Table of Contents

Oqtane Extensions Development Guides (WIP)

These guides will help you get started with developing Extensions on/with Oqtane.

This is not about building Oqtane itself, but about building your own Extensions such as Themes and Modules.

Background

Oqtane is a .net 8.0 Blazor application that is designed to be modular and extensible. This means that you can create your own modules, themes, and other extensions to customize your Oqtane solution.

Extensions can be:

  1. Themes
    Themes are the visual appearance of your Oqtane solution. They can be as simple as changing the colors and fonts, or as complex as changing the layout and adding new components.
  2. Modules
    Modules are the functional components of your Oqtane solution. They can be as simple as a single page with some text, or as complex as a full-featured application with a database backend.
  3. Language Packs
    Language Packs are translations of the user interface into different languages. They can be as simple as a few words, or as complex as a full translation of the entire user interface.
  4. Pure Extensions
    Pure Extensions are any other type of extension that you can think of. For example, an Image-Resizer which doesn't have a UI.

Prerequisites

To develop on Oqtane, you will typically need the following skills / tools:

  1. Visual Studio 2022 with the latest .net 8.0 SDK
  2. SQL Server (alternatives are possible, but this is the easiest to get started)
  3. C# programming skills

The following skills are also useful, or will need to be developed as you go:

  1. Blazor programming skills
  2. HTML / CSS / JavaScript / Bootstrap5 skills
  3. Git / GitHub skills
  4. Oqtane installation

Basic Setup

You will need to install Oqtane on your development machine to get started. For this you have 2 options:

  1. Clone/Fork the Oqtane Source Code to your local machine and run using Visual Studio
    This is the most common option, and the best way to also track down any issues.
  2. Install a runtime version of Oqtane in your web server
    This is the method you'll use when you create many Oqtane solutions, since it will run faster and allow you to focus on only the code you write.

Next Steps

Read about:

  1. Best Practices
  2. Themes
  3. Modules

Additional Resources


Main Author

Daniel Mettler, @iJungleboy [MS MVP, Oqtane Core Team]

Content Management Expert, Chief Architect of 2sxc and cre8magic.
Forged in the jungles of Indonesia, lives in Switzerland , loves Oqtane 🩸 & 2sxc 💜.

LinkedIn | Discord: @iJungleboy | Twitter: @iJungleboy | Github: @iJungleboy

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