Recent changes
Wednesday November 04 2026
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Building a style guide page Updated Markdown page
How to build a living style guide inside an Exponential theme - a page that shows every token and component with the theme's real templates and stylesheets, made with a node override and template parts, kept out of…
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Color palettes and ramps Updated Markdown page
How theme designers build a color palette for an Exponential theme - brand colors, ramps of tints and shades, role tokens chosen from the ramps, dark values, status colors, and how to check contrast before anything is…
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Component inventory Updated Markdown page
How theme designers keep an inventory of the components of an Exponential theme - what counts as a component, a template for each entry with states, tokens and template, how the inventory maps to templates and CSS, and…
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Design QA checklist Updated Markdown page
A checklist for theme designers to check a built Exponential theme against the design - on a development or preview siteaccess, page type by page type, in light and dark, at three widths, with real and stress content…
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Designing content listings and cards Updated Markdown page
How theme designers design lists, grids and cards for Exponential content - folder lists, mixed classes in one list, sort order set by editors, pagination, cards with and without images, and the accessibility of…
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Designing empty and error states Updated Markdown page
How theme designers design the moments when there is nothing to show or something went wrong in an Exponential site - empty folders and blocks, missing images, no search results, not-found and access-denied pages, form…
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Designing for editors Updated Markdown page
Design rules that keep an Exponential theme working when editors, not designers, fill it - variable text length, optional fields, images of any shape, rich text, translations, and the field descriptions that guide…
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Designing for many languages Updated Markdown page
The design decisions behind a multilingual Exponential site - one siteaccess per language, text expansion, scripts and fonts, right to left, dates and numbers, the language switcher, missing translations and images with…
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Designing for performance budgets Updated Markdown page
The design decisions that decide how fast an Exponential theme is - agreeing a budget before drawing, the first screen, fonts, images, third-party embeds, page weight per template, and how a designer checks a page…
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Designing for several brands in multisite Updated Markdown page
How theme designers plan one design system for several brands served from one Exponential installation - what varies per brand and what stays shared, a brand matrix, brand tokens, logos, and how the design maps to a…
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Designing forms Updated Markdown page
How theme designers design the public forms of an Exponential site - feedback and contact forms built from content classes, field anatomy, required fields, errors, the confirmation page, captchas, and what the template…
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Designing headers and footers Updated Markdown page
How theme designers design the frame of an Exponential site - the header and footer drawn by the pagelayout around every page, including search, sign-in and error pages; what usually goes in them, the signed-in state…
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Designing image crops and art direction Updated Markdown page
How theme designers plan the image sizes and crops of an Exponential theme - an image slot inventory, image aliases and their filters, what the converters can and cannot crop, CSS object-fit, responsive sources, the…
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Designing interactive states Updated Markdown page
The states every interactive element of an Exponential theme needs - default, hover, focus, active, visited, current, selected, disabled, error and loading - with what each must show, how they map to CSS selectors and…
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Designing layout blocks Updated Markdown page
How theme designers design for Exponential Layouts, where editors build pages from blocks - designing block types and view types instead of pages, any order and any zone width, containers, shared header and footer…
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Designing login and user pages Updated Markdown page
How theme designers design the account pages of an Exponential site - sign in, register, forgotten and changed passwords, profile, the mails that go with them, the two-factor pages where that extension is installed, and…
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Designing navigation and menus Updated Markdown page
How theme designers design navigation for a site whose structure editors change - menus built from the content tree, depth and width limits, the current page, breadcrumbs, sub navigation, small screens, and what to…
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Designing newsletter emails Updated Markdown page
How theme designers design newsletter mails for Exponential sites that use the CJW Newsletter extension - skins with an HTML and a text part, why mail design follows different rules from the web theme, the four shipped…
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Designing search results Updated Markdown page
How theme designers design the search page of an Exponential site - the form, the result count, one result per class through view modes, no results, long queries, pagination, the advanced search page, and filters when…
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Designing the front page Updated Markdown page
How theme designers approach the front page of an Exponential site - the three ways a front page is built (a layout, a class of its own, an override of the root node), how to choose with the client, designing for…