Is creating a Theme for Confluence Cloud still possible?

Confluence Development Confluence Cloud
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1

I just wanted to create a Theme for Confluence Cloud. My theme gets installed just fine and I can select it as the Site Theme.

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Well… So far so good… But no matter what I put in the “lookAndFeel” theme properties - the theme seems to have no effect at all.

Maybe I’ll just completely embarrass myself with this post because I’m just doing something obviously wrong… but all the screenshots in the documentation look extremely outdated and I’m wondering: can you actually still create a Confluence Theme with connect? (or is this just an artifact in the docs and it’s not possible anymore…)

This is the descriptor I used:

{
    "key": "custom-confluence-theme",
    "baseUrl": "https://something.ngrok.io",
    "name": "Custom Confluence Theme",
    "vendor": {
        "name": "Lively Apps",
        "url": "https://livelyapps.com"
    },
    "authentication": {
        "type": "none"
    },
    "scopes": [],
    "modules": {
        "confluenceThemes": [
            {
                "key": "custom-confluence-theme",
                "routeOverride": false,
                "availableGlobally": true,
                "icon": {
                    "width": 110,
                    "height": 70,
                    "url": "/icon.png"
                },
                "name": {
                    "value": "Custom Theme"
                },
                "description": {
                    "value": "bla"
                },
                "lookAndFeel": {
                    "headings": {
                        "color": "#6554C0"
                    },
                    "links": {
                        "color": "#36B37E"
                    },
                    "menus": {
                        "hoverOrFocus": {
                            "backgroundColor": "#3873AE"
                        },
                        "color": "#732D3E"
                    },
                    "bordersAndDividers": {
                        "color": "#0D0E0E"
                    },
                    "header": {
                        "backgroundColor": "#661F2D",
                        "button": {
                            "backgroundColor": "#894E59",
                            "color": "#FFFFFF"
                        },
                        "primaryNavigation": {
                            "hoverOrFocus": {
                                "backgroundColor": "#863647",
                                "color": "#FFFFFF"
                            },
                            "color": "#FFFFFF"
                        },
                        "secondaryNavigation": {
                            "hoverOrFocus": {
                                "backgroundColor": "#863647",
                                "color": "#FFFFFF"
                            },
                            "color": "#000000"
                        },
                        "search": {
                            "backgroundColor": "#9A636B",
                            "color": "#FFFFFF"
                        }
                    },
                    "content": {
                        "screen": {
                            "layer": {
                                "height": "250px",
                                "width": "100%",
                                "backgroundSize": "cover",
                                "backgroundRepeat": "no-repeat"
                            },
                            "background": "linear-gradient(45deg, rgba(176,104,112,1) 0%, rgba(244,212,216,1) 100%)",
                            "gutterTop": "20px",
                            "gutterRight": "small",
                            "gutterBottom": "none",
                            "gutterLeft": "small"
                        },
                        "container": {
                            "background": "#F4D4D8",
                            "padding": "0 20px",
                            "borderRadius": "10px"
                        },
                        "header": {
                            "background": "rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2)",
                            "padding": "20px",
                            "borderRadius": "5px 5px 0 0"
                        },
                        "body": {
                            "background": "#FF5630",
                            "padding": "10px",
                            "borderRadius": "0 0 5px 5px"
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        ]
    }
}

Cheers,
Sven

5 Likes
2

Hi @sven.schatter, I believe you still can customize themes.
Changing the Look and Feel of Confluence.

3

Hey @sven.schatter I’ve pointed this thread to the engineering team to get an update on the current status. I’ll respond here again once I get a better understanding of where it’s at.

1 Like
4

Thanks @mikeroyal but that’s for Confluence Server. :slight_smile:

Thank you @rwhitbeck !

5

There are some ugly bugs no one from atlassian cares about cares about like: CONFCLOUD-65593

6

Did you hear back from the team yet? :slight_smile:

7

We urgently need an answer whether Atlassian will repair this functionality. Currently theming and (more importantly) the Look and Feel API does not work at all. Only very few lookAndFeel attributes are taking effect (sub-attributes of content to change the page background for example). You’ll able to find some of the other persisted CSS values within https://foo.atlassian.net/wiki/styles/colors.css but obviously deprecated selectors are used.

Can we expect that this will work someday (and when) or will Atlassian drop this api?

8

Did you hear back from the team by any chance now @rwhitbeck ?

