Creating a New Skin: the Bare Minimum

Table of Contents

Introduction
Apache directives
Customizing templates

Introduction

When you adopt the TPAC as your catalog, you must create a new skin. This involves a combination of overriding template files and setting Apache directives to control the look and feel of your customized TPAC.

Apache directives

There are a few Apache directives and environment variables of note for customizing TPAC behavior. These directives should generally live within a <vhost> section of your Apache configuration.

OILSWebDefaultLocale specifies which locale to display when a user lands on a page in the TPAC and has not chosen a different locale from the TPAC locale picker. The following example shows the fr_ca locale being added to the locale picker and being set as the default locale:
```
PerlAddVar OILSWebLocale "fr_ca"
PerlAddVar OILSWebLocale "/openils/var/data/locale/opac/fr-CA.po"
PerlAddVar OILSWebDefaultLocale "fr-CA"
```
physical_loc is an Apache environment variable that sets the default physical location, used for setting search scopes and determining the order in which copies should be sorted. The following example demonstrates the default physical location being set to library ID 104:
```
SetEnv physical_loc 104
```

Customizing templates

When you install Evergreen, the TPAC templates include many placeholder images, text, and links. You should override most of these to provide your users with a custom experience that matches your library. Following is a list of templates that include placeholder images, text, or links that you should override.

All paths are relative to /openils/var/templates/opac

parts/config.tt2: contains many configuration settings that affect the behavior of the TPAC, including:
- hiding the Place Hold button for available items
- enabling RefWorks support for citation management
- adding OpenURL resolution for electronic resources
- enabling Google Analytics or Matomo Analytics tracking for your TPAC
- displaying the "Forgot your password?" prompt
- controlling the size of cover art on the record details page
- defining which facets to display, and in which order
- controlling basic and advanced search options
- controlling if the "Show More Details" button is visible or activated by default in OPAC search results
- hiding phone notification options (useful for libraries that do not do phone notifications)
- disallowing password or e-mail changes (useful for libraries that use centralized authentication or single sign-on systems)
- displaying a maintenance message in the public catalog and KPAC (this is controlled by the ctx.maintenance_message variable)
- displaying previews of books when available from Google Books. This is controlled by the ctx.google_books_preview variable, which is set to 0 by default to protect the privacy of users who might not want to share their browsing behavior with Google.
- disabling the "Group Formats and Editions" search. This is controlled by setting the metarecords.disabled variable to 1.
- setting the default search to a 'Group Formats and Editions' search. This is done by setting the search.metarecord_default variable to 1.
parts/footer.tt2 and parts/topnav_links.tt2: contains customizable links. Defaults like 'Link 1' will not mean much to your users!
parts/homesearch.tt2: holds the large Evergreen logo on the home page of the TPAC. Substitute your library’s logo, or if you are adventurous, create a "most recently added items" carousel… and then share your customization with the Evergreen community.
parts/topnav_logo.tt2: holds the small Evergreen logo that appears on the top left of every page in the TPAC. You will also want to remove or change the target of the link that wraps the logo and leads to the Evergreen site.
parts/login/form.tt2: contains some assumptions about terminology and examples that you might prefer to change to be more consistent with your own site’s existing practices. For example, you may not use 'PIN' at your library because you want to encourage users to use a password that is more secure than a four-digit number.
parts/login/help.tt2: contains links that point to http://example.com, images with text on them (which is not an acceptable practice for accessibility reasons), and promises of answers to frequently asked questions that might not exist at your site.
`parts/login/password_hint.tt2\`: contains a hint about your users' password on first login that is misleading if your library does not set the initial password for an account to the last four digits of the phone number associated with the account.
parts/myopac/main_refund_policy.tt2: describes the policy for refunds for your library.
parts/myopac/prefs_hints.tt2: suggests that users should have a valid email on file so they can receive courtesy and overdue notices. If your library does not send out email notices, you should edit this to avoid misleading your users.
myopac/update_password_msg.tt2: defines the password format that needs to be used when setting a user password. If your Evergreen site has set Password format regex in the Library Settings Editor, you should update the language to describe the format that should be used.
password_reset.tt2: in the msg_map section, you might want to change the NOT_STRONG text that appears when the user tries to set a password that does not match the required format. Ideally, this message will tell the user how they should format the password.
`parts/css/fonts.tt2\`: defines the font sizes for the TPAC in terms of one base font size, and all other sizes derived from that in percentages. The default is 12 pixels, but some design sites strongly suggest a base font size of 16 pixels. Perhaps you want to try '1em' as a base to respect your users' preferences. You only need to change one number in this file if you want to experiment with different options for your users.
parts/css/colors.tt2: chances are your library’s official colors do not match Evergreen’s wall of dark green. This file defines the colors in use in the standard Evergreen template. In theory you should be able to change just a few colors and everything will work, but in practice you will need to experiment to avoid light-gray-on-white low-contrast combinations.

The following are templates that are less frequently overridden, but some libraries benefit from the added customization options.

parts/advanced/numeric.tt2: defines the search options of the Advanced Search > Numeric search. If you wanted to add a bib call number search option, which is different from the item copy call number; you would add the following code to numeric.tt2.
```
<option value="identifier|bibcn">[% l('Bib Call Number') %]</option>
```

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