Let's Zen! (Stop Theming From Scratch)

Stop Theming From Scratch... Let's Zen! Chris Charlton www.chrischarlton.us

Who am I? What am I? Chris Charlton – I teach, I write, I code.  LA Drupal Manager – groups.drupal.org/LA  LA AIR Adobe Group Manager – laair.org  Drupal Training – drupaltrainer.com and  drupallearning.com for info and dates.

What Unicorns Planned For Us Today: General overview of Drupal Themes.  Parts of a Drupal Theme.  How time consuming “from scratch” really is.  Zen Theme: Vanilla for your sprinkles! 

Drupal 6 Themes General Overview Themes can be installed/uninstalled at will.  Site users can pick any theme you install.  There are free themes, commercial themes,  and any can be tweaked or sub-themed. Themes are made up of CSS and PHP files.  Themes override core and module rendering. 

Parts of a Drupal Theme (Terms) Page = the “shell” markup   <head>  <body>  <div id=”header”>  <div id=”content”>  <div id=”custom-regions”> Region = area where blocks/content live  Header  Content  Sidebar Left  Sidebar Right  Footer  Node = a piece of content 

Parts of a Drupal Theme (Files) Folder & files:   .infofile = theme description/manifest  style.css = the common name for main stylesheet  template.php = powerful file; custom theme logic TPL (PHP/XHTML files; PHP Template)   page.tpl.php  node.tpl.php  block.tpl.php  comment.tpl.php  ... and many, many more.

Theme Cost Graph – fake, but real. A = a free/core theme  B = a budget theme  C = a contrib theme  D = a budgetted theme Price  D B Themes take more C A than one pass, and themes always evolve. Quality

Spend $$$ on your theme Good themes keep sites out of the passive  “Oh, just another Drupal site” stigma. Good themes grow with a site & don't smell.  Theme code overrides rendering logic from  core and module defaults. Your theme has final “say” on how anything should look. Modules provide theme “hooks” to override. 

Save $$$ on your theme Join a theme framework project, like Zen!   Others out there: Blueprint, The 950 Theme, Basic, ...  Reduce or eliminate “from scratch” foundation work. Zen contains pre-declared CSS selectors:   Tags: h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p, a, a:hover, a:visited, ...  Common Drupal regions (IDs): #header, #footer, #content, ...  Common Drupal styles (Classes): .node, .form-field, .block, ...

Where to read more about Zen http://drupal.org/project/zen  Drupal Planet & Drupal Talk (blogs/feeds)  Themer Group –  http://groups.drupal.org/theme-development *Dreamweaver fans visit http://xtnd.us

Let's Zen! (Stop Theming From Scratch)

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