The Look Of Things - Themes in Magento 2

So you have a brand new Magento 2 install to work with. Let's take a look at how to set up and configure a theme. Magento 2 comes packaged with two themes when you install it, Blank and Luma. Both these themes were built from the ground up to be used as starter themes for further development, giving developers a foundation to customize just the parts of the site that are required and leaving a lot of the heavy lifting to the Magento core team. We are going to cover what themes are, setting up a custom theme, Magneto's built in theming tools and some of the pit falls to avoid in building out a theme.

For a Magento Front End developer, there is a lot more to know then what typically falls under the rubric of front end skill sets. While the foundation of the day to day work involves CSS and Javascript, there are a lot of other concepts that go into building out themes in Magento 2. At this meetup I will help to dispel the confusion and complication into a clear understanding of how the front end system works and how it can be leveraged to create next level designs.

If you would like to follow along with me as I work through the topics, you will want to have a fresh install of Magento 2 (https://magento.com/tech-resources/download) running either locally or on a development server (no live sites!). You might also want to have a quick look at some of the dev docs relating to front end theming (http://devdocs.magento.com/guides/v2.1/frontend-dev-guide/themes/theme-create.html). To get the most out of the talk, you will also want to have grunt installed on your development environment (http://devdocs.magento.com/guides/v2.0/frontend-dev-guide/css-topics/css_debug.html). I will be using these tools, and wont have time to cover their installation, but even without them you will still be able to get a full featured theme set up.

If you missed our first meetup (https://www.meetup.com/Colorado-Magento-Meetup/events/240344331) and need help getting a development site set up, I will be at the location early and will have a little bit of time.

--Venue Info--

Fluid Coffee Bar has a meeting room in the back that we will be taking over. It's located on the corner of 19th and Pennsylvania. There is access into the space in the back of the shop, but it's you are coming late, there are doors on the outside of the space for direct access to the meeting room, you don't have to go through the coffee shop. Parking is all street parking, and in this area is a roll of the dice, but I have always been able to find plenty of spots.