How can I use a theme for multiple installations of OJS. I have two installations I would like to share the same theme without having to update both. In other words one change in a theme should be reflected in both installations, on the same server of course. I am using OJS 3.0.2.0.
To do that you would most likely need a lot of changes to the OJS core which would make upgrading extremely hard and would, in my opinion, beat the purpose you have: to minimize work.
We haven’t specifically written OJS and OMP to share theme plugins, but there is enough underlying shared code that I suspect you could do this without much difficulty.
Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team
Of course you can do it. As @ajnyga explained, mojo is developed entirely over this idea.
(BTW, mojo not yet OJS 3 complient, but I’m working to make it run on 3 and with docker).
I short, you only need to create a symbolic link in your journal’s /plugins/themes/ and your changes will apply in both OJS.
If you do this (share plugins folder), you need to be sure you disable journal managers ability to install and remove plugins.
Imagine your journal’s manager deletes a plugin… it means the files are removed and the rest of ojs installations won’t be able to find the files and will crash. I learned this by the hard way.
I think OJS 3 allows you to block install permissions to your journal’s manager. It was not possible in OJS 2.x and this is why I developed adminLocker.
Any way… I need to recognize that, after lots of years with a “symlinked” architecture (mojo), I’m thinking in moving to isolated journal approach based on docker. You will have much more flexibility and control.