Forum Discussion

zentheducky's avatar
zentheducky
Reel Rookie
4 years ago

How to Customize the UI of a Direct Publisher LIKE Channel

I've created a Roku Direct Publisher channel, but the UI is clunky and so plain looking. All DP channels look the same for the most part. I've watched all of the "How to build a custom Roku Channel from scratch", I've googled relentlessly, I've search in the forums, I've contacted "Partner Success" (which took DAYS to respond and were of no help at all).....

What does it take to get the Direct Publisher channel layout and brightscript in a downloadable zip so that we can "convert our DP channel to SDK" (yes I've read the FAQ in the blog about it a hundred times) AND be able to go inside the XML and Brightscript files and make changes. Or does Roku not want to give that up for some reason? They really need to have more WORKING themes available for Direct Publisher. They stopped supporting Hero Grid, so 100% of Direct Publisher channels will now look the same.......LAME and not a good way for channels to differentiate themselves. 

The Roku "build a channel from scratch" video course is hard to follow and doesn't go into the correct detail that truly explains what's going on under the hood, however, I'm familiar with XML and Brightscript, but not advanced enough to create my own Brightscript functions. 

Roku Developer Program

8 Replies

  • newperceptions's avatar
    newperceptions
    Streaming Star
    3 years ago

    Thank you for this comment! Yes, we have the same issue. We can't afford to pay a developer to make a fancy channel for our church, but have been using Direct Publisher's Hero Row template, which was perfect for our simple needs. I'm not sure why the DP is going away, but providing the tools for channels like our would really be helpful. We tried the one supplied in the migration, but it just tosses everything into one row called "movies". Please consider all the channels that may have to shut down if you are unable to provide such a template.

    • Baradanikto's avatar
      Baradanikto
      Roku Guru
      3 years ago

      Please see my Post regarding the tool I've written to help DP channel developers convert to a SceneGraph channel.

      • newperceptions's avatar
        newperceptions
        Streaming Star
        3 years ago

        Baradanikto thanks for putting this together. Unfortunately we do not have issues with the conversion itself. Rather, we want to use a different template than the one provided by Roku. We want to use the Hero Row template that is provided by Direct Publisher. The conversion isn't that difficult with a little elbow grease, but when it comes to editing the UI, that's much more time consuming and complicated. So we're looking for a one-to-one migration of what we currently have. Otherwise it just shows all the videos in a single row and is not paying attention to the way the JSON file is constructed, which currently with Hero Row, splits the series up into separate video rows.