The login page is one the most modified parts of the application code, producing conflicts when we want to modify it, so we decided to implement a way for each implementor/developer to define their own page layout and switch easily from one to another. As of January 2018, you can now setup your own Login page without having to modify the coreBOS base code.

A login page must have a few minimum requirements

• it must have a unique name template saved in a directory of the same name inside Smarty/templates/Login, for example Smarty/templates/Login/yourpage.tpl
• it must contain a form with its' action set to index.php
• the form must have these hidden fields

  <input type="hidden" name="module" value="Users" />
  <input type="hidden" name="action" value="Authenticate" />
  <input type="hidden" name="return_module" value="Users" />
  <input type="hidden" name="return_action" value="Login" />

• the form must have an input field for the user name called user_name
• the form must have an input field or the user password called user_password

The layout gives you control inside the head section of the HTML page. The application will output the initial HTML page directives, the default charset, the favicon, and the title and then give you control. So you can load your stylesheets, scripts or whatever you need. Then continue with the body where you can use smarty template syntax to access some application variables and set out any layout you wish.

Finally, the application will close the HTML body and page for you.

Optionally, you may use some javascript code to set focus on the login fields and detect if CapsLock is active which is also loaded by the initial header code.

It is recommended that you put the next piece of code where you would like to show login errors to the user and set the styling you want to the errorMessage class:

{if $LOGIN_ERROR neq ''}
<div class="errorMessage">{$LOGIN_ERROR}</div>
{/if}

By convention, the resources used by your page should be saved inside the themes/login/yourpage directory but since you have full control of what you load you can actually access whatever you need.

Additionally, you must implement a two-factor authentication page for those users who have this feature activated. This is basically the same page you have already created with an additional field to capture the authentication code called XXX. I usually make the user and password fields read-only on this page and you must fill them in with the values given in the previous step which are XX

The two factor authentication page must also live inside the Smarty/templates/Login/ directory and have the same name as your login page ended in 2fa, that would be yourpage2fa in the example we are using here.

The last step is to set the new login page as the one to use. Currently this is done setting the $cbodLoginPage variable in modules/Settings/cbodconfig.php file.

The best way to understand all the above is studying the existing login layouts and discussing your doubts with us in the forum or gitter live chat.

Don't hesitate to share your designs with the community