Using in GovCMS SaaS

Before you begin

Where to get help

See Getting help section

Steps overview

1. Generic GovCMS setup

1.1 Setup local

  1. Clone the GitLab project locally.

  2. Create a new branch develop from master.

  3. # Login to GovCMS image repository
docker login gitlab-registry-production.govcms.amazee.io -u <username>
  4. ahoy up

  5. Uncomment MARIADB_DATA_IMAGE line in .env file.

  6. ahoy refresh-db

  7. Add the following file exclusions to .gitignore:

    .data
*.sql
*.tar.gz
*.sql.gz

themes/civictheme/civictheme_starter_kit
themes/civictheme/civictheme-create-subtheme.php
themes/civictheme/civictheme_govcms
  8. # Unblock admin user (user 1 or generate a new one).
ahoy drush user:unblock [username]

You can lookup username by logging into production site or by running:

ahoy drush uinf $(drush sqlq "SELECT GROUP_CONCAT(name) FROM users_field_data")

Now, if you run ahoy login you should be able to login to your local version of the site as an admin user.

1.2 Export active configuration

  1. # Pull latest production DB.
ahoy refresh-db

  2. If the above did not work OR hasn't been updated nightly - download a raw database file from GovCMS Lagoon Projects from the “Backups” tab and import with ahoy mysql-import .data/db.sql

  3. Run ahoy drush cex and commit configuration changes.

  4. Push to remote and wait for deployment to complete.

  5. Upon successful deploy, create a new Merge Request against master branch . This will get the active configuration into the main branch.

  6. When merged, update your local branch against the latest master.

At this point, you should have a GovCMS project running in master environment in GovCMS SaaS with the default theme.

2. CivicTheme setup

It is advised to perform all changes in a dedicated (feature) branch to test this part before applying any customisations.

2.1 Download CivicTheme theme

Since GovCMS SaaS does not allow to install themes via Composer, CivicTheme source must be installed as a custom theme.

  1. Download the latest CivicTheme release and extract into themes/custom directory, rename the directory to civictheme.

2.2 Enable required modules

Using an automated script to discover required modules from theme dependencies (Drupal does not support this OOTB):

ahoy drush ev "require_once dirname(\Drupal::getContainer()->get('theme_handler')->rebuildThemeData()['civictheme']->getPathname()) . '/theme-settings.provision.inc'; civictheme_enable_modules();"

2.3 Clear caches

Do not skip this step

ahoy drush cr

2.4 Enable admin and CivicTheme

CivicTheme MUST be enabled before your custom theme is enabled

# Enable CivicTheme and set as default.
ahoy drush theme:enable -y civictheme
ahoy drush config-set -y system.theme default civictheme
ahoy drush config-set -y media.settings standalone_url true

# Enable admin theme and set as default (optional).
ahoy drush theme:enable -y adminimal_theme
ahoy drush config-set -y system.theme admin adminimal_theme

2.5 Remove GovCMS content types

CivicTheme GovCMS helper module civictheme_govcms serves the purpose to remove unnecessary entities and configuration that ships with GovCMS.

Install it locally to automatically remove the configuration from DB to later have it exported without GovCMS entities.

  1. Run in CLI container (ahoy cli):

    cd web/modules/contrib

# Download and extract the helper module.
# Ensure to use the latest tag (not Release) https://github.com/civictheme/civictheme_govcms/tags
wget https://github.com/civictheme/civictheme_govcms/archive/refs/tags/<latest-tag>.tar.gz && tar -xvf <latest-tag>.tar.gz && rm <latest-tag>.tar.gz

# Enable module, run the command to remove entities and uninstall a module.
drush pm-enable -y civictheme_govcms
drush civictheme_govcms:remove-config --preserve=user_roles
drush pm-uninstall -y civictheme_govcms

# Delete the module
rm -Rf civictheme_govcms

  2. Export updated configuration

    ahoy drush cex -y

2.6 Generate a sub-theme

Consider naming your theme as close as possible to the name of the site. Do not include civic or civictheme into name to avoid confusions in code when maintaining a theme in the future.