With the new Confluence navigation currently being rolled out, a lot of the existing attributes don’t make sense anymore. Therefore, my personal expectation is that this API will either be dropped or reworked completely at some distant point in the future. For now I think this can probably be considered a zombie in the documentation. :slightly_frowning_face:

1 Like
9

@rwhitbeck can you confirm that the API is dead? Any plans to bring it back or at least remove the docs? :s

10

Yup. Are there any plans to fix the API?

11

Hi all,

I can confirm that the Look and Feel API is no longer working as documented in Confluence Cloud.
Specifically, it is currently only taking effect for the “Header color” and “Text color” attributes. The rest appears to have been dropped a while back, as a part of the sidenav navigation update.

I’ve followed up with engineering to confirm the exact details of what’s going on here, and importantly, get the documentation up to date.

On theming for Confluence Cloud in general/long-term, we know this is a highly desirable feature and an important part of our company promise to make Cloud the best Atlassian experience. I’ve followed up with the Confluence Cloud Ecosystem team and asked them to share an update on their thinking in this thread.

I’ll make sure an update on both the short and long-term questions raised are answered here by the end of the week.

5 Likes
12

Thank you @SimonKubica ! :slight_smile:

13

I’ll make sure an update on both the short and long-term questions raised are answered here by the end of the week.

well, how long are your weeks at Atlassian? :stuck_out_tongue:

are there any updates? we don’t expect an immediate solution. But we rely on this question for further product decisions on our side.

1 Like
14

well, how long are your weeks at Atlassian? :stuck_out_tongue:

:laughing: Sorry! We’re in the middle of the annual planning process right now, and I’ve been absolutely swamped. I made the mistake of over-committing to this ambitious timeline, so apologies for that.

On the short-term status, I am still chasing up some clarity with the Confluence Cloud Ecosystem team to fully unpack what’s going on here and get the documentation up to date.

Long term, plans for a more comprehensive re-think of Theming are still in the early stage. We’ve just completed a research project into organizational requirements for Theming in the cloud, and we’re in the process of aligning on next steps. It’s clear that organizations would love more flexibility here, however like all things it’s a matter of priority and balancing this up against other roadmap items.

I care a lot about about our plans for Theming (the custom server UIs you all flex at App Weeks look :heart_eyes:) , and about all of you folks that have taken the time to leave comments here. So rest assured I’m going to continue chasing it up. Will post an update as soon as I have one.

2 Likes
15

Hi @sven.schatter and others - As you may know, the current state of the Theme API is currently broken as it was built for a UI that the product has recently moved away from. One of the determining factors in not immediately updating the API is the low usage the API currently has. At this time the Confluence Cloud Ecosystem team is determining the future of the API and will be making a decision by the end of June to either EOL it or to continue to support the Theming API. We appreciate your patience here – please don’t hesitate to reach out directly if you have any other questions!

4 Likes
16

Thanks to @SimonKubica for keeping the conversation up and thanks to @JasonPhan for joining in! :slight_smile:

This is essentially what I expected and I completely understand that rebuilding this API (or a similar one) would take considerable time. I also understand that it of course doesn’t have the highest priority as it wasn’t used much.

This one I don’t quite understand though, since the API kind of has reached EOL already, right? I appreciate the openness, but I guess the decision you have to make in June is probably rather whether you want to build a successor, right? (Edit: And if you do - allow me to change theme values at runtime please! :stuck_out_tongue:)

Until then, could we maybe have the broken/EOL/zombie theming module removed from the docs? We often evaluate whether new app ideas or server->cloud migrations are technically possible. (This is actually how I encountered that this module is broken.) Having this broken module in the docs is actively hindering cloud migrations because it leads to vendors wasting time on trying to use it, like in my case. Removing it from the docs hopefully shouldn’t be too much effort and can hopefully happen before June. :sweat_smile:

Cheers,
Sven

2 Likes
17

I’m actually working on this now. Give it a couple of days to work through the process.

4 Likes
18

Awesome! I guess in that case I could mark the thread as solved - but I don’t know which answer to choose lol… Let’s see… Simon has already complained about me boosting his likes, so I basically have to give him the answer as well.

19

Wrapped up in a neat little package

1 Like
20

Are there any further updates on this?
BTW aside from “Header color” and “Text color” attributes, the override on the space overview page is still working.