Consider the removal of global theme settings

Created on 17 March 2010, about 15 years ago

Updated 2 May 2025, 13 days ago

While fixing a small D7 problem in #741242: Cleanup left over set-to-global-defaults description → , I got carried away and wrote down a couple of other usability issues regarding the theme settings pages, which in fact deserved their own (this) issue. I came to the conclusion that global theme settings can be removed.

At the moment, it isn't clear to the user how the global settings relate to the theme-specific settings. Theme-specific settings are following the global settings 'automagically' until the first time you save the settings form for a specific theme. On that moment, that theme stops following the global settings and starts storing it's own settings. I think the theme settings forms are suffering from a couple of problems:
1) The user doesn't know when he is breaking the invisible link with the global settings.
2) The theme even starts using its own settings (instead of global) if the form is submitted without changes.
3) On the theme-specific form, you can't see if you're looking at default values (loaded from the global settings) or at theme-specific settings.
4) There is no way to switch back to global settings (that choice was made in #518750: Rethink the system settings form → ).
5) It is not clear if global settings are overridden per-setting (which is not the case) or for the theme as a whole (which is what happens).

Global theme settings have probably served a purpose at some point, but currently, I don't see the need for global theme settings at all. You enable a theme, configure the settings and you're good to go. I only do that once or twice on each site I build. The global settings are making an educated guess as long as I haven't adjusted the theme-specific settings. That's not a huge time saver, especially now that the "Display author and date information" settings have been moved elsewhere. As far as I'm concerned, default values can simply be hard-coded in variable_get calls, just like you would do with settings for your average module.

I'd like to read your opinions. Are there good use cases for global theme settings? If so, let's improve the 5 points above. If not, let's remove global theme settings.

📌 Task

Status

Active

Version

11.0 🔥

Component

system.module

Created by

🇳🇱Netherlands marcvangend Amsterdam

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Usability
Makes Drupal easier to use. Preferred over UX, D7UX, etc.

theme settings

Incomplete comments

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Comment 13 days ago →
🇦🇺Australia mstrelan
I agree that global theme settings are confusing. For most sites, a lot of the settings aren't really applicable anyway. For most sites I've worked on there are no user pictures, nor are there comments. It also doesn't make sense for "User verification status in comments" to be configurable per-theme (or in global theme settings). This should be comment.module settings. I don't know any site that would set the shortcut icon (favicon) per theme either, it's always global.

My suggestion would:

Remove "User pictures in posts" and "User pictures in comments" from global settings. They can stay in themes that support them.

Move "User verification status in comments" to /admin/config/people/accounts as a form alter in comment.module

Move "Shortcut icon" to /admin/config/system/site-information

Then we can remove global theme settings.

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