Book Image

Drupal 6 Themes

By : Ric Shreves
Book Image

Drupal 6 Themes

By: Ric Shreves

Overview of this book

<p>Drupal is an award winning open source Content Management System (CMS). Based on PHP/MySQL, its power and flexibility combined with its exceptional design mean it is one of the most popular choices for creating a CMS website.<br /><br />Drupal employs a specialized templating system and supports themes, which allow you to change the look and feel of the system's front and back-end interfaces. <br /><br />Drupal 6 Themes is an ideal introduction to theming with Drupal 6. If you want to create a striking new look for your Drupal 6 website, this book is for you. This book is a revised, updated and expanded edition of Drupal 5 Themes, written specifically for Drupal 6. The book will show you techniques and tools to help you improve the look and feel of any Drupal 6-powered website<br /><br />Starting from the basics of theme setup and configuration, you will learn about the Drupal theming architecture and the PHPTemplate engine, and then move on to modifying existing themes and building new themes from scratch. You will find out about tools to make your theme development easier, and also find invaluable information about under-documented elements of the theming system.</p>

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Drupal 6 Themes
Ric Shreves
Sep, 2008 | 312 pages
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Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Drupal 6 Themes
Drupal 6 Themes
Credits
Credits
About the Author
About the Author
About the Reviewers
About the Reviewers
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
The Elements of a Drupal Theme
The Elements of a Drupal Theme
The Importance of Themes in Drupal
What Is a Theme?
What Is a Theme Engine?
The Range and Flexibility of Drupal Themes
What You See on the Screen
The Big Picture: How Drupal Displays a Page
The Default Themes of the Drupal Distro
The Theme Files
Summary
2
Theme Setup and Configuration
Theme Setup 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
3
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
4
Identifying Templates, Stylesheets, and Themable Functions
Identifying Templates, Stylesheets, and Themable Functions
Putting Together the Pieces—Templates, Stylesheets, and Functions
A Guide to Theming Elements
Summary
5
Intercepts and Overrides
Intercepts and Overrides
Overriding the Default CSS
Overriding Templates and Themable Functions
Summary
6
Modifying an Existing Theme
Modifying an Existing Theme
Setting Up the Workspace
Planning the Modifications
Creating a New Subtheme
Making the Transition from Zen to Tao
Summary
7
Building a New Theme
Building a New Theme
Planning the Build
Creating a New PHPTemplate Theme
Build a New Pure PHP Theme
Summary
8
Dynamic Theming
Dynamic Theming
Using Multiple Templates
Dynamically Theming Page Elements
Creating Dynamic CSS Styling
Working with Template Variables
Summary
9
Dealing with Forms
Dealing with Forms
How Forms Work in Drupal
How to Approach Modifying Forms
Solutions to Common Form Issues
The Default Forms
Summary
Drupal CSS Map
Drupal CSS Map
A Guide to Drupal Stylesheets
The Stylesheets of the Default Themes
The Themers' Toolkit
The Themers' Toolkit
Drupal Modules
Firefox Extensions

Creating a New Subtheme

Install the Zen theme if you have not done so before now; once that is done we're ready to create a new subtheme.

Note

Installing a new theme is covered in Chapter 2.

First, make a copy of the directory named STARTERKIT and place the copied files into the directory sites/all/themes. Rename the directory "tao".

Note

Note that in Drupal 5.x, subthemes were kept in the same directory as the parent theme, but for Drupal 6.x this is no longer the case. Subthemes should now be placed in their own directory inside the sites/all/themes/ directory.

Note that the authors of Zen have chosen to vary from the default stylesheet naming. Most themes use a file named style.css for their primary CSS. In Zen, however, the file is named zen.css. We need to grab that file and incorporate it into Tao.

Copy the Zen CSS (zen/zen/zen.css) file. Rename it tao.css and place it in the Tao directory (tao/tao.css).

Note

When you look in the zen/zen directory, in addition to the key zen.css file, you...

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