ckanext-matolabtheme

A CKAN extension providing the Mat-O-Lab theme for data portals. It includes configurable branding (logo, banner, favicon), GDPR-compliant privacy pages in English and German, and a customisable landing page suitable for materials science research data repositories.

Requirements

Compatibility with core CKAN versions:

CKAN version	Compatible?
2.9 and earlier	not tested
2.10	✓ CI tested
2.11	✓ CI tested

Installation

To install the extension:

1. Activate your CKAN virtual environment, for example:

. /usr/lib/ckan/default/bin/activate

2. Use pip to install package

pip install ckanext-matolabtheme

3. Add matolabtheme to the ckan.plugins setting in your CKAN    config file (by default the config file is located at    /etc/ckan/default/ckan.ini).

4. Restart CKAN. For example, if you've deployed CKAN with Apache on Ubuntu:

sudo service apache2 reload

Theming

Banners

Header (banner_top.svg) and footer (banner_bottom.svg) are crisp SVG files — a teal gradient with flowing sinusoidal wave lines. Upload replacements or set an external URL via Admin → Theme Config.

Colors

On first load the plugin seeds ckan.site_custom_css with a default navy CSS variable palette (if no custom CSS is already configured):

:root {
  --bs-primary: #1a3d5c;
  --bs-primary-rgb: 26, 61, 92;
  --bs-secondary: #4a7fa5;
  --bs-secondary-rgb: 74, 127, 165;
  --bs-body-bg: #f0f4f7;
  --bs-body-bg-rgb: 240, 244, 247;
}

To customise colors go to Admin → Config → Custom CSS and override any CSS variable — no restart required. Clearing the field restores the plugin defaults on the next restart.

Config settings

CKANINI__CKANEXT__MATOLABTHEME__CONTACT_URL=<url to contact site>
CKANINI__CKANEXT__MATOLABTHEME__LEGAL_PERSON_MD=<Legal Body Address in Markdown>
CKANINI__CKANEXT__MATOLABTHEME__LEGAL_NOTICE_URL=<Url to your legal notice information>
CKANINI__CKANEXT__MATOLABTHEME__DSVGO_CONTACT_MD=<Contact to adress with dsvgo conflicts in markdown>
CKANINI__CKANEXT__MATOLABTHEME__CONTACT_DP_COMMISSIONER_EMAIL_MD="[datenprotection_commissioner@example.de](mailto:datenschutzbeauftragte@example.de?subject=dataprotection ${CKAN_HOST})"
CKANINI__CKAN__FAVICON=/img/favicon.png

or ckan.ini parameters.

ckan.matolabtheme.contact_url = <url to contact site>
ckan.matolabtheme.legal_person_md = <Legal Body Address in Markdown>
ckan.matolabtheme.legal_notice_url = <Url to your legal notice information>
ckan.matolabtheme.dsvgo_contact_md = <Contact to adress with dsvgo conflicts in markdown>
ckan.matolabtheme.dsvgo_contact_md = "[datenprotection_commissioner@example.de](mailto:datenschutzbeauftragte@example.de?subject=dataprotection]"
ckan.favicon = /img/favicon.png

If no contact_url is given, it will relate to the about page!

Developer installation

To install ckanext-matolabtheme for development, activate your CKAN virtualenv and do:

git clone https://github.com/Mat-O-Lab/ckanext-matolabtheme.git
cd ckanext-matolabtheme
pip install -e ".[dev]"

Tests

To run the tests, do:

pytest --ckan-ini=test.ini

Citation

If you use this software, please cite it. GitHub shows a "Cite this repository" button (top right of the repo page) that exports the CITATION.cff in APA or BibTeX format.

After the first Zenodo release, a DOI-specific BibTeX entry will be available on the Zenodo record. Until then:

@software{hanke_ckanext_matolabtheme,
  author       = {Hanke, Thomas},
  title        = {ckanext-matolabtheme},
  url          = {https://github.com/Mat-O-Lab/ckanext-matolabtheme},
  license      = {AGPL-3.0-or-later},
}

License

AGPL