Editing Themes in Developer Mode

Understanding developer mode support requires an understanding of Themes and Theme Studio.

When would I use Developer Mode?

Developer mode is useful when working on themes within a team environment and it is beneficial to have file system access for source control management of theme development while still benefiting from editing directly in Theme Studio. Developer mode should never be used in a production environment.

What Does Developer Mode do?

For themes, developer mode enables Theme Studio to store themes exclusively within the file system. With developer mode enabled, all theme edits (aside from edits to the Social theme) will be stored within Centralized File Storage as factory default themes (that is, edits will not show as "Customized Default" in Developer Mode and edits cannot be reverted to factory default implementations).

Note that developer mode does not allow editing of the factory default Social theme. The Social theme is protected to ensure there is always a way to get to a working theme.

Using Developer Mode

Enabling Developer Mode

Developer mode can be enabled by setting EnableDeveloperMode to true in web.config.

<add key="EnableDeveloperMode" value="true" />

File Storage Locations

When developer mode is enabled, theme-related files are stored in:

• filestorage/
  • themefiles/
    • d/
      • [THEME_TYPE_ID]/
        • [THEME_ID].xml
    • fd/
      • [THEME_TYPE_PREFIX]/
        • [THEME_ID]/
          • files/
          • jsfiles/
          • preview/
          • stylesheetfiles/

Where the THEME_TYPE_PREFIX for default theme types is:

• Site themes: "s"
• Group themes: "g"
• Blog themes: "b"

These folders should be monitored for changes for source management.