How do I customise the look of my Jiglu site?

There are a number of ways that you can change the look of a Jiglu site. Basic changes in colour and branding can be carried out by changing settings in the web interface. More advanced changes can be implemented by adding your own theme.

Themes

Jiglu comes with six fixed and two customisable themes. You can either choose from three base colour variants – blue, green and red – or select your own colours in a customisable theme to match your organisation’s own branding.

For each colour there are then two variants. The ‘blend’ variant uses a line between each item on index pages and lists of items. The ‘blend striped’ variant uses alternating grey backgrounds for each item instead.

To change the theme go to System settings and then choose the Appearance option. Here you can also select the time zone where your business is located (users can pick their own if wanted) and the locale. Currently only British and American English are supported.

Normally blogs and spaces can pick their own theme, which does not have to be the same as that of the system. If you want to allow only certain themes then you can do so in the Themes settings page. Here you can also choose the colours used by the custom themes.

Images

Out of the box, a Jiglu site will use default Jiglu branding. To change the banner images and icon to your organisation go to System settings and then choose the Banner images option.

There are four images that you can upload here:

  • The system page banner, used at the top of the page.
  • The system icon, used for browser bookmarks / favourites, browser tabs, browser notifications and feed icons. Blogs and spaces may optionally have their own icon.

It is generally best to upload an image in the right size for its use, but the system will scale the image if needed. For system icons you can use a PNG with a transparent background as long as it is 128 x 128 pixels in size. For the other banners, if you wish to support high DPI displays then you should upload an image with a multiple of the required height. For example, the system page banner it should be 60, 120, 180 or 240 pixels high.

Stylesheet

If there are simple changes to presentation that you want to make then this can be achieved with a system stylesheet. For example, if you have uploaded a group default banner with a lighter shade than the default then you may want to change the colour of the text with the group name. Go to System settings and choose the Stylesheet option. The system will allow you to enter standard CSS 3 stylesheet definitions, but note that it will remove any that do not validate or could be a potential security risk.

System naming

You will want to give your system a name, a short identifier to be used in emails and a description to be used in feeds and on any public home page. Go to System settings and choose the System identity option and you will be able to set these.

Footers and page analytics

It is likely that you will want to set your own footers on each page, for example to identify the system, tell users how to get support and linking to any system polices such as usage terms or cookie polices. Go to System settings and choose the Page elements option and you will be able to set footers for both system and group pages.

Here you can also enter custom JavaScript to appear on each page. This is likely to be most useful for incorporating external tracking systems, such as Google Analytics.

Public home page

By default, a user that is not logged in that enters the URL of the site will be redirected to the logon page. If you prefer you can present information to a user about the system, such as what it contains and how they can get access. Go to System settings and choose the Public home page option and you will be able to enter the HTML to be used in the middle part of the page when a user visits the site and a stylesheet that will be applied to this HTML.

Registration terms, privacy policy and additional information

Before a user registers to use the system you may want them to accept specific registration terms and you may also want users to be able to view the privacy policy explaining how their information is used and what cookies are used. Go to System settings and choose the System policies option and you will be able to enter these terms. You can also enter contact information for the administrators of the system and a short message that will be displayed on the log in page.

As well as appearing on the registration page, the registration terms and privacy policy have their own web pages, as does the contact information.

  • Registration terms are at https://(your-site)/+terms
  • Privacy policy is at https://(your-site)/+privacy
  • Contact information is at https://(your-site)/+contact

You may want to link to these pages from the page footers.

Written by Stephen Hebditch. Published on .
6.0.0
Changing the colours, page elements and policy pages of a Jiglu site.