Customising look-and feel

Using available themes, we can customise the look and feel of the generated web sites. The list of availbale themes for Sphinx are described here : Sphinx themes catalog

If your virtual environment is not running, go to the sphinx directory and activate it.

usr1:server:~$ cd ~/sphinx
usr1@Dserver:~/sphinx$ source .venv/bin/activate

Then install the theme that you like. In this example we are installing the Read the docs theme

(.venv) usr1@server:~/sphinx$ pip install sphinx-rtd-theme

Once the theme is installed edit the docs/source/conf.py and change the following lines

html_theme = 'sphinx_rtd_theme'
# html_theme_options specific to rtd theme
html_theme_options = {
    'analytics_id': 'G-XXXXXXXXXX',  #  Provided by Google in your dashboard
    'analytics_anonymize_ip': False,
    'logo_only': True,
    'display_version': True,
    'prev_next_buttons_location': 'bottom',
    'style_external_links': False,
    'vcs_pageview_mode': '',
    'style_nav_header_background': '#0CB3A2',
    # Toc options
    'collapse_navigation': False,
    'sticky_navigation': True,
    'navigation_depth': 5,
    'includehidden': True,
    'titles_only': True
}

Now that the changes are made, you need to rebuild the project and deploy the new pages for the webserver to render them.

(.venv) usr1@server:~/sphinx$ sphinx-build -M html docs/source/ docs/build/
(.venv) usr1@server:~/sphinx$ cp -R -v docs/build/html /var/www/{website directory}/

Go to the url of your website and refresh. You should see the following page dispayed

You have successfully installed the ReadTheDocs theme !