Step by Step Guide to Create Theme for Liferay DXP 7

We have been working with Liferay platform ever since the release of Liferay 3.6 for developing enterprise web applications and over this time , not only we have seen the platform evolve and grow significantly with each release, it has also been recognized as a leader in the “Magic Quadrant for Horizontal Portals”– an yearly publication from Gartner ( A leading IT research firm), for the fifth year in a row.

With introduction of Liferay Digital Experience Platform (DXP) 7, creation of custom themes became a complex process, compared to Liferay 6.2 where themes can be easily created using Liferay developer studio and Eclipse.

Therefore in this blog, we have provided a step by step guide for creating your own custom theme for Liferay 7.0.
Mainly 3 steps are included:

• Prerequisite (i.e. environment) to start theme development
• Steps to build theme.
• Deploy theme

Setup of Liferay Theme

Theme generator has few inline dependencies. To make theme generator work, you need to follow following steps to resolve its dependencies.

• Uninstall latest version of node & Ruby and Rails if installed
• Install Node v4.2.2 via this link
• Open the Command Prompt and Check the node version,
  => Type command –

• node –v

and check for output – v4.2.2

• Setup NPM environment by following below steps:

=> Open it in Command Prompt (CMD)

=> Go to C:\Users\ {current User} for Example: C:\Users\dharam.mali
=> Type

copy NUL .npmrc

=> You can see-> .npmrc file is created at C:\Users\dharam.mali
=> Open .npmrc file and add following path:
prefix=c:\Users\dharam.mali\.npm-packages

•     Set environment variables for Node and NPM as follows:
  => NPM_PACKAGES (Add new System Variable) = C:\Users\ dharam.mali\.npm-packages
  =>  NODE_PATH (Add new System Variable) = %NODE_PATH%;c:\Users\dharam.mali\.npm-packages\node_modules
  => Add to (user variable) PATH = %NPM_PACKAGES%
•      Close the Command Prompt (CMD) and open again with Administrator, now Install Yeoman and gulp globally by executing the following commandnpm install -g yo gulp

(It will take some time)

• Now you’re ready to install the Themes Generator. Install it by executing this command:npm install -g generator-liferay-theme

Once everything is installed without error, then install Sass on Windows. Install Ruby Sass and Compass by below steps

• Download Ruby from: http://rubyinstaller.org/downloads/
  => Use the latest version: Ruby 2.3.1 (x64)

Installation:
a. Install it in Program file
b. Make sure to tick
i. “Add Ruby executable to you PATH
ii. Associate .rb and……

iii. Open CMD with administrator, type

gem -v

output: 2.5.1

• Now install SASS Compiler for CSS
  a. To avoid error we will change source path for Ruby,
  => Open CMD with administrator, type:

• gem sources - follow this link

b. Install

• gem install sass compass

Everything is installed properly, now it’s time to create theme!
 

• Go to directory when you want to create your theme: (for Example: E:\projects\liferay-developer-studio\workspace\liferay-workspace\themes)
  
  a. Open CMD with Administrator,
  type :

• yo liferay-theme

Create New Theme name ”MyFirstTheme”

         b. Now your theme is created, see folder created named “MyFirstTheme”
         c. Go to your theme folder E:\projects\liferay-developer-studio\workspace\liferay-workspace\themes\myfirsttheme-theme
        d. In CMD type:

npm install

Now, to deploy theme in Liferay, follow the simple steps given below:

• Go to your theme folder in cmd, e.g. E:\projects\liferay-developer-studio\workspace\liferay-workspace\themes\myfirsttheme-theme
• Type :gulp build

• Once you get message “Finished ‘build’ after 17 s” type:gulp deploy

Now your theme is ready for use.

Wrap-Up

In this Blog, we have provided step by step Installation guide and error free solution for developers which helps in time efficient and user friendly installation of theme in Liferay 7.

You should also read this for exclusive insights: How to Create Portlet Application Using OSGi in Liferay 7?