The Centova Cast user interface (UI) is designed entirely using HTML5+CSS. You (or your web developer) will need to be reasonably familiar with HTML5 and CSS in order to customize or rebrand the UI.
The Centova Cast UI has been designed to use a CSS-based layout. This allows you to make a wide range of changes -- from simple logo replacements, to drastically altering the appearance of the UI -- by editing only the CSS files, and without modifying a single line of HTML code.
File Locations
Centova Cast's UI is separated into two portions:
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Theme files: These are HTML templates and CSS files stored in the
/usr/local/centovacast/web/theme/directory on your Centova Cast web interface server. These are used to change the overall appearance and page layout of Centova Cast's user/admin areas and login page. Most customers will only need to modify these files to rebrand the Centova Cast UI. -
System templates: These are HTML templates stored in the
/usr/local/centovacast/web/system/templates/directory on your Centova Cast web interface server. These files are used by Centova Cast to display output from all of its internal features, ranging from account lists to configuration editing and so-on. These files are intended for internal use and tend to contain more advanced template markup. Incorrect modification of these files can easily break the Centova Cast UI, so we strongly recommend that you avoid modifying these files.
Theme File Descriptions
Inside the Theme Files directory, you will find the following files:
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style.css
The main stylesheet for the Centova Cast user/admin UI. You can customize the vast majority of Centova Cast's appearance using this stylesheet.
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ie.css
An add-on stylesheet used only for Internet Explorer. Allows IE-specific styles to be applied to the Centova Cast UI.
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login.css
The main stylesheet for the Centova Cast login page. You can customize the vast majority of the login page's appearance using this stylesheet.
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playlist.css
The stylesheet for the playlist editor.
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templates/page.tpl
The main HTML layout file for the Centova Cast user/admin UI. This defines the overall HTML markup used to format the Centova Cast user/admin UI.
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templates/login.tpl
The main HTML layout file for the Centova Cast login page. This defines the overall HTML markup used to format the Centova Cast login page.
System Template Descriptions
The system templates are intended for internal use by Centova Cast, and are thus not documented at this time. If you feel that you must modify these templates, the filenames for each are reasonably self-explanatory.
Template Guide
If you are an advanced user and need to make more advanced modifications to the templates (and more specifically, to the template markup), please download the DirecTemplate Template Author's Guide from the Centova Cast Documentation Page. This provides advanced developer documentation for the template markup used by DirecTemplate, the template library used internally by Centova Cast.
Retaining Template Modifications When Upgrading
Directly modifying the Centova Cast template files will work fine until it comes time to upgrade Centova Cast, at which time all of your customizations will be overwritten during the upgrade.
If you need to ensure that your modified templates persist across upgrades, you can create a directory named custom inside the template directory and place your modified template inside the custom directory instead of directly modifying the original template file. Any templates in the custom directory will override their equivalents in the parent directory.
For example, if you wanted to modify the theme/templates/login.tpl template, you would create a theme/templates/custom/ directory, copy login.tpl into it, and make your modifications to theme/template/custom/login.tpl.
Please note that Centova Cast's templates may change between releases so it is still important that you update your templates after each upgrade to incorporate any new changes to the new templates, otherwise elements of your user interface may stop working.
Also note that any modified image or CSS files will still be overwritten during upgrades. If you need to retain your image or CSS files it is important to give them unique filenames which do not conflict with the original filenames, and modify the templates to reference your customized versions.
