Respawn
A gaming theme for Flarum 2: chamfered surfaces, neon accents, mono typography, hex-clipped avatars, hero with blinking cursor, level/XP sidebar widget, and a stats footer.
Features
Dark + Light mode — admin-configurable default, per-user toggle in the header (☾ / ☀)
Branded hero — replaces the default IndexPage hero with a panel showing an eyebrow line, big mono headline ("Welcome to {forum}"), tagline, and an optional row of tag-shortcut chips
Server-status footer — four chamfered stat cards (Posts · Discussions · Members · Online Now) rendered at the bottom of the index page, cached server-side at 60s
Player Card — sidebar widget for the logged-in user with hex avatar, derived LVL N · {posts} POSTS, and a cyan→magenta XP bar
Rarity Legend — sidebar panel mapping the four tag-color tiers (Legendary / Epic / Rare / Common) so newcomers learn the vocabulary
Post styling — chamfered post cards, mono usernames in cyan, post-number pills, accent-bordered blockquotes, mono code blocks
Composer + Scrubber — restyled to match the theme
The theme is a pure CSS/LESS skin layered on top of stock Flarum — no Mithril components replaced or routes added beyond the small components above. Anything that uses Flarum's CSS variables (--primary-color, --secondary-color, etc.) is remapped, so most extensions skin for free.
Requirements
Flarum 2.x
PHP 8.3+
Installation
composer require ernestdefoe/respawn
php flarum cache:clear
Then enable Respawn in Admin → Extensions.
Configuration
All settings are in Admin → Extensions → Respawn.
Setting Description Default
Theme Mode Default colour mode for new visitors (Dark or Light). Users can toggle with the moon/sun button in the header. Dark
Hero Tagline Subtitle shown under the welcome headline. Leave blank to hide. Drop in, level up, and join the discussion.
Hero Eyebrow Small accent line above the headline. ▸ Player Connected
Hero Tag Chips Comma-separated list of tag slugs to feature as quick-jump chips (e.g. halo, elden-ring, deals). Leave blank to hide. (blank)
The hero headline reads from Flarum's standard Forum Title setting (Admin → Basics).
How the stats are computed
ForumStatistics queries the posts, discussions, users, and users.last_seen_at tables and caches each count for 60 seconds. The "Online Now" tile uses a 5-minute activity window matching Flarum's stock indicator. Any DB error renders the affected tile as — rather than a misleading 0.
Player Card level formula
Currently: level = floor(posts / 100) + 1, progress to next level = posts % 100.
It's a deliberately simple linear ramp. If you want a non-linear curve (exponential, custom thresholds, Bronze/Silver/Gold ranks instead of a number), open an issue.
Customising
The theme exposes its tokens as CSS variables on :root (and [data-respawn="light"]), so an extension or custom CSS can override any of them without touching Respawn itself:
:root {
--r-accent: #50ff8a; /* lime instead of cyan /
--r-magenta: #ff6b35; / orange instead of magenta */
}
Every component reads through these variables.
Support
Questions, bug reports, and feature requests:
Support forum: https://ernestdefoe.online
Issues: ernestdefoe/respawnissues
This theme was created using Claude.
License
Respawn is released under the MIT License.
Copyright © ernestdefoe.
Screenshots:
