Modifying an Existing Theme | Drupal 5 Themes

Sign In Start Free Trial

Book Overview & Buying
Table Of Contents

Drupal 5 Themes

4.2 (12)

Drupal 5 Themes

4.2 (12)

Overview of this book

Drupal is an award winning open source Content Management System. Based on PHP/MySQL, its power and flexibility combined with its exceptional design mean it is already on the way to becoming the de facto standard for CMS Websites. Drupal?¢‚Ç¨‚Ñ¢s modular design and structured source code make it both highly flexible and easily extended and modified. Drupal is extremely scalable, making it ideal for both a simple personal website as well as an industrial strength commercial or institutional web presence.Drupal is a model open source project in that it has a large, friendly community of people who contribute to the project in various ways. Drupal is not only free and easy to use, but this community provides on going mutual support.

Drupal 5 Themes

Drupal 5 Themes

Credits

Credits

About the Author

About the Author

About the Reviewer

About the Reviewer

Preface

Preface

Free Chapter

The Elements of a Drupal Theme

The Elements of a Drupal Theme

What is a Theme?

What is a Templating Engine?

The Range and Flexibility of Drupal Themes

What You See on the Screen

The Big Picture: How Drupal Displays a Page

The Importance of Themes in Drupal

The Contents of the Drupal Distro

The Theme Files

Summary

Theme Set Up and Configuration

Theme Set Up and Configuration

Finding Additional Themes

Installing an Additional Theme

Configuring a Theme

Managing Modules and Blocks

Theming in Action: Dressing Up Garland

Uninstalling Themes

Summary

Working with Theme Engines

Working with Theme Engines

What is PHPTemplate?

How does it Work?

Getting Started with PHPTemplate

Alternative Theme Engines

Installing Additional Theme engines

Summary

Style Sheets and Themeable Functions

Style Sheets and Themeable Functions

A Guide to Drupal Style Sheets

Identifying Themeable Functions

A Guide to Themeable Functions

Summary

Intercepts and Overrides

Intercepts and Overrides

Overriding the Default CSS

Overriding Functions

Intercepting Template Files

Summary

Modifying an Existing Theme

Modifying an Existing Theme

Setting Up the Workspace

Planning the Modifications

Cloning a Theme

First Look at Zen/Tao

Turning Zen into Tao

Summary

Building a New Theme

Building a New Theme

Planning the Build

Build a New PHPTemplate Theme

Extending Your PHPTemplate Theme

Build a New Pure PHP Theme

Summary

Dealing with Forms

Dealing with Forms

How Forms Work in Drupal

Modifying and Overriding Form Functions

Common Form Issues

The Default Forms

Summary

Appendix A

Appendix A

Chapter 6. Modifying an Existing Theme

In this chapter, we will put together the various techniques that we have covered and demonstrate how to modify and heavily customize an existing theme. The majority of people who get into Drupal themes tend to do so by modifying other themes and learning from them; and that's exactly what we're going to do in this chapter.

We will take an existing theme, look at how it works, then copy it and modify it until we have a very different looking theme. In this case, we will be building a fixed width, CSS-based, personal blog theme.

For the purpose of illustrating the examples in this chapter, we start with the Zen theme, which you can download from the Drupal site.

Setting Up the Workspace

There are several software tools that can make your work of modifying themes more efficient. Though no specific tools are required to work with Drupal themes, there are a couple of applications that you might want to consider adding to your tool kit.

I work with Firefox...

Visually different images

CONTINUE READING

83

Tech Concepts

36

Programming languages

73

Tech Tools

Unlimited access to the largest independent learning library in tech of over 8,000 expert-authored tech books and videos.

Innovative learning tools, including AI book assistants, code context explainers, and text-to-speech.

50+ new titles added per month and exclusive early access to books as they are being written.

Drupal 5 Themes

Search

Your notes and bookmarks