A key component of creating and maintaining a consistent brand image is Magento 2 custom theme development. It is a highly flexible tool. Despite this, the complexity that might accompany this possibility can be enormous.
Building a solid foundation of theming best practices as soon as possible can save your developers time and frustration, provide a seamless brand experience for clients, and position you for quite a long period of success after shipment. Hire Magento developers to increase your knowledge of app development.
What is Magento 2?
One of the finest e-commerce systems, Magento enables medium- and large-sized businesses to enhance their online stores at a reasonable cost. Over 200000 online shops currently use the Magento e-commerce development platform, which has experienced phenomenal growth in recent years.
It is simple to conclude that Magento is the finest choice one can make when trying to expand their business, given its high-performance features, vast scalability choices, and sizable support community.
The newest version of the Magento family’s e-commerce software, known as Magento 2, intends to increase the speed and performance offered by several other high-level features, raising conversion rates for online retailers.
Why Magento 2?
For your enterprises, Magento 2 is the ideal shopping cart solution. It provides a large variety of versatile tools, which improves it as a platform for your online businesses.
You can easily manage your business’s appearance, content, and features by using Magento 2. It supports a variety of PHP frameworks, numerous databases, and online and cloud services, making the application hassle-free.
In Magento 2, the admin interface is more approachable and straightforward. It is adaptable and created to allow administrators to quickly access crucial information and manage items.
Hire expert Magento 2 developers!
What is Magento 2 custom theme development?
A theme is a part of the Magento program that uses a mix of unique templates, layouts, styles, or graphics to provide a consistent visual appearance across the application area. The resources for the view layer given by modules or libraries are intended to be overridden or customized by themes.
Themes are created by various vendors (front-end developers) and supplied with other Magento system components as add-on packages. When it comes to establishing a unified look and feel for the whole store, Magento 2 custom theme development is a crucial element.
After successfully installing Magento 2, you will notice the Luma and Blank themes as the default options. Blank is a foundation for creating unique Magento theme customizations, whereas Luma is a demonstration theme.
We’ll go through the fundamentals of Magento 2 custom theme development for newcomers in this blog.
Requirements
Make sure the following conditions are met before you start working on creating your own Magento 2 theme:
- You’ve worked with Magento a little bit when it comes to coding.
- You’re familiar with Magento 2’s fundamentals.
- You have access to the front and back end of Magento 2 on your local host, which is installed and functioning without issue.
If you don’t already have Magento 2 operational, a Magento hosting partner can set it up quickly. In just a few clicks, launch your Magento 2 store and begin building it from scratch.
Steps to make Magento 2 custom theme development
☛ Step 1:
You must navigate to the following location to create a directory for your Magento 2 theme: your Magento 2 root directory>/app/design/front-end. Create a new directory with the name of your theme vendor within the front-end directory: /app/design/front-end/vendor name.
Make a guide named /app/design/front-end/vendor name/m2-theme within your theme vendor directory for your Magento 2 theme. You must declare your Magento 2 theme after constructing this structure for Magento to recognize it. In the back-and-backend of Magento 2, you may designate your theme as the default theme.
☛ Step 2:
The theme.xml file must now be created and placed in the directory app/design/frontend/vendorname/m2-theme/theme.xml.
The title> tag has to contain the name of your theme. The parent> element allows for the specification of the parent theme for fallback operations.
☛ Step 3:
To register the package on a packaging server, add a composer.json file to your theme directory at app/design/frontend/vendorname/m2-theme/composer.json. The theme dependency information includes a link to this file. Packagist.org is the default public packaging server for Magento.
☛ Step 4:
Create the following file in your theme directory: app/design/frontend/vendorname/m2-theme/registration.php to register your theme with the Magento system.
☛ Step 5:
Once your theme has been added to the file system, you are ready to activate it and use it in your shop. Navigate to the contentContent> Design > Themes section after accessing the Magento 2 backend. Ensure that your theme is included in this list.
When your theme appears in this list, navigate to Stores > Configuration > Design and pick your newly generated theme. Click “Save Config” once you’ve chosen your theme, then “Clear Cache” to save your configuration.
☛ Step 6:
You require view.xml to configure the sizes of additional pictures and catalog images. If the product image sizes of your custom Magento development are different from the parent theme sizes, then this file is necessary for the theme. All storefront product image sizes are configured in the view.xml file.
☛ Step 7:
Create the Magento Theme/layout folders, then add the necessary code to the default.xml file to specify the theme logo. The default.xml file is located in the following path: /app/design/frontend/vendor name /m2-theme/Magento Theme/layout/default.xml.
☛ Step 8:
Theme inheritance makes it simple to extend themes and reduces maintenance requirements. An existing article might be a starting point for modest shop design improvements like seasonal decorations or bespoke Magento theme development adjustments.
You can include overriding and extending files instead of duplicating big theme files and changing only the things you need to alter. In Magento 2, the level of theme inheritance is unrestricted.
The fallback technique is the foundation for theme inheritance in Magento, just like in Magento 1. It ensures that the Magento system will go through the module files or library of the default themes if a view file is not present in your custom Magento theme.
The fallback method differs for static files like CSS, fonts, pictures, JavaScript, and other theme files. The child theme specifies the parent theme using a theme.xml file.
☛ Step 9:
Applications built with Magento 2 follow the model view controller architectural paradigm.
Before we start customizing the theme, you should be aware of the following three ways to style the website:
- Client/Server Compilation
- Grunt-Based Server-Side Compilation
- Client-Side Compilation
To find the front-end development process, go to Stores > Configuration > Advanced > Developer > Workflow type. Choose “Save Config” from the menu.
When we reload the web browser in this mode, Grunt does not need to be running to compile our CSS. The Magento platform will handle it. Now that we have fewer files, we can edit them and watch the front end altar in the directory listed below: /app/design/front-end/vendor name/m2-theme/web/CSS/source/CW-theme.less
You can include any theme-specific styles in this file, save them, and refresh your browser. You’ll see that when the browser first loads with client-side compilation enabled, there are no styles. The reason for this is that Magento is now compiling LESS. Just wait a moment or two, and your customized classes will start to appear.
☛ Step 10:
It is necessary to add a layout file with the same name in the directory /app/design/front-end/Magento/luma/Magento Theme/layout/default.xml to override the theme layout.
These files overrode the following layouts: /vendor name/m2-theme/Magento Theme/layout/default.xml.
Always use the directory name page layout rather than the layout when replacing page layout files.
Conclusion
Now that your first theme has been established as a recommended practice, you may start working on it. With the help of these guidelines, you’ll be able to concentrate on what’s important: creating a retail environment that connects with your customers and motivates them to switch.
We understand that building your theme is simply the beginning of a meaningful engagement. You may be curious about how your customized Magento store will function now that you know how to modify your theme to suit your needs.
Therefore, the only hosting platform suitable for Magento and properly optimized can significantly speed up your website’s loading. Hire a Magento development company to implement a theme application mechanism for you.