Whether you are using a customised theme or one of the in-built themes within Totara Learn, there are a range of Theme settings around display and navigation within the Administration block via Site administration > Appearance > Themes > Theme settings.
| Setting | Description | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Theme list | This lists the themes available for selection as a course or user themes. Leave this field blank to allow any installed theme to be selected. If you wish to shorten the display of the theme menu, you may enter a comma-separated list of theme names, without spaces (e.g. standardtotara,standardtotararesponsive). | You can preview the available themes in Site administration > Appearance > Themes > Theme selector. |
| Theme designer mode | Normally all theme images and style sheets are cached in browsers and on the server for a very long time, for performance. If you are designing themes or developing code then you probably want to turn this mode on so that you are not served cached versions. | This will make your site slower for all users. Alternatively, you can also reset the theme caches manually from the Theme selection page. |
| Allow user themes | If enabled, each user may select their preferred theme when editing their profile. All Totara Learn pages will be displayed in the user's selected theme, apart from courses where a course theme has been set and forced. User themes allow learners a degree of personalisation and control over their learning environment and for them to set a theme which best suits their visual display/accessibility requirements. | User themes will not be mobile or tablet device optimised unless the option Enable device detection is disabled (unchecked). |
| Allow course themes | If you enable this option, then trainers will be able to set their own course themes. Course themes override all other theme choices (site, user, or session themes). Each editing trainer may select their course theme via the Force theme option on the course settings page. The course will always be displayed in the theme specified in the course setting, with user and the site themes being overridden. Course themes can be used to visually distinguish course types (such as online, classroom based or blended), subject areas or priority (Mandatory, Essential, Recommended, Optional etc). | Course themes will not be mobile or tablet device optimised unless the option Enable device detection is disabled (unchecked). |
| Allow category themes | If you enable this option, themes can be set at the category level with all child categories and courses inherit this theme unless they have specifically set their own theme. Category themes can be used to visually distinguish subject areas or training providers. | Enabling category themes may affect performance, as it will result in a few extra database queries on each page, so only turn this on if you need it. The category theme will not be available on mobile and tablet devices unless the option Enable device detection is disabled (unchecked). |
| Allow theme changes in the URL | If enabled, the theme can be changed by adding either:
| You can turn this on to aid in troubleshooting problems that may be theme related. This will allow you to switch to a standard or different theme for your own session without affecting other users or the site theme. |
| Allow users to hide blocks | Enable this option if you want to allow users to Hide/Show blocks ( |
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| Allow blocks to use the docks | If enabled and supported by the selected theme, users can choose to move blocks to the side Dock. |
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| Custom menu items | Custom menu items allows you to create a drop down menu that can be displayed by supporting themes. Currently all themes that are provided with Totara Learn support this custom menu. Each line consists of some menu text, a link URL (optional), a tooltip title (optional) and a language code or comma-separated list of codes (optional, for displaying the line to users of the specified language only), separated by pipe characters. You can specify a structure using hyphens, and dividers can be used by adding a line of one or more # characters where desired. For example: -Totara community|http://www.community.totaralearning.com -Totara support|http://www.support.totaralearning.com -Totara development|http://dev.totaralearning.com --Totara help|http://www.help.totaralearning.com -Totara News|http://www.totaralearning.com/about-totara/news -Totara Partners|http://www.totaralearning.com/partners Multi-language supportYou can add a language code (or a comma separated list of codes) as the 4th item of the line. The line will be then printed if and only if the user has currently selected the listed language. For example: English only|http://totaralearning.com|English only item|en German only|http://totaralearning.de|Deutsch|de Adding other attributes to the HTMLOther attributes, such as 'target' can be added: Totara Homepage|http://totaralms.com" target="_blank The first quote closes the "href" attribute, allowing other attributes to be added. Do not add the closing quotation mark on the final attribute, it is added automatically by Totara Learn. | This is deprecated functionality and will not display in core themes (will be deleted in Totara 10.0). Please customise the main menu instead via the Administration block within Site administration > Appearance > Main Menu The custom menu does not escape characters within the label, if you want to use a special HTML character such as an ampersand you must escape it yourself within the label. e.g. use "&" instead of "&". |
| User menu items | You can configure the contents of the logged in User Menu (with the exception of the logout link, which is automatically added). Each line is separated by | characters and consists of:
Dividers can be used by adding a line of one or more # characters where desired. For example the default user menu is: grades,grades|/grade/report/mygrades.php|grades messages,message|/message/index.php|message preferences,moodle|/user/preferences.php|preferences |
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| Enable device detection | Enables detection of individuals using mobiles, smartphones, tablets or default devices (desktop PCs, laptops, etc) to access Totara Learn, to determine the application of themes and other features. | - |
Device detection regular expressions | By default, Totara can detect devices of the type default (desktop PCs, laptops, etc), mobile (phones and small handheld devices), tablet (iPads, Android tablets) and legacy (Internet Explorer 6 users). The theme selector can be used to apply separate themes to all of these. This setting allows regular expressions that allow the detection of extra device types (these take precedence over the default types). | For example, you could enter the regular expression '/(MIDP-1.0|Maemo|Windows CE)/' to detect some commonly used feature phones add the return value 'featurephone'. This adds 'featurephone' on the theme selector that would allow you to add a theme that would be used on these devices. Other phones would still use the theme selected for the mobile device type. |
The Totara Academy has a whole course dedicated to using Dashboards and basic theming in Totara Learn. Here you can learn more on how to adjust your site's appearance, see best practice, and give it a go yourself.
