- How do I install nova-snowball in a Laravel application?
- Install it with composer require stephenlake/nova-snowball, then either let Laravel package discovery register the service provider or add it manually to your providers list. Publish the package assets and clear your cached config and views so the new stylesheets take effect. Mechanically the integration is trivial; the real prerequisite is a working, licensed Nova installation in the same project, since the package only registers CSS and asset overrides into Nova's theming pipeline.
- Which Laravel Nova versions does nova-snowball support?
- The last release was 2020-12-31, which places it firmly in the Nova 3 era. Nova 4 reworked theming toward CSS custom properties and Nova 5 changed the asset pipeline again, and there is no evidence of maintained compatibility with either. Pin the exact package version alongside the Nova major you are running and verify in a scratch application before touching production. If your project is on Nova 4 or 5, assume the selectors and asset hooks will not line up until you test them.
- Is nova-snowball still maintained?
- Practically speaking, no. It is a roughly 38-star, single-maintainer package with no release in over four years, so it should be treated as abandoned rather than merely quiet. The MIT license means you are free to fork it, which is usually the cleaner path for a package of this size. If you need ongoing fixes, plan to own them yourself rather than waiting on upstream.
- Does installing nova-snowball require a Nova license in CI?
- Yes. Nova itself ships from a paid, credential-gated Composer repository, so CI runners, dependency scanners, and new developer machines all need Nova credentials configured before this package can even resolve. That license provisioning step is usually the biggest source of friction, not the theme install itself. Sort out Nova authentication in your pipeline before you evaluate the theme.
- Can nova-snowball break my Laravel application?
- The blast radius is limited because the package carries no domain logic, routes, schema, or runtime data access, so the worst realistic outcome is cosmetic breakage. The exception is a service provider that fails to boot, which is a hard application failure and is disproportionate for a stylesheet. Because the package couples to Nova's internal theming API, which is not covered by Laravel's backward-compatibility promise, register it behind an environment or config toggle so you can switch it off without a deploy rollback.
- Can I fork nova-snowball into a private repository?
- Yes. The MIT license is permissive and removes any legal barrier to forking or vendoring it internally. Forking is often the middle path: it preserves the existing design work while restoring your ability to patch selectors when Nova changes. Pin the version, add visual regression coverage, and document the upgrade procedure so the fork does not quietly rot.
- How do I disable the nova-snowball theme without rolling back a deploy?
- Treat it as a replaceable skin rather than a dependency and gate its service provider behind a config or environment flag. That way you can turn the theme off in a deployed environment without a code rollback. Document the removal procedure up front, ideally before your next Nova upgrade, so disabling or deleting it is a routine operation rather than an incident.
- What is a safer alternative to nova-snowball for custom styling in Laravel Nova?
- A small in-house CSS override registered through Nova's supported theming hook is the most reliable option, and realistically it is only a few hundred lines. That is generally cheaper to own than an unmaintained dependency that targets an older Nova markup structure. Forking the original package into a private repository is the middle ground if you want to keep the existing dark blue and white design.
- Is the nova-snowball dark blue and white palette accessible and does it support dark mode?
- There is no evidence that contrast ratios or dark-mode behaviour have been validated, so run a WCAG contrast check before shipping it to internal users. The dark blue and white palette can easily produce low-contrast text in tables, badges, and secondary UI elements inside Nova. Also test how the theme behaves alongside Nova's own dark mode, since asset overrides may not account for it.
- What should I verify before upgrading Laravel Nova with nova-snowball installed?
- Spike the upgrade in a throwaway application: install, screenshot, and diff the result against default Nova before committing. Confirm that Nova's own nova:publish and asset build steps do not overwrite the theme's published assets. Then check behaviour after config:cache and view:cache in a production-like configuration, add visual regression coverage, and document the removal path in case Nova's theming API has shifted.