
Creating Mezzanine themes, Part 1 - pajju
http://bitofpixels.com/blog/mezzatheming-creating-mezzanine-themes-part-1-basehtml/
======
pajju
Part 1 — Working with Base.html [http://bitofpixels.com/blog/mezzatheming-
creating-mezzanine-...](http://bitofpixels.com/blog/mezzatheming-creating-
mezzanine-themes-part-1-basehtml/)

Part 2 — The HomePage [http://bitofpixels.com/blog/mezzatheming-part-2-the-
homepage...](http://bitofpixels.com/blog/mezzatheming-part-2-the-homepage/)

Part 3 — Pages, extra DRY [http://bitofpixels.com/blog/mezzatheming-
part-3-pages-extra-...](http://bitofpixels.com/blog/mezzatheming-part-3-pages-
extra-dry/)

Part 4 — To the blog, and beyond [http://bitofpixels.com/blog/mezzatheming-
part-4-style-the-bl...](http://bitofpixels.com/blog/mezzatheming-part-4-style-
the-blog-and-beyond/)

Themes developed so far: [http://mezzathe.me/](http://mezzathe.me/)

Finally I love the way its going and the good patterns, its looking like the
Python Wordpress. :)

A Great initiative for the whole Python and Django ecosystem. Looks like the
next Python Wordpress?

~~~
joshcartme
I'm the author of those blog posts and I just now saw that this had made it's
way onto HN, glad I could generate some discussion and good publicity for
Mezzanine. Thanks for sharing it!

------
stephen_mcd
Title is really poorly worded and could use an edit - Django CMS is the
_other_ popular CMS project based on Django. Article is for Mezzanine, an
entirely separate project. Really confusing!

Edit: title has been updated :-)

------
wslh
It's important to highlight that theming a Django/Mezzanine site is
straightforward and does not require any special skill beyond modifying
templates and styles BUT if you need to change the basic Mezzanine CMS
functionality you must dive into Django.

A designer themed my own site [http://www.nektra.com](http://www.nektra.com)
just customizing my Bootstrap styles and giving me templates of the main and
inner pages.

~~~
joshcartme
I totally agree, beyond needing to understand the basics of the Django
template language nothing else is required to create a Mezzanine theme.

In the blog posts this discussion is about, I did go into some detail about
creating custom content types but none of that is necessary to theme vanilla
Mezzanine.

edit: grammar

------
waterlion
(Looks like this is Mezzanine not Django CMS.)

~~~
frabber
Mezzazine uses the term "django CMS" everywhere they can. I think it is to get
some thunder from django CMS. Or SEO considerations.

~~~
stephen_mcd
Completely outrageous for a CMS built with Django.

------
andybak
I've got my own unpublished, undocumented and a bit-flaky-in-places CMS that I
have always intended to release 'someday'.

So it's really interesting to look at mature projects such as this and see
where their philosophy and feature-set differs from where I've ended up.

So far I've decided that what I've got is different enough and non-awful
enough to at least consider open-sourcing - it's just the task of cleaning-up,
documenting and marketing my project seems rather overwhelming.

And I have great admiration for anyone who gets past that barrier for their
own projects.

~~~
joshcartme
I'd say just go for it, maybe make a basic tutorial that would explain to
people how to use it then open source it.

With Mezzanine I think the community that has developed around it's google
group has been key.

What's your CMS written in?

~~~
andybak
It's Django. There wasn't much around when I started it (I think there was
only Django CMS).

In similar in some ways to FeinCMS in philosophy and I borrowed a small amount
of code from Fein. It's not quite as cleverly coded but actually simpler in
some respects (in a good way).

And there are

~~~
joshcartme
It looks like you comment may have been cut off, it sounds good. I'd say go
for it, see if you can develop a community around!

~~~
andybak
Thanks. I have no idea how my sentence was supposed to end. :-/

------
milkanic
Love Mezzanine and Cartridge - very clean code and easy to modify/theme.

~~~
jgroszko
Agree, it's the first CMS I've worked with that wasn't incredibly painful.

Modifying Cartridge to work with my payment provider was pretty
straightforward, and creating a few custom Page types was super easy as well!

------
davidcollantes
Creating posts with a huge photo that takes 3/4 of a 27" iMac screen is a new
trend? Not sure if that is part of a Mezzanine theme, but curious to hear the
opinion of others.

~~~
joshcartme
The referenced posts are mine, I enjoy photography and figured it was a good
place to mix my hobby and profession. It's nothing specific to Mezzanine, just
the particular design of my site which is coincidentally powered by Mezzanine.

Do you find it aggravating, appealing or are you ambivalent?

