bos_theme Theme

The base design elements are loaded into the custom Drupal theme `bos_theme`. This theme manages the basic building blocks of the boston.gov website.

The bos_theme manages the templates, css, php and js code required by boston.gov to items which appear on pages.

• Atoms ⇒ basic design items which do not contain any other items. e.g. Button.

• Elements ⇒ more complex items which are comprised of one or more atoms or other Elements. e.g. Card (contains textfields, images and buttons).

Other design items required by boston.gov include:

• Components ⇒ items that represent complete functional page sections/components. These are added webpages (nodes) by content authors, and are pre-configured of elements, atoms and other components. e.g. Grid of Cards (contains Cards, Component Titles and navigation elements).

• Content Types ⇒ the framework for a type of webpage (node). This contains elements and atoms and has a section where components can be added by content authors. e.g. Public Notice.

Atoms, Elements, Components and Content types are design items, and page built from them is an Entity.

Caution: Drupal is somewhat flexible in the use of the term Entity, and it might represent a 'populated' Atom, Element, Component or Content Type Item both before and after after content has been applied from the database.

We should use the terminology that an Item is the framework whereas Entity is the Item populated with content.