How to upload additional themes for PHPMyAdmin

Introduction

In order to provide a better experience for your users, you may want to upload a custom theme for PHPMyAdmin.  You could choose from existing themes or you could create your own unique theme for your company.  No matter what you choose, this guide will show you how to add that theme to PHPMyAdmin on a cPanel server.

Procedure

The following steps assume you have root access to the server and are comfortable working on the command line.  While there are different methods of getting the theme bundle onto the server, they all ultimately end up requiring files to be placed in /usr/local/cpanel/base/3rdparty/phpMyAdmin/themes.  You can do that by downloading the files directly to the server, or uploading them through FTP:

Option 1 - Downloading the file directly to your server

1. If you're using this option, you're likely downloading a theme that already exists from the PHPMyAdmin site at https://www.phpmyadmin.net/themes/.  For our examples, we'll be using the Blueberry theme as it is the first in the list.
2. Access https://www.phpmyadmin.net/themes/ and find the Blueberry theme.
3. Copy the link to the .zip file.
4. Access your server over SSH and run the following commands to download the theme, extract the theme, and configure it with the correct permissions:

   1. cd /usr/local/cpanel/base/3rdparty/phpMyAdmin/themes
      wget https://files.phpmyadmin.net/themes/blueberry/1.1.0/blueberry-1.1.0.zip
      unzip blueberry-1.1.0.zip
      chown -Rf root:wheel blueberry

5. Access WHM >> PHPMyAdmin to open the root PHPMyAdmin interface.
6. You should see a menu called "Appearance settings" on the main page with a dropdown menu where you can choose the theme
   1. 
7. Click either the dropdown menu or the "View all" button to change the theme.  Your page will refresh and the new theme will be loaded.

Option 2 - Uploading the theme files to the server

• This would be the best option to choose if you have theme files locally on your machine that you'd like to upload to the server.
• Upload the files to your server in whatever way is easiest.  This could be through FTP as a cPanel user, File Manager as a cPanel user, or sFTP as the root user.
• Access the server on the command line and move those files to /usr/local/cpanel/base/3rdparty/phpMyAdmin/themes
• Access your server over SSH and run the following commands to download the theme, extract the theme, and configure it with the correct permissions:

  • cd /usr/local/cpanel/base/3rdparty/phpMyAdmin/themes
    chown -Rf root:wheel theme_bundle_name

• Performs steps 5-7 from Option 1 above to select the theme in the interface.