Frontend

Frontend documentation for RCA Themer covers two surfaces: the Styles panel on your live Joomla site for Super Users, and the free hosted lab at https://recreatinganew.com/themer that runs in the browser without touching your server.

Styles panel on your live site

Log in on the frontend as Super User and open the floating Styles panel. Click elements to inspect cascade-winning matched declarations, edit values, export dirty CSS, or when live write is armed and allowed save to the selected custom.css file. Panel assets load according to plugin options, including the optional Require ?rca_themer=1 gate when you enabled it.

Same-origin CSS and honest limits

Same-origin stylesheets cooperate for inspection and live write. Cross-origin CDN sheets are limited for inspection and are never rewritten by live write. Inline builder CSS and shadow DOM are only partially visible depending on version. When builder inline style keeps winning, move durable rules into custom.css with specificity that matches reality, not wishful thinking.

Hosted lab at https://recreatinganew.com/themer

Open https://recreatinganew.com/themer in a modern browser. You do not need to log in to your Joomla site to use the lab. Design against Helix and SP Page Builder fixture chrome, import existing custom.css when you are refining work already on a site, export when the look is right, and paste into your template css/custom.css or the Helix custom CSS field your template documents. Clear Joomla cache and hard-refresh the live site after paste.

Who sees what on the frontend

Guests and non-Super Users do not see the retail Styles panel unless you deliberately changed Super Users only, which you should not do without a reason. The lab is available to anyone with the URL; it does not expose your site files or Joomla admin.

After export or lab paste

custom.css should load last in Helix. Clear Joomla cache, browser cache, and CDN cache if you use one. Hard-refresh before you open a support ticket about colors that are still old because cache lied to you.