gin_frontend

A Gin sub-theme designed for use as a Drupal site's default (frontend) theme — for the cases where you want Gin's visual language on customer-facing pages, not just admin.

Gin is a fantastic admin theme, but it isn't intended as a public-facing theme: it doesn't render site branding, main navigation, or account-menu blocks in its regions. This sub-theme fills that gap by adding the chrome customers expect, while inheriting everything Gin does well for forms and content rendering.

What it provides

• New regions — branding, primary_menu, secondary_menu, pre_footer, footer — for the chrome Gin omits.
• A page template that renders those regions above the standard Drupal page structure, without Gin's admin-specific sticky toolbar.
• Restored breadcrumb semantics. Gin's gin_preprocess_breadcrumb() rewrites the first breadcrumb item to a "Back to site" link meaningful only in admin context. On a frontend theme it's nonsensical — this is the site — so this theme restores the first breadcrumb item to the standard "Home" link. No upstream patch required.
• Chrome CSS that uses Gin's CSS custom properties (--gin-color-primary, --gin-spacing-*, etc.) so it tracks Gin's accent color and spacing tokens automatically.

Installation

1. Place this theme at themes/contrib/gin_frontend/ (or themes/custom/gin_frontend/ if you're customising it).
2. Enable it: drush theme:install gin_frontend.
3. Set it as your default theme: visit Appearance, or drush config:set system.theme default gin_frontend.
4. Place blocks in the new regions:
   • branding → Site branding (logo + name + slogan)
   • primary_menu → Main navigation
   • secondary_menu → User account menu

Known limitations

Sub-theme settings (#3280001)

Gin's GinSettings::getAdminTheme() is private and always reads from system.theme.admin, so a sub-theme used as the frontend theme inherits the admin theme's settings (logo, accent color, etc.) rather than its own. The Gin maintainers have marked #3280001 as won't-fix and recommend "override getAdminTheme() in your sub-theme" — but that method is private, and themes can't ship service decorators in Drupal, so this is awkward to address from inside a theme alone.

Practical effect: configure logo, accent color, dark mode, etc. on the admin theme (Gin), and the sub-theme will use the same. If you genuinely need separate frontend settings, pair this theme with a companion module that decorates gin.settings.

Officially-unsupported subtheming

Gin maintainers don't officially support subtheming Gin (see #3187880, #3280001 comments). This theme exists because #3166974 — the meta issue asking for a Gin frontend theme — was closed with a suggestion to build it as a separate contrib project. Use accordingly.

Compatibility

• Drupal 10.3+ / 11+
• Gin 5.x

License

GPL-2.0-or-later, matching Drupal contrib convention.