content > Design > Themes. Lastly, make sure your theme appears on this list. When you can see your theme in this list, go to Stores > Configuration > Design &pick your newly created theme.
Conclusion
Well in this write-up we have focused on the most essential things required to create a basic custom theme. Hopefully, this guide proves to be of great help to you to understand how to start developing your Magento custom development. And if you still find issue then you should take help from hire magento theme developer
We have made you learn how to tweak your theme according to your requirements. Perform the above-cited steps to get your custom themes. Create a theme of your desire and give a new look and feel to your store.
We request, do share your valuable feedback with us. It gives us the motivation to work hard. You can also share suggestions and whatever queries you may have. We would love to hear from you.
Thanks for sharing your precious time!
Emily is a content creator of Magento developer with expertise in numerous eCommerce web development technologies. She is working for the Magnetofx- magento theme development company in the USA. She loves to share her inappropriate knowledge on the web.