Overview
The Default Classter Theme setting controls which visual color theme (skin) is applied across the Classter portal for users who have not personally chosen a theme of their own. It is a single, institute-wide (company-level) preference, configured once for the whole institute, and it works together with – but does not override – each individual user’s own personal theme choice.
This setting affects only the visual appearance of the interface, such as colors, backgrounds, and contrast. It does not change any data, feature availability, menu structure, or user permissions.
What This Setting Does
When an administrator selects a value for this setting, that value becomes the theme shown by default to every user of the institute the first time they open Classter, and at any later time, as long as that user has not chosen a personal theme of their own.
The setting is a single choice from a fixed list of available themes:
- Light
- Dark
- Blue
- Red
- Intense
- Contrast
- Enhanced
- Midnight
- Slime
- Modern Orange
Each option changes the color palette of the entire interface, such as backgrounds, menus, buttons, highlighted text, and icons, without changing any wording, menu structure, or functionality.
Confirmed behavior: This setting only supplies a starting default. Any user can still open their own personal theme option (see ‘Where It Is Used’ below) and pick a different theme for their own account at any time. Once a user makes that personal choice, it takes priority over the institute default for that user from then on. Changing the Default Classter Theme setting afterward will not change what that user already sees.
Where It Is Used
- Across the entire Classter web portal: Once a theme is active for a user, whether it comes from this institute default or from a personal choice, it colors the whole interface that user sees, including the main menu, top bar, dashboard widgets, buttons, forms, and pop-up windows.
- Personal Themes option: Every user type (Employee, Teacher / Instructor / Lecturer, Student / Learner, Parent / Guardian) can open their own personal settings panel, available from the user icon or side panel under ‘Themes’, and pick any of the same theme options for their own account. This is the same list of themes, and the institute default is simply the value a user sees before making a personal choice.
- Mobile app: The Classter mobile app also offers a ‘Change Theme’ option in its own Settings section. This is treated as an assumption rather than a confirmed rule: it is reasonable to expect a user’s first theme on the mobile app to also start from the same institute default, but this has not been separately confirmed and may work as its own independent personal setting.
Business Logic / Behavior
Confirmed rules, based directly on how the setting is configured:
- The setting is defined once per institute (company-wide). It cannot be set differently per academic term, per role, or per individual user at the configuration level – there is only ever one institute-wide default value active at a time.
- The default only applies to users who have not already picked a personal theme. A personal choice, once made, always takes priority over the institute default for that user.
- Changing this setting does not retroactively force a theme onto users who have already picked their own theme. It only changes what new users, or users who have never made a personal choice, will see going forward.
- The updated default is picked up the next time an affected user logs in or starts a new portal session, rather than instantly for users already in an active session.
- If no value is ever selected for this setting, Classter falls back to its own built-in default theme, which is Light.
Example(s)
Example 1 – Setting an institute-wide default
Alpha Academy (example institute) wants every new staff and student account to open Classter with a clean, simple look. The administrator sets the Default Classter Theme to ‘Light’. From that point on, every new Teacher, Student, Parent, and Employee account that has not personally changed its theme sees the Light theme the first time they log in.
Example 2 – Personal choice still wins
At Beta Institute (example institute), the administrator sets the Default Classter Theme to ‘Contrast’ so that staff who need higher contrast are covered by default. A teacher, referred to here as Mr. Sample Teacher, later opens his own personal Themes option and selects ‘Blue’ because he prefers it. From then on, Mr. X Teacher continues to see the Blue theme even though the institute default remains Contrast for everyone else.
Example 3 – Accessibility-driven change
Gamma College (example institute) receives feedback that the standard look is hard to read for some users. The administrator changes the Default Classter Theme from ‘Light’ to ‘Enhanced’, a higher-contrast option, so that any user who has not chosen a personal theme automatically gets a clearer layout starting from their very first login.
When to Use
Because this setting is a single choice rather than an on-or-off switch, it is best understood as ‘which starting look should new and unconfigured users see’ rather than a simple enable-or-disable choice.
With that in mind:
When to change it from the standard default
- The institute has a preferred visual identity or color scheme it wants every unconfigured user to see by default, for example choosing ‘Blue’ or ‘Modern Orange’ to loosely reflect the institute’s own colors.
- Feedback from users indicates the current default is hard to read, and a higher-contrast option such as ‘Contrast’ or ‘Enhanced’ would help most users before they think to change it themselves.
- The institute is onboarding a large number of new users at once, for example at the start of a new academic year, and wants a consistent first impression across all of them.
When to leave it at the standard default
- There is no specific visual preference or accessibility need, and the institute is comfortable with each user individually picking a theme from their own Themes option.
- The institute prefers to let personal choice drive the look and feel entirely, using the institute default only as a neutral starting point.
Notes
K-12 Mode and Higher Education Mode
This setting behaves identically whether the institute is running in K-12 Mode or in Higher Education Mode. Enabling or disabling Higher Education mode has no effect on how or when this default theme is applied. Importantly, this setting does not itself switch the institute between K-12 Mode and Higher Education Mode – that is controlled separately by a different setting (see ‘Related Settings’ below). Since color-theme behavior is identical in both modes, no separate explanation is needed for each mode.
Related Settings
- Enable Configuration for Higher Education: (Configuration > Main Settings > General Settings > Higher Education Customization tab > Enable Configuration for Higher Education): this is the setting that actually switches the institute between K-12 Mode and Higher Education Mode. It is unrelated to color themes, but is mentioned here because the two are sometimes confused; changing it does not change the default-theme behavior described in this article.
- Default Language: (Configuration > Main Settings > General Settings > Basic Customization tab > Default Language): a similar type of setting in the same configuration area, defining a company-wide default (in this case, the portal language) that individual users can still override from their own profile.
- Personal Themes option (Each user’s own profile or side settings panel > Themes): this is where any individual user can override the institute default described in this article and pick their own preferred theme.
- Light Mode for selected user types (Configuration > Main Settings > General Settings > Dashboard Settings tab > Light Mode Configuration section): despite the similar name, this is a different, unrelated setting. It temporarily simplifies the interface and improves performance for chosen user types (for example during busy periods such as report card distribution) and has nothing to do with the ‘Light’ color theme covered in this article. The two should not be confused.
Prerequisites
There are no special prerequisites for configuring this setting. It can be changed at any time by an administrator with access to the general configuration area, and the change does not require any other field or setting to be configured first. Every user type already has access to their own personal Themes option by default, so no additional setup is needed for users to be able to override the institute default if they choose to.
Setting Path
Configuration > Main Settings > General Settings > Dashboard Settings tab > Dashboard Settings and Rights section.