Run in CLI container (ahoy cli):

# Generate sub-theme (example overrides are removed using --remove-examples flag). 
# See php civictheme_create_subtheme.php --help
cd web/themes/custom/civictheme
php civictheme_create_subtheme.php <SUBTHEME_MACHINE_NAME> "<SUBTHEME HUMAN NAME>" "<SUBTHEME HUMAN DESCRIPTION>" ../<SUBTHEME_MACHINE_NAME> --remove-examples

This should result in 2 directories:

themes/civictheme
themes/<SUBTHEME_MACHINE_NAME>

2.7 Install sub-theme and set as default

# Enable sub-theme.
ahoy drush theme:enable <SUBTHEME_MACHINE_NAME> -y
# Set sub-theme as default.
ahoy drush config-set system.theme default <SUBTHEME_MACHINE_NAME> -y

2.8 Build front-end assets

  1. Run on your host:

    cd themes/<SUBTHEME_MACHINE_NAME>
nvm use
npm install
npm run build

  2. Check that directory themes/<SUBTHEME_MACHINE_NAME>/dist was created.

  3. Navigate to your site and assert that default styling was applied.

2.9 Commit built assets

  1. Modify .gitignore file in your new theme and remove the following lines\

    storybook-static
dist
components_combined
.components-civictheme

  2. Commit built assets.

2.10 Provision content

CivicTheme comes with pre-set Block Content blocks configuration. Since Drupal does not support running install hooks in themes, a custom content provisioning script has to be used.

The provisioning needs to be run twice:

  1. Locally - to capture created configuration for config entities (blocks, menus etc.)

  2. In production - to populate the configuration with the default content. This step will be covered in the “Deployment” section below.

Run locally:

  1. Login to the local instance of your site.

  2. Navigate to /admin/appearance/settings/<SUBTHEME_MACHINE_NAME>\

  3. Press "Provision content" button.

  4. Navigate to the homepage and observe that all blocks and menus are present.

  5. Export config for created entities:

    ahoy drush cex -y

  6. Commit and push to remote.

  7. Wait for deployment to finish and login to the Drupal instance.

  8. Navigate to /admin/appearance/settings/<SUBTHEME_MACHINE_NAME>.

  9. Press "Provision content" button.

  10. Navigate to the homepage and observe that all blocks and menus are present.

After deployment and provisioning your remote feature environment should look like a default CivicTheme site without homepage content.

3. Deployment

3.1 Deploy to (pre-)production

  1. Merge feature branch to master (or develop and then to master).

  2. Commit and push to remote.

  3. Wait for deployment to finish and login to the Drupal instance.

  4. Navigate to /admin/appearance/settings/<SUBTHEME_MACHINE_NAME>.

  5. Press "Provision content" button.

  6. Navigate to the homepage and observe that all blocks and menus are present.

After deployment and provisioning your remote (pre-)production environment should look like a default CivicTheme site without homepage content

3.2 Cleanup

Only run this step once everything is working and looking as expected.

  1. # Remove unnecessary files.
rm themes/civictheme/civictheme_create_subtheme.php
rm -Rf themes/civictheme/civictheme_starter_kit

  2. Commit and push to remote.

4. Customising CivicTheme

  1. Replace sub-theme logos in repository themes/<SUBTHEME_MACHINE_NAME>/assets/logos with site-specific versions.

  2. Update the colour palette with your sub-theme.

  3. Update sub-theme screenshot.png with something more appropriate (optional).

  4. npm run build and commit changes.

5. Updating CivicTheme

See Version update

Resolving issues with roles

  1. Enable Role Delegation module and allow Site Administrator to delegate both GovCMS and CivicTheme roles. Ensure that CivicTheme roles have the same permissions with their GovCMS counterparts.

  2. Login to the site and re-assign existing users from GovCMS roles to relevant CivicTheme roles.

  3. Remove GovCMS admin roles and re-export configuration.

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