Themes allow you to define a particular 'look and feel' which can be applied across Confluence or to an individual space. Use themes if you want to add a new functionality or significantly alter the appearance of Confluence.

To create a new theme,

1. Create the decorator files that define how the different content screens are laid out.
2. Create the colour scheme for the theme (optional).
Optionally, use a stylesheet which will override the styles defined in the decorator files.
3. Create the theme plugin module.
4. Install the theme plugin.

Working with decorators for themes

Working with colour schemes for themes

You can configure a colour scheme for your theme dynamically through the 'Space Admin' tab under the 'Browse Space' view of the space.

To incorporate a colour scheme within a theme, you will need to express it as an XML document.

Here is an example:

<colour-scheme key="earth-colours" name="Brown and Red Earth Colours"
                class="com.atlassian.confluence.themes.BaseColourScheme">
     <colour key="topbar" value="#440000"/>
     <colour key="spacename" value="#999999"/>
     <colour key="headingtext" value="#663300"/>
     <colour key="link" value="#663300"/>
     <colour key="border" value="#440000"/>
     <colour key="navbg" value="#663300"/>
     <colour key="navtext" value="#ffffff"/>
     <colour key="navselectedbg" value="#440000"/>
     <colour key="navselectedtext" value="#ffffff"/>
</colour-scheme>

As above, the class of a colour scheme must implement com.atlassian.confluence.themes.ColourScheme. The com.atlassian.confluence.themes.BaseColourScheme class provided with Confluence sets the colours based on the module's configuration.