Create a First Theme

Overview

This guide will show you how to create a theme from scratch. You will also learn how to install and activate your theme.

Prerequisites

All you need for this guide is a running Shopware 6 instance and full access to both the files, as well as the command line.

Create your first plugin theme

Let's get started with creating your plugin by finding a proper name for it.

Name your plugin theme

First, you need to find a name for your theme. We're talking about a technical name here, so it needs to describe your theme appearance as short as possible, written in UpperCamelCase. To prevent issues with duplicated theme names, you should add a shorthand prefix for your company.
Shopware uses "Swag" as a prefix for that case.
For this example guide we'll use the theme name SwagBasicExampleTheme.

INFO

Notice: The name of a theme must begin with a capital letter too!

Create a plugin-based theme

Now that you've found your name, it's time to actually create your plugin.

Open your terminal and run the following command to create a new theme

bin/console theme:create SwagBasicExampleTheme

# you should get an output like this:

Creating theme structure under .../development/custom/plugins/SwagBasicExampleTheme

After your theme was created successfully Shopware has to know that it now exists. You have to refresh the plugin list by running the following command.

bin/console plugin:refresh

# you should get an output like this

[OK] Plugin list refreshed                                                                              

Shopware Plugin Service
=======================

 ----------------------- ------------------------------------ ------------- ----------------- -------- ----------- -------- ------------- 
  Plugin                  Label                                Version       Upgrade version   Author   Installed   Active   Upgradeable  
 ----------------------- ------------------------------------ ------------- ----------------- -------- ----------- -------- ------------- 
  SwagBasicExampleTheme   Theme SwagBasicExampleTheme plugin   9999999-dev                              No          No       No           
 ----------------------- ------------------------------------ ------------- ----------------- -------- ----------- -------- ------------- 

 1 plugins, 0 installed, 0 active , 0 upgradeable

Now Shopware recognises your plugin theme. The next step is the installation and activation of your theme. Run the following command in terminal.

# run this command to install and activate your plugin
bin/console plugin:install --activate SwagBasicExampleTheme

Shopware Plugin Lifecycle Service
=================================

 Install 1 plugin(s):
 * Theme SwagBasicExampleTheme plugin (vdev-trunk)

 Plugin "SwagBasicExampleTheme" has been installed and activated successfully.

 [OK] Installed 1 plugin(s).

Your theme was successfully installed and activated.

The last thing we need to do to work with the theme is to assign it to a sales channel. You can do that by running the theme:change command in the terminal and follow the instructions.

# run this to change the current Storefront theme
$ bin/console theme:change

# you will get an interactive prompt to change the 
# current theme of the Storefront like this

Please select a sales channel:
[0] Storefront | 64bbbe810d824c339a6c191779b2c205
[1] Headless | 98432def39fc4624b33213a56b8c944d
> 0

Please select a theme:
[0] Storefront
[1] SwagBasicExampleTheme
> 1

Set "SwagBasicExampleTheme" as new theme for sales channel "Storefront"
Compiling theme 13e0a4a46af547479b1347617926995b for sales channel SwagBasicExampleTheme

At first, we have to select a sales channel. The obvious choice here is the 'Storefront'. Afterwards enter the number for our theme.

Now your theme is fully installed, and you can start your customization.

Directory structure of a theme

# structure of a plugin-based theme
├── composer.json
└── src
    ├── Resources
    │   ├── app
    │   │   └── storefront
    │   │       ├── dist
    │   │       │   └── storefront
    │   │       │       └── js
    |   |       |           └── swag-basic-example-theme  
    │   │       │               └── swag-basic-example-theme.js
    │   │       └── src
    │   │           ├── assets
    │   │           ├── main.js
    │   │           └── scss
    │   │               ├── base.scss
    │   │               └── overrides.scss
    │   └── theme.json
    └── SwagBasicExampleTheme.php

Next steps

Now that you have created your own theme, the next step is to learn how to make settings and adjustments.

• Theme configuration
• Add SCSS Styling and JavaScript to a theme
• Add assets to theme