Add a new Frontity package or theme to your project

In Frontity themes are just any other type of package, so the info explained in this guide can be applied to when you want to use an alternative theme in your project

During the development of your project, you may want to install new Frontity packages, or even change the ones you are using (for example if you want to use a different theme or a different analytics service). In order to do this, you'll need to:

1. Install the Frontity package.

2. Add it to frontity.settings.js.

Please note that this process is only necessary for Frontity packages. If you want to install an npm package you can use the normal npm install some-package procedure.

1. Install the Frontity package

At this point, you need to differentiate between the external packages (which aren't meant to be modified) and the local packages (the ones you want to change at your will), because its installation will be slightly different. If you want to understand better how external and local packages work you can check its docs page.

External packages

This is the typical way of using Features Packages

These packages will be treated like any npm package and stored in node_modules folder, where all your dependencies are installed. In order to install a package as external you just have to run this command in the root of your project:

npm install new-frontity-package

It will be automatically added to your node_modules folder and your package.json file.

Local packages

This is the typical way of using Frontity Themes

The process to install a local package is pretty similar, but you'll have to make minor modifications.

1. You need to install the package as an external one by running npm install new-frontity-package

2. It will be installed inside the node_modules folder of your project, so you'll need to look for the package and move it to the folder packages inside your Frontity project.

3. Next step would be to change your package.json. You'll have your new package inside the dependencies of your project, pointing to its latest version. As we are going to use it as a local package, we have to point it to its proper folder.

{
  "name": "frontity-project",
  ...
  "dependencies": {
    ...
    "another-frontity-theme": "./packages/another-frontity-theme",
    //before it would be something like "another-frontity-theme": "^1.0.0"
    ...
  }
}

1. Once changed, run npm install at the root of your project and it will work as local package.

We are planning to release a new command, that will take care of all these steps.

2. Add it to `frontity.settings.js`

Once installed, the process it's the same for both external and local packages.

You have to include it in your frontity.settings.js, inside the packages array to make it work. Remember to check if any settings are needed and include them as well (You can check that at each specific Frontity Package or Frontity Theme).

const settings = {
  ...
  "packages": [
    ...
    //If the package has no settings
    "new-frontity-package",

    //If you want to add settings to your package
    {
      "name": "new-frontity-package",
      //Add your settings here
    },
    ...  
  ]
};

export default settings;

And that's all, your package is installed and working now.

Note that if you are changing your theme or any other package, you may want to remove the old one in your package.json and in your frontity.settings.js