- What is yajra/cms-themes and what does it actually do?
- It is the themes module carved out of YajraCMS, a first-party Laravel CMS. It handles the four mechanics of simple theming: theme discovery, runtime activation, Blade view precedence with fallback, and per-theme asset publishing. It is not a general-purpose theming library, so treat it as a scoping instrument and reference implementation rather than a dependency to plan a roadmap around.
- Which Laravel and PHP versions does yajra/cms-themes support?
- There is no documentation beyond the source, and the package appears to target the Laravel 5.x era. Check the illuminate/* constraints in its composer.json first, because that ceiling is the first hard gate in any evaluation. If you are on a modern Laravel version, installation will likely fail or force you onto an unsupported framework, which is a security and hiring problem rather than an inconvenience.
- How do I install yajra/cms-themes with Composer?
- Run composer require yajra/cms-themes, then register the service provider or rely on package discovery, and publish the config and assets. Mechanically this is an afternoon's work. The real friction is evidentiary: 7 stars, zero dependents, and no installed base proving it survives contact with a real application.
- Does yajra/cms-themes require yajra/cms core, or does it work standalone?
- Because it was split out of the CMS repository, it may carry hidden coupling to yajra/cms or sibling modules. Run composer why yajra/cms-themes and inspect composer.json to see whether a theming feature silently pulls an entire CMS in transitively. If it does, that changes the integration cost dramatically.
- When should I use yajra/cms-themes instead of a general theming package?
- Use it if you are already inside the YajraCMS ecosystem, or if you want a concrete working pattern for discovery, activation, Blade precedence, and asset publishing. It does not fit SPA or API-first stacks, where theming is a client concern. It also does not address page builders, theme marketplaces, or per-tenant design systems.
- How does theme discovery, activation, and Blade view fallback work?
- The package discovers theme directories, lets you activate one at runtime, and resolves Blade views with fallback to a default theme while publishing per-theme assets. The theme contract itself, meaning manifest format, required files, and fallback behavior, is not documented outside the source. Read the code before you depend on any of that behavior.
- Is yajra/cms-themes safe to run in production?
- It is hard to justify today given the 7 stars, zero dependents, single-author history, and no issue history showing bugs get fixed. If the parent YajraCMS is not shipping, this module is not shipping either. If you adopt it, vendor it under your own namespace and place it behind an internal interface so application code never imports vendor classes.
- Does yajra/cms-themes support theme uploads, and is that a security risk?
- Theming packages conventionally imply archive upload and extraction into resources/ or public/, and unguarded extraction is a code-execution vector through zip-slip or PHP landing in a public asset directory. Verify whether an upload or extraction path exists and whether it is reachable from non-admin routes. Gate this hardest before committing engineering time.
- What are the alternatives to yajra/cms-themes?
- For simple swappable Blade themes, most teams write a small resolver themselves: a theme path registrar plus view namespace fallback, in a fraction of the code. If you want a maintained dependency, look for an actively supported Laravel theming library with a real installed base. The pragmatic middle path is fork-and-own, stripping CMS coupling and wrapping it in ThemeResolver::active() and activate($slug).
- Is yajra/cms-themes still maintained, and does it have a test suite?
- Maintenance tracks the parent CMS: a module split from a CMS repo follows that repo's lifecycle. There is no visible test suite, no documented recent activity, and no issue history acknowledging modern Laravel support. Treat it as unmaintained until you verify otherwise.