Branding & appearance

Branding and appearance settings live across two sections of the admin panel: Admin → Forum info for identity and assets, and Admin → Appearance for colors, themes, typography, and custom CSS.

Changes to appearance settings take effect immediately in the browser without a server restart.

Forum info

Found at Admin → Forum info.

Forum identity

Forum name — displayed in the browser tab and outgoing emails. Defaults to Nexus.
Forum description — a short tagline used in meta tags and the default email footer.
Base URL — the domain your forum is served from (e.g. forum.example.com). Used when constructing absolute URLs in emails and notifications.

An optional welcome banner displayed above the post feed on the main page.

Show hero banner — toggle to enable or disable the banner.
Hero headline — large text shown prominently in the banner.
Hero body text — supporting text displayed below the headline. Supports plain text.

Site logo

Uploaded via Admin → Forum info → Site logo. Accepted formats: JPEG, PNG, WebP, SVG. PNG or SVG is recommended for best quality. Maximum recommended width is 400px.

When a logo is uploaded it replaces the text wordmark in the sidebar and top bar. If no logo is set, the forum name is displayed as text.

Favicon

Accepted formats: .ico, PNG, SVG, WebP. Recommended size: 32×32px. Displayed in browser tabs.

OG image

Shown as a preview card when your forum URL is shared on social media, Slack, Discord, and iMessage. Recommended size: 1200×630px. PNG or JPG recommended — avoid WebP, as some crawlers and email clients do not support it.

Appearance

Found at Admin → Appearance.

Themes

Nexus supports dark mode and light mode independently. Both are enabled by default.

Dark mode — can be individually enabled or disabled. At least one theme must remain enabled.
Light mode — can be individually enabled or disabled. At least one theme must remain enabled.

When both themes are enabled, a Default theme selector appears with three options:

Auto — follows the user’s OS preference (prefers-color-scheme)
Dark — all users default to dark mode
Light — all users default to light mode

Users can override the default from their own settings.

Colors

Color settings are split by theme. When both themes are enabled, tabs allow switching between dark and light color configuration.

Dark theme:

Accent color — used for buttons, active states, links, and highlights on dark backgrounds. Default: #a78bfa
Background tint — a subtle hue applied to dark background surfaces. Use a near-black value for no tint. Default: #0d0d14
Tint intensity — how strongly the tint colour is applied to dark surfaces. Slider from 0 to 50. Default: 10

Light theme:

Accent color — used for buttons, active states, links, and highlights on light backgrounds. Default: #7351db
Background tint — a subtle hue applied to light background surfaces. Use a near-white value for no tint. Default: #f5f4fb
Tint intensity — how strongly the tint colour is applied to light surfaces. Slider from 0 to 50. Default: 22

Color changes preview live in the admin panel before saving.

Avatars

Avatar shape — a slider from 0% (square) to 50% (circle) controlling the border-radius of all avatars across the forum. Default: 22%.

Typography

Six font size sliders, all in pixels:

Setting	Controls	Range	Default
UI labels	Section headers, tags, sort pills, timestamps	9–14px	11px
Interface text	Sidebar items, feed text, messages, buttons	11–16px	13px
Feed post titles	Post title size on the feed and search pages	11–20px	14px
Post titles	Thread title on the post page	16–28px	20px
Post & reply body	Written content inside posts and replies	12–18px	14px
Code blocks	Inline code and code block text	10–15px	12px

Custom CSS

A free-text field for injecting additional CSS that applies globally across the forum. Useful for fine-grained style overrides that aren’t covered by the settings above.

Custom CSS is injected after Nexus’s own stylesheet, so it takes precedence. Use with care — changes here can break the interface if selectors target internal elements that change between versions.