Installing your Egg-Based Theme Product

In this section, we will look at how to install egg-based themes using buildout. As of Plone 3.1.2, all of the Plone installers create a buildout that contains your Plone instance. When installing or developing themes, buildout is highly recommended.

 To install the theme product you created in Practical 1:

• First, if it isn't already there, copy your theme product to [your buildout]/[zinstance|zeocluster]/src (if you find that this directory doesn't exist, you can create it yourself).
• Then, using a text editor, edit your buildout.cfg (you'll find it in [your buildout]/[zinstance|zeocluster]) and add the following information into the buildout, instance, and zcml sections. The actual buildout.cfg file will be much longer than the snippets below:

[buildout]
 ...
 develop =
    src/plonetheme.mytheme

[instance]
 eggs =
 ...
 plonetheme.mytheme

zcml =
 ...
 plonetheme.mytheme

The last line tells buildout to generate a ZCML snippet (slug) that tells Zope to recognize your theme product. The dots [...] indicate that you may have additional lines of ZCML code here.

• After updating the configuration, stop your site and run the ''bin/buildout'' command, which will refresh your buildout.
• Then, restart your site and go to the 'Site Setup' page in the Plone interface and click on the 'Add-on Products' link. The 'Site Setup' area is also known as plone_control_panel, as this is the URL used to get to 'Site Setup'.
• Choose the product (My Theme 1.0) by selecting the checkbox next to it and click the 'Install' button.

Note: You may have to empty your browser cache to see the effects of the product installation.

Uninstalling a Theme Product

Uninstalling can be done from the 'Site Setup' / 'Add/Remove Products' page, but only if you installed it from the 'Add/Remove Products' screen. Not all themes uninstall cleanly, but reinstalling the Default Plone product generally cures any issues here.