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Florida Online Journals (OJ): Theming

Scholarly Journal Publishing: Florida Online Journals (Florida OJ) is a service for publishing journal content. The software allows for a variety of publishing workflows including prospective authors uploading material, anonymous reviews, and publishing

Appearance Setup

Colors and Layout

1.  Log into your journal and hover over your name in the upper right corner of the screen. Select Dashboard. Navigate from the profile page to your journal page via the file structure icon in the top left.


2.  In the left hand column, click to "Settings", then "Website".  This takes you to the main page with your site's color and banner image.


3.  Look at the drop down menu for "Theme".  At this time, 5 themes are available for OJS 3.3.   Try out different themes, save the changes, then go to the journal's public view ( https://journals.flvc.org/yourjournalurl/ ) and press CTRL+F5 to refresh the page.


4.  Each theme will have a color picker area. This is labeled "Colour".  You can click on the colored box under the "Colour" heading, and then select a color that you would like to use with the theme.  Try saving a new color, then go to the journal's public view ( https://journals.flvc.org/yourjournalurl/ ) and press CTRL+F5 to refresh the page.


5.  Each theme has a banner image.  This is labeled "Logo".  Click on "Setup" under "Theme" to access it.  Try out uploading a logo for the theme you'd like, then go to the journal's public view ( https://journals.flvc.org/yourjournalurl/ ) and press CTRL+F5 to refresh the page.


Here are recommended banner image sizes for each theme:

  • Default Theme:  Banner image should be 80 pixels high.  There is no recommended width, but 600 pixels seems to look good on most browsers.
  • Health Sciences Theme:  Banner image should be 80 pixels high.  There is no recommended width, but 600 pixels seems to look good on most browsers.
  • Immersion Theme:  Banner image should be 135 pixels high.  There is no recommended width, but 600 pixels seems to look good on most browsers.
  • Classic Theme:  Banner image should be 50 pixels high.  There is no recommended width, but 600 pixels seems to look good on most browsers.
  • Additionally, we recommend that you keep a larger version of your banner image handy in your records, in case you would like to change to a new theme and resize the image.

Tips on specific themes:

Customizing the "Default Theme"

Making the homepage image smaller:  Out-of-the-box, the Default Theme makes the homepage image very large.  In order to make the banner image smaller, follow instructions here https://github.com/FLVC/FloridaOJcss and upload the following template stylesheet to your journal as "Journal style sheet" https://github.com/FLVC/FloridaOJcss/blob/master/TemplateStyleSheet_DefaultTheme_JournalHomepageImageChanges.css .

Customizing the Classic Theme

Adding a search box:  While other themes have a "Search" link built into the theme, the Classic Theme does not.  In order to add a link to search, you have to add an item to the navigation menu across the top of the screen.  To add this:  Log in and go to your journal's logged in view, Click to "Settings" "Website", Click to the "Navigation Menus" tab, Click the arrow next to "Primary Navigation Menu" then click "Edit" in the menu that opens, Click and drag "Search" from the "Unassigned Menu Items" to "Assigned Menu Items", and click "Save".

Journal Display on the Florida OJ Homepage

The homepage of Florida OJ shows a thumbnail image for each journal and a brief description of the journal.  You can see this at https://journals.flvc.org/ .

Steps to set the thumbnail image:

1.  Log in.
2.  Click to the admin page for your journal.  (  https://journals.flvc.org/yourjournalurlhere/management )
3.  Click to "Settings" then "Website".


4.  Under the heading for "Journal thumbnail", click to upload an image.  Recommendations for format and size are: a .png or .jpg file that is 170 pixels wide and between 170 and 300 pixels tall.


5.  Click "Save".

Steps to set the journal summary that appears on the Florida OJ homepage:

1.  Log in.
2.  Click to the admin page for your journal.  (  https://journals.flvc.org/yourjournalurlhere/management )
3.  Click to "Settings" then "Journal".


4.  Under the heading for "Journal Summary", enter a short description of your journal.  FLVC recommends staying under 250 words, and not changing the font size.


5.  Click "Save".

Making your journal appear on the Florida OJ homepage:

You are not able to make your journal appear on the homepage.  Only FLVC can do that.  To have the link to your journal posted, email to help@flvc.org with "Florida OJ" in the subject line.