Themes and Styles are used to change Vanilla’s structure and appearance respectively. Themes are sets of xhtml templates that Vanilla uses when rendering to the screen. Styles are sets of css and image files which get applied to the chosen theme. Using this form you can select which theme you want to use and which style you want to use.

When you select a theme from the theme dropdown, the page will refresh and the style dropdown will be filled with available styles for the newly selected theme. If you check the box next to “Apply this style to all users”, the chosen style will be applied to all users in the database - this way all users will see the same thing when browsing Vanilla. If you do not check this box, only unauthenticated users (users who are not yet registered or signed in) will see the selected style.

By default there should only be one theme and a default style for it. If you want more themes and / or styles, you can find the latest ones available at the Vanilla Add-ons Directory.

Once you’ve downloaded your new theme, it should be uploaded to your Vanilla installation. Your new theme files should be placed within their own folder in the themes directory of Vanilla. The path to your new theme should be as follows:

/path/to/vanilla/themes/theme_name/

Once you have placed your theme in the correct place, you can make Vanilla use your theme by using the Themes & Styles form on the settings tab.

Once you’ve downloaded your new style, it should be uploaded to your Vanilla installation. Every style works only for specific themes, so make sure that you place this style in the correct theme’s style folder by checking the lussumo.com/addons listing for this style.

The path to this style’s folder & contents should be as follows:

/path/to/vanilla/themes/theme_name/styles/style_name/vanilla.css

Once you have copied the files to the correct place in Vanilla, you can then choose the style using the Themes & Styles form on the settings tab.