You will, without doubt work with various themes of Drupal. Inevitably, you will want or need to create a site that doesn't look like it came out of the box. This requires that you jump into the theme. Every new installation begins with the Garland theme, but most themers will usually alter this theme, adopt another, or even create a new theme from scratch. The techniques we will study here are practiced on the Garland theme, but may be adapted to any theme, although some may require alterations. By the end of this chapter, you should have a firm threshold from where to begin your work.

You should already have a custom theme to work from, as outlined in the first chapter. We assume you have copied the Garland folder to something similar to /sites/themes/my_theme, have made the necessary changes to garland.info (both changing that file's name to my_theme.info and making similar changes within that file), and have activated that new theme by visiting Administer | Site...