The Theme Creator lets you create your very own theme. Once you've created the theme, you can apply the theme to either a page that you have admin powers over, or you can apply it to yourself which then gives many pages of the site that custom look. Not only can you create your own theme, but you can also choose from any of the user created themes.

This has been one of the more anticipated features that I promised users years ago. Even though it still has a long way to go, I'm excited to finally launch it . Keep in mind that it'll only affect pages of the site that have been migrated to the new site engine but I plan to get more pages migrated in the near future, especially ones that are commonly used such as the New Reply page, Private Messages, Announcements and Login/Register. Also keep in mind that you can collaborate on a theme with someone by making them an "Admin" of your theme's page which gives them access to making changes to the theme (to make someone an admin of a page that you're an admin of, click the 'Edit Page' link at the top left of the page).

The feature can be found here:
https://www.vizzed.com/u/theme.php

Notable Features
-Create your own customized theme with instant previewing
-Browse user created themes to use as your own theme
-Make your theme available to the public or make it private
-See how many pages and users are using a specific theme

Future Features
-Allow users to buy and sell themes with Viz
-More customization over the look of the site
-Ability to copy "qualified" themes and alter them from there
-Rating system
-Search Features
-Make the theme creator easier to use and more user friendly

Set a Theme as Your Default Theme
To set a theme as your default site theme, click the 'Settings' link at the top left of the page and then scroll down to the 'Theme' section and from there, insert the ID of the theme you want to use.

Set a Theme for a Page
To add a theme to a page, simply click the 'Edit Page' link at the top left of a page that you have admin powers over and there should be a theme section where you can insert the ID of the theme you want to use.

Theme Hierarchy
My next post will show the theme hierarchy so it's clear and obvious when a theme will get used. Before the site renders a page, it looks through a bunch of settings to know how to display a page and in many cases, there are settings that conflict with each other.

These are in order of highest priority first. In other words, if 2 settings conflict with each other, the setting taken toward the top would be prioritized over anything below it.

1. Custom Page Settings
When settings have been added to a page from the 'Edit Page' section.

2. Page's Theme
When a theme has been added to a page.

3. User's Theme
When a user has set a theme as their own theme to use on the site.

4. Special Event Theme
When Vizzed has a special event theme, like the yearly Christmas theme.

5. Custom Page Settings of Parent Page
When settings are added to the parent of the current page.

6. Parent Page's Theme
When a theme has been added to the current page's parent.

7. Custom Page Settings of Directory Page
When settings are added to the directory of the current page.

8. Directory Page's Theme
When a theme has been added to the current page's directory.



If you don't understand the meaning of a "directory" or a "parent", I'll do my best to explain that briefly. The directories of the site are basically the main sections of the site. They include the 'Retro Game Room', 'Video Game Room', 'Vizzed Board', 'Marketplace', and a few others. Not all pages have a "parent" but pretty much any page that has an id number in the URL or is a variation of other similar pages is considered a "child" or a parent page. So for example, in the 'Video Game Music Room', the index page would be the parent and all of the song pages would be the "children". I should point out that not all "parent" pages are accessible (such as the parent of the game pages in the VGR and RGR) but they sometimes still do have their own settings that get placed on top of all the "child" pages.

This concludes the hierarchy of the site for most pages:
Vizzed.com > Directory > Parent > Page

That would translate to a URL similar to this:
vizzed.com/directory/parent.php?id=child

Here's a real URL that takes on that structure:
https://www.vizzed.com/u/theme.php?id=3

A hypothetical question if I may ask: Will there be an option to report a theme if the layout is not displaying properly or against the site rules?

This is actually pretty sweet, I made myself a very simplistic easy-on-the-eyes theme.

This is probably the sweetest thing I have seen you have made on vizzed thus far! I already spent several hours making a christmas layout and will make some more. I have some suggestions though. I do find some of the options confusing and out of place. I keep messing up when I try to do something because I find the options all over the place and am constantly mistaking one for the other.

Can you tweak it to the following format:

Text:
-------------------------------------
- Text Fonts
- Text Colors
- Text Weights
- Text Decorations
- Text Shadows
etc....

Hyperlinks:
--------------------------------------
- Link Colors
- Link Weights
- Link Decorations
- Link Shadows
etc...

Styling:
---------------------------------------
- Page Borders
- Page Shadows

Backgrounds:
----------------------------------------
- Page Background Colors & Images
- Header Background Colors & Images
- Title Bar Background Colors & Images
- Content Box Background Colors & Images

Also the naming of some of the things is quite a headache to me. For instance "Page A Active
Color" should just be something simple like "Active Links, Hover Links, Visited Links". The other thing that is a bit confusing to me are the content boxes, there are 3 different ones but I have no idea where they are on the page.

I would also make it so when you duplicate a layout that it is set to unlisted as it will just flood the results with duplicate entries.

There is also another thing I noticed. When previewing someone elses layout I am viewing stuff from my layout shows up on their layouts. My logo also does not show on Vizzed Index or Board Index (The default vizzed logo shows instead).

Overall it is very neat, but just a tad bit more confusing then it needs to be. The format I have above will definitely make it easier for people to make layouts in future including myself.