VuFind is developed using Smarty templates for HTML and CSS for design. Templates and CSS are bundled into themes, which are found in the web/interface/themes folder. You can use one of VuFind's built-in themes (classic or default), or you can build your own. The theme used by VuFind is determined by the theme setting in the [Site] section of web/conf/config.ini.

The layout is controlled by the Yahoo UI CSS, which means that by modifying the class declarations within the HTML, you can modify the layout. For more information on how to use the Yahoo UI CSS, please see the Yahoo UI web site. To modify the colors and design elements, you can edit the styles.css file located in the css directory of your chosen theme.

All of the HTML is stored in Templates. There is one main template that controls the overall web site - the layout.tpl file stored in the root of your chosen theme's directory. Each module also has its own subdirectory in the theme where the individual templates for each web page are stored. They can be modified as needed.