Thanks for more context!
I understand where you are coming from, but the way I feel about this currently, there is a split between web developers that embraced modern approach (eg. node.js, bundlers, js and css processors) and old ones (I just find the file, edit it, taadaa!).
I will make things easier for people running their communities on Misago, but sadly it will never be the level of "just edit the template and it works". Misago is JavaScript application consuming the API from Python application. If you want to customize generated HTML, you need to fork the frontend. Currently, this requires you to fork the entire repo, but when new frontend hits, you will have to fork only the repo with frontend. Next improvement will be that you won't really have to really modify whole that lot in your fork. You may want to stick to editing just the Sass variables for theme colors, generate output css
file, and then upload just that CSS file on your site via admin control panel.
Or if you want to add extra CSS bit to your site, say override the CSS for .navbar .navbar-brand
. Admin panel will have simple editor letting you add extra CSS snippet on top of already-existing CSS.
This is the course I'm taking with how customizing Misago will look like. Maybe we will have web UI for changing the SCSS variables without having to do it on your machine, don't know yet.