Concepts

Understanding these five notions is enough to master NeoFrag Reborn.

Modules

A module is a complete feature: the forum, news, the gallery, members, the shop… Each module brings its public pages, its administration screens, its data (tables) and its permissions.

The package ships 63 modules, but you don't install them all: at installation, a site profile — Full, Gaming / eSport, Community, Association / club or Core only — pre-ticks what fits, and you can untick module by module. What a module needs is added automatically (honours need teams). Core modules (accounts, permissions, settings, pages, tools…) are always there and cannot be uninstalled.

Then, from Administration → Themes & Addons, you install, enable, disable or uninstall each module. A disabled module disappears from the site but keeps its data. The addresses of a missing module answer with a clean 404, never with an error.

Widgets

A widget is a small reusable block: the navigation menu, the member area, the latest comments, a countdown, a Twitch player… The same widget can be placed several times, in different places, with different settings. The package ships 42 widgets.

Widgets are placed in the theme's regions with the Live Editor: a four-step wizard (widget, type, title, configuration), and drag and drop to move them.

Themes

A theme gives the site its look: colours, typefaces, layout, navigation, footer, and light or dark mode. It declares zones, gives them stable region names (header, content, footer…), and sets its default layouts.

The package ships Nebula, a general-purpose community theme (navy and turquoise, glassmorphism), made for a team, a guild, a club or an association. Six other themes — Granite, Forge, Blockcraft, Extend, Chronique, Pulse — are in the package and are installed from Administration → Themes & Addons; an installation that lacks them finds them in the marketplace. The active theme is chosen in Administration → Themes & Addons; if several public themes are installed, visitors can switch with the selector in the footer.

Every theme speaks the same colour vocabulary (--nf-accent, --nf-surface…): a widget automatically takes on the active theme's look.

Zones, regions and layouts

A theme splits the page into zones: usually Header, Before content, Content, After content, Footer, each known by a region name that the templates use.

A layout describes, for a given page (or a page pattern), which widgets occupy which zone and in which grid. Patterns go from the most general to the most specific:

Pattern	Applies to
*	every page
/	the home page only
forum/*	every forum page

The most specific pattern wins: a * layout puts the content on eight columns plus a side column, a marketplace* layout can switch the same page to full width.

You change layouts with the mouse in the Live Editor. A page can also carry blocks: ordered, configured module instances, inserted with the [block:…] shortcode.

Addons and the marketplace

Addon is the generic word for anything that installs: modules, widgets, themes, authentication connectors (Discord, GitHub, Google) and language packs (six languages shipped).

The marketplace is the project's catalogue: it detects updates to installed addons and lets you add those that are not in the package, with a SHA-256 integrity check. The CMS core updates in one click from Monitoring, with a backup before writing and an automatic rollback if it fails.

Technically, an addon is just a folder of PHP files: you can version it, share it and reinstall it on any NeoFrag Reborn site. That is what makes the CMS extensible — see the developer guides.

In practice: building a community

For a gaming team: at installation, choose the Gaming / eSport profile (forum, teams, events, recruitment, honours…) and the Nebula theme is in place; then, with the Live Editor, place the navigation widget in the header region and a content widget (latest topics, upcoming matches…) in the home page's side column. Everything is set in the administration, without a line of code.

For an association or a club: choose the Association / club profile — news, forum, galleries, calendar, collectives, donations and membership fees, newsletter, wiki and FAQ, without the esport kit. Members, pages and the contact form are always there; teams, if you need them, are added in one click.

Overriding without forking

Any shipped file (view, class, asset) can be overridden without changing the original code. The framework resolves in this order (the first one found wins):

1. overrides/{type}/{file} — global override
2. themes/{active theme}/overrides/{type}/{file} — per-theme override
3. the shipped original

This way you adapt a module or a widget to your site without ever touching the core, and without breaking updates.

To go further: Getting started and A site in several languages.