It’s something I came across a while ago, but wasn’t exactly something that stayed in the fore-front of my mind: how to let users choose or select a theme (arbitrarily) on a Plone site.  Normally, I stick to having one theme per site for continuity but a new theme-test site for clients is an exception.

If you were to search Google for the right terms, you’ll find out how to let this happen, but I ended up having to go hunt it down myself.  Hopefully this entry will help people (if I go and include as many terms as I think I or someone else might look for!).

How

Head to the ZMI as an administrative user (/manage), and then to portal_skins.  Under the Properties tab, you’ll find a Boolean option called “Allow arbitrary skins to be selected”.  You guessed it; turn to it on and save.

Your users now have a drop-down menu in their personal preferences for changing the theme.  Install some additional themes and away you go.

Note: seems like this feature doesn’t work well or I’m not using it right.  Changing the theme for one user changes it for everyone..hmm.  Probably the reason the option’s hiding in the ZMI!

Here’s how to correct pesky problems in your code/XHTML since the line number and column references are slightly useless in the ZMI:

Paste contents from a page or page template from the ZMI into a program like gedit and then the line and column reference numbers will be correct (once you remove the comment about the error from the top of the page).

Editing in the ZMI is a bit painful, but we persevere.