Help for Designers
Design themes and templates, build extensions, then publish, sell and maintain them through their life cycle.
916 pages
Start here
Read these pages in this order.
- Designers: start here The landing page for designers: what Exponential's design system is, a first-week plan, the six sections of...
- Extension development: the book (start here) A complete book on growing from user to builder, extension developer and theme developer with Exponential:...
- Site packages: start here The start of the site packages help. What a site installer package is, the package server that publishes th...
- The Exponential project: start here A map of the Exponential project as its website exponential.earth presents it, mapped onto this help - what...
- Two ways to build, every page The index of the "two ways to build" help - templates in a design extension and the Layouts editor - with t...
- Contribute your site package 7x and the Exponential Foundation strongly encourage you to submit your own site package by pull request to...
Good to know
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Show your theme as a live static demo
Put your Exponential theme in front of clients and users as a live demo site on GitHub Pages, free and always up, with example content and a link to the theme's repository.
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Make a free website in 15 minutes
The tutorial - from an existing Exponential site to a live github.io address in about 15 minutes, with a free GitHub account, one token, the setup wizard, a build, a check and a publish.
Search by topic
Each button lists the pages of one topic for Designers.
- Getting started14
- Two ways to build247
- Help and support2
- Theme design87
- Templates85
- Extension development122
- Theme extensions46
- Publishing and distribution40
- Selling themes and services30
- Maintenance life cycle38
- Public sector25
- Press and media1
- Training54
- Community5
- Ecosystem6
- Reselling1
- AI and agents1
- Software engineering1
- Mobile apps3
- Web frameworks2
- E-commerce1
- The Exponential project11
- Standards1
- Development68
- Installation and upgrades25
Key pages
All pages for Designers- Contribute extensions back: share your work with everyone Why and how to give the extensions you build back to the Exponential project so everyone can use them; what the GNU GPL really requires w...
- Distributing a theme: start here The map for publishing a theme - GitHub repository, version numbers and permanent tags, releases and changelogs, Packagist, licensing cho...
- Exponential: frequently asked questions The answers of the FAQ on exponential.earth, retold and checked against the software - what Exponential is and how it relates to eZ Publi...
- Selling themes and services: start here The map for designers who want to earn a living around Exponential themes - what can be sold under the GPL, licensing and pricing models...
- Templates overview A map of Exponential's template language (TPL) for designers: what templates are, the kinds of templates a design has, the building block...
- The maintenance life cycle: start here The map for keeping a theme alive after its first release - following Exponential releases, upgrade testing, per-release accessibility, C...
- Theme extensions: start here The map of everything about packing a design into a theme extension - folder structure, ezinfo.php and extension.xml, the settings a them...
- Two ways to build Exponential 6.0.15+ builds pages two ways - template code in a design extension, and the Layouts editor with no code - and the two meet i...
- Getting support: free help and paid help Every way to get help with Exponential, following the support page of exponential.earth - first the documentation, eZpedia and the articl...
- TPL syntax basics The rules of the template language in one page: tags in braces, variables with $, values (strings, numbers, arrays, hashes, booleans), op...
Recently updated
- Getting Support Updated: The documentation names expcomponents as the kernel's libraries, in English an...
- Reading the code you already have Updated: The documentation names expcomponents as the kernel's libraries, in English an...
- Licenses and how they combine Updated: The documentation names expcomponents as the kernel's libraries, in English an...
- Documentation sources: where to read about Exponential Updated: The documentation names expcomponents as the kernel's libraries, in English an...
- Licensing questions: the GPL and Exponential Updated: The documentation names expcomponents as the kernel's libraries, in English an...
Related audiences
Free documentation: use it to help yourself and others
This help is free documentation, licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License 1.3 or later. You may use it, share it and improve it:
- Study it Read any page as often as you like, for any purpose.
- Copy it and share it Give pages to other users, on paper or as files. Keep the copyright notice, the license notice and a copy of the license with every copy.
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- Cite it Refer to a page by its title and its address in the help, or its file in the doc directory.
- Contribute fixes back Use "Edit on GitHub" on any page. Changes are accepted under the same license, so they stay free for everyone.
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