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:
1. Navigate to
admin/appearance[Home | Administration | Appearance].2. Choose Garland (or any other theme of choice) in the Administration theme drop down at the bottom of the page.
3. Click 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.
Just as Drupal can dynamically change the theme being used to render administration pages, so can we. This is covered in the Displaying a different theme for each day of the week recipe in Chapter 2, Beyond the Basics.