---
author: ''
category: ''
date: 2012/05/08 10:54
description: ''
link: ''
priority: ''
slug: changing-color-schemes-in-nikola
tags: python, nikola
title: Changing Color Schemes and Fonts in Nikola
type: text
updated: 2012/05/08 10:54
url_type: ''
---
One of the easiest ways to personalize how your site looks is using color and
typography. While `Nikola's <http://getnikola.com>`_ "site" theme 
is **intended** to be rather bland and neutral, it doesn't *have* to be that way, 
and it's easy to change.

.. figure:: //ralsina.me/galleries/random/site-theme.thumbnail.png
   :target: //ralsina.me/galleries/random/site-theme.png 

   Bland, solid and boring.

To do these changes, you don't even need to know any CSS, HTML, or programming!

Here's the trick: Nikola is using Twitter Bootstrap to handle its styling. And
they provide a handy web form to create a customized version, just for you, at
their `customize page <http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/download.html>`_.

So, if you want auvergine navigation bars and avocado backgrounds, with courier
fonts all over the place, that's where you do it. Just change the value in the
right variable to whatever color you want.

Once you have your bootstrap.zip, go to your site's folder, and create ``themes/mytheme/assets``
and unzip it in there, so that you have ``themes/mytheme/assets/css``, ``themes/mytheme/assets/js``, etc.

Create a file called ``themes/mytheme/parent`` containing the word ``site``.

Then edit your ``dodo.py`` (or ``conf.py`` if you are using the git master) and
change the ``THEME`` option ``"mytheme"``.

Rebuild your site, and voilá, all your customizations are now in place.

This awfulness, for example, was done by setting just three variables (bodyBackground,
textColor, and sansFontfamily):

.. figure:: //ralsina.me/galleries/random/site-c64.thumbnail.png
   :target: //ralsina.me/galleries/random/site-c64.png 

   Yes, I had a C64.