simpleTwo is a simple, yet very clean, theme with two columns for picoCMS using a floating header.

A live version of the theme can be seen at 205.si, with mathjax and blogging.

Copy the content of the simpletwo directory in the themes folder of your Pico installation and change the following setting within your config.php:

$config['theme'] = 'simpletwo';

Copy the content of the simpletwo directory in the themes folder of your Pico installation and change the following setting within your config.yml:

theme: simpletwo

You can see, that there are four different templates included with the theme. From the visual point of view, there are all the same, but they differ in how they handle the menu links.

The index.twig template behaves exactly how the old simpleTwo theme behaved, i.e. the menu will show links to all the pages equally, no matter what the structure is.

If, for example, the content directory looks like this:

index.md
  section1/index.md (Introduction)
          /chapter1.md (Meeting for the first time)
          /chapter2.md (Learning about terminology)
  section2/index.md (Going deeper)
          /chapter1.md (Discovering methods)
          /chapter2.md (Adapting the methods)

the menu bar will show the content of the Title meta tag in the menu for all pages it can find in alphabetic order, such as:

Going deeper
Adapting the methods
Discovering methods
Introduction
Learning about terminology
Meeting for the first time

As you can see, the inner structure of the content is broken, so this template is only useful for simple content where structure of the content does not matter too much. If you plan for such a page, use this template.

For structured content that resembles a book-like structure, you can use the following three templates. Visually, they do not differ from the index.twig but they differ in how they handle the menu. You can invoke the use of an appropriate template by using the Template: book keyword in the header of the page markdown file, such as:

Title: Learning about the terminology
Template: chapter

You can achieve a book-like structure, by using the correct templates for correct content.

• book.twig should work as a master page for your content. The menu will only show section items' titles, similarly what a table-of-contents would do in a regular book. The master page should have the following meta data:

  Title: The book of gardening
  Template: book

• section.twig should work as table of contents for chapter pages. The menu will show all chapter items' titles, i.e. pages that are all placed inside of that section directory. The meta data for a typical section:

  Title: Introduction
  Template: section
  Toc: section

• chapter.twig is a template for a regular chapter. The menu will only show the links to the top of the book and to a previous page. The typical chapter meta data are:

  Title: Meeting for the first time
  Template: chapter
  Toc: chapter

For blog style content use the following two templates:

• blog.twig should work as a master page for your blog. The master page should have the following meta data:

  Title: My gardening blog   
  Description: My gardening blog   
  Template: blog

• blog-post.twig is a template for a regular blog entry. Blog entries should be saved in the blog folder. The menu will only show the links to the top of the book and to other blog entries. The typical blog-post meta data are:

  Title: Planting in autumn
  Description: Planting in autumn
  Date: 2021-03-30
  Template: blog-post

If your structure should be even more complex, then this system will not work for the deeper elements. You should probably combine it with links to those deeper sections created manually on sctructurally higher elements.

This disclaimer relates to the CSS file that I have not touched.

Please be advised, that I dont understand CSS. I really don't.

So you should expect nothing from this code except that it might eat your cat, steal your wallet and do other nasty stuff. The good thing is, you can change the code yourself and tell me about it :)