Understanding Themes

In October CMS, a theme is the folder that holds everything your visitors see: pages, layouts, partials, content blocks, and assets like CSS and JavaScript. Your site always has one active theme, and switching themes changes the entire look and feel without affecting your content.

A theme's folder structure looks like this:

themes/

my-theme/

pages/: individual pages, each with its own URL
layouts/: shared page structures (header, footer, common elements)
partials/: reusable template fragments
content/: static content blocks that can be edited in the backend
assets/: CSS, JavaScript, images, and fonts

You don't need to memorize this. You will learn each piece as we go. For now, let's create a theme.

# Navigate to the Theme Settings

1. In the backend, go to Settings → Frontend Theme.
2. You will see any themes that are currently installed. A fresh installation includes a demo theme.

# Create a New Blank Theme

1. Click the Create a new blank theme button.
2. Enter the following:
   • Name: My Theme
   • Directory Name: mytheme
3. Click Create.

Your new theme now appears in the list. It is an empty theme with no pages and no layouts, just an empty folder ready for you to build in.

# Activate Your Theme

1. Find My Theme in the theme list.
2. Click the Activate button next to it.
3. Confirm the activation.

Your site is now using your new blank theme. If you visit the frontend right now, you will see a blank page. That is expected. We haven't created any pages yet.

# Next Steps

Your theme is created and active. Let's give it some structure. Continue to Creating a Layout to build the HTML skeleton that all your pages will share.