1593080 - blog.thunderbird.net - create new theme

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Infrastructure & Operations :: Blogs, task)

Description

[Ryan Lee Sipes]

Our blog template has not aged gracefully. We have the manpower to create a new template but not the permissions to do so on the blog. Please advise. Should we create a template and generate a bug to replace the existing one? Or can we just get privileges at a level that we can do it ourselves?

Comment 1

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

If Ryan or Andrei have access to the Admin Dashboard of the WordPress blog, I can provide a ZIP archive with the new theme to upload in there and activate.
Unless there are any permission limitations.

Comment 2

[Craig Cook (:craigcook)]

(In reply to Alessandro Castellani (:aleca) from comment #1)

If Ryan or Andrei have access to the Admin Dashboard of the WordPress blog, I can provide a ZIP archive with the new theme to upload in there and activate.

If you already have a theme you want to use we can install and activate it. If it's a custom theme you can send the zip (just attach it to this bug if it's not too large) or if it's an official "off the rack" theme from https://wordpress.org/themes/ just let us know which one.

Comment 3

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

Great, I'll upload the zip file here once I have the new theme ready.
Thanks

Comment 4

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

Hi Craig, after talking with Ryan to coordinate the work on the new theme, we were wondering if it would be possible to increase the permission level of Ryan's account to editor, and even having access to an admin account in order to manage plugins, comments, categories, navigation elements, etc.
I'd like to have full access to the WordPress installation in order to properly update it.

Also, would be possible to get an SQL dump alongside the upload folder in order for me to configure the site locally?
Thanks

Comment 5

[Craig Cook (:craigcook)]

(In reply to Alessandro Castellani (:aleca) from comment #4)

Hi Craig, after talking with Ryan to coordinate the work on the new theme, we were wondering if it would be possible to increase the permission level of Ryan's account to editor, and even having access to an admin account in order to manage plugins, comments, categories, navigation elements, etc.
I'd like to have full access to the WordPress installation in order to properly update it.

I've added you as an admin and promoted Ryan's account as well. You can sign in at blog.thunderbird.net/wp-admin using your LDAP credentials (you may have gotten an email with a temp password, but you can ignore that and just use LDAP).

Also, would be possible to get an SQL dump alongside the upload folder in order for me to configure the site locally?

A SQL dump probably isn't practical since it's a multisite installation with a big shared database. But you can easily export the content under Tools > Export (https://blog.thunderbird.net/wp-admin/export.php). That generates an XML file that you can then import into your local setup. We can also create a copy of the blog on a dev server for more thorough QA once you've got something ready to test, before we push it to production.

Since you're building your own theme, I drew up some additional tips and guidelines a while back that you might find helpful: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Iivi9VdO1urBAvbculO4ULPRx10SeDA1KNAtrgRm-98/

Comment 6

[Ryan Lee Sipes]

Hey Craig,

We have a new theme and are ready to deploy it (we were wondering if you could spin up that test instance you mentioned above to see if it works well in "production" first). Can you help us with that?

Comment 7

[Craig Cook (:craigcook)]

I've installed the theme at https://mozilladev.wpengine.com/thunderbird/.

It's a slightly stale copy of the blog so doesn't have all the latest content, but there's enough there to let you should still be able to do plenty tinkering and QA before we push the theme to production.

Anyone with access to the main blog should have the same access here and you can sign in at https://mozilladev.wpengine.com/thunderbird/wp-admin/ using the same LDAP credentials. Let me know if you need to add anyone new.

Also I'm happy to push occasional theme changes or, if you find you need to do lots of little tweaks, I can give someone on the team SFTP access so you can upload yourselves.

Comment 8

[Ryan Lee Sipes]

Hey Craig, we are ready to move the theme to the live blog.

I don't think we'll do a ton of changes, but if you want to hook Sancus up with SFTP access, that would probably be good.

Comment 9

[Ryan Lee Sipes]

Just as a reminder, the theme is on Github: https://github.com/thundernest/thunderblog

Comment 10

[Craig Cook (:craigcook)]

The new theme has been deployed to production and activated. Looks great! Nice work!