This recipe describes how to set up Drupal to use a different theme only for administration pages. This is a frequent requirement especially on brochure sites which have a limited number of regions where blocks can be placed, or have missing page elements such as breadcrumbs which reduces usability. Having a separate administration theme also comes in handy during custom theme design as the site could well be largely unusable during the initial stages of development. A stable administration interface will therefore ensure that administrative tasks can still be performed effortlessly until the new theme becomes ready.
Depending on the amount of real estate required, it will be worthwhile to put some thought into deciding on the right theme to use as the administration theme. Themes such as the aptly named Administration theme (http://drupal.org/project/admin_theme) and RootCandy (http://drupal.org/project/rootcandy) have been designed specifically with the administration pages in mind. That said, if the requirement is temporary, using a core theme such as Garland will usually suffice.
Specifying an administration theme can be done by following these steps:
Navigate to
admin/settings/admin(Home | Administer | Site configuration | Administration theme).Choose Garland (or any other theme of choice) in the Administration theme drop-down list.
In situations where only administrators have permissions to add and edit content, it might be handy to also check the Use administration theme for content editing checkbox seen in the previous screenshot.
Click on the Save configuration button to save our changes in the database.
Viewing an administration page should confirm that the specified administration theme is being used in preference to the default theme.
Every time a page is displayed, Drupal checks to see if the URL of the page begins with admin. If it does, and if we have specified an administration theme, Drupal overrides the default theme being used with the specified theme.