Django CMS Simple Admin Style

A lightweight theme that makes Django's admin feel at home in django CMS. It aligns colours, spacing, forms, buttons, and icons with the django CMS interface while deliberately preserving Django's familiar admin structure and behaviour.

djangocms-simple-admin-style is included by the official django CMS project template.

See the difference

The comparisons below show the same django CMS admin dashboard with Django's native styling and with Django CMS Simple Admin Style.

Light mode

Django admin	Django CMS Simple Admin Style

Dark mode

Django admin	Django CMS Simple Admin Style

Why use it?

• Consistent: the Django admin and django CMS editing interface share one visual language, including light and dark colour schemes.
• Conservative: small, targeted overrides leave Django's admin styling and behaviour intact.
• Compatible: dedicated stylesheets support both the established admin markup and the redesigned forms introduced in Django 6.1.
• Compact: each production stylesheet is a single minified CSS file under 16 kB.
• Tested: CI renders real admin pages and checks that CSS rules still match across supported Django versions.

Alternative: Django Unfold

This package intentionally stays close to Django's native admin. Projects that prefer the more comprehensive Django Unfold theme can instead use MetaForX's Django Unfold Extra. That unofficial extension integrates Unfold with django CMS, including the page tree, plugin forms, versioning, and light/dark theme synchronisation.

Installation

Install the package:

python -m pip install djangocms-simple-admin-style

Then add it to INSTALLED_APPS immediately before django.contrib.admin:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    # ...
    "djangocms_simple_admin_style",
    "django.contrib.admin",
    # ...
]

Projects created with the official django CMS project template already include the package.

Configuration

Colour scheme

The theme follows django CMS' CMS_COLOR_SCHEME setting. For example:

CMS_COLOR_SCHEME = "auto"  # "light", "dark", or "auto"

See the django CMS colour-scheme documentation for details.

Update notifications

Superusers see a notification on the admin index when a newer applicable django CMS release is available. The check requests current release metadata from PyPI; it does not send project or user data.

CMS_ENABLE_UPDATE_CHECK

Defaults to True. Set it to False to disable the check.

CMS_UPDATE_CHECK_TYPE

Defaults to "patch" and accepts "patch" or "minor". "patch" stays within the installed x.y series; "minor" stays within the installed major series.

Legacy django CMS styling

The package automatically uses the legacy visual language with django CMS versions earlier than 5.1, or when the project's base.html contains <html data-cms-theme="4">.

Set CMS_LEGACY_STYLE to override detection:

• True forces the legacy django CMS 4 style.
• False forces the current style and skips auto-detection.
• If unset, the style is detected automatically.

Custom styling

The package overrides admin/base_site.html. To add project-specific CSS, create templates/admin/inc/extrastyle.html in your project; that template is included in the admin's extrastyle block.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome. See the contribution guide for the development setup, CSS workflow, and test-suite guide. Release details are recorded in the changelog.

Licensing

The package is distributed under the BSD 3-Clause License. Bundled Bootstrap Icons are distributed under the MIT License; see the license file for details.