Drupal Theming For Beginners – Danté SELF 2010

Drupal ThemingFor BeginnersBy Danté TaylorMediacurrent Senior Designer
South East Linux Fest
June 13, 2010

We will cover
What is Drupal?
What is a Drupal Theme?
Contributed Drupal Themes, Engines, & Services
What can you do with Drupal themes?
Drupal Theme Anatomy 101
How to Design for Drupal
Create a Drupal Theme the easy way
Where to find help
`

About Me
Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) from Savannah College of Art and Design
Worked as a Designer for 10 years
Have worked with Drupal since version 4.7 release (5 years)
Biggest project worked on in Drupal is savannahnow.com
Favorite project worked on in Drupal is ymib.com
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What is Drupal?
Content Management System (CMS)
Application Programming Interface (API) built on top of PHP
A community of more than 800,000+ users and developers contributing to build needed tools, services, and programs using a standard methodology or practices.
There are more than 6,000+ profiles, modules, and themes supported by the Drupal community
People who use Drupal include: Ubuntu.com, Whitehouse.gov, FastCompany.com, MTV.com
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What is a Drupal Theme?
A set of files and templates used to build the Front-end of a Drupal site.
The User-Facing section of a Drupal site that facilitates the majority of the user experience.
To put it in Real Estate terms it is the Décor of a Web Site.
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Contributed Drupal Themes, Engines, & Services
Zen Theme (Themes)
Garland Theme* (Themes)
PHPThemple* (Theme Engine)
Smarty (Theme Engine)
PHPTal(Theme Engine)
Drupal Gardens (Service)

What can you do with Drupal Themes?
Design photo sharing sites.
Build a site for your local baseball team.
Build a personal portfolio or résumé site.
Build a theme for your church, civic group, or organization.
There are not many limits to what can be done with Drupal and Drupal theme design.

Drupal Theme: AutoTrader
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Drupal Theme: University of Georgia:
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Garland Theme
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Choose A Theme
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Configure Theme
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Add some color
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How to Design For Drupal?
Install Drupal to experiment and learn how modules UI functions work together, before you begin your design project.
Use built-in features of Drupal and modules to achieve Design objectives. (Try not to reinvent)
Think in terms of how your Design elements can be reused or repeated throughout Web site.
Work closely with specialist in Drupal Design or Development to save on time and budget as you plan your Drupal project.
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Drupal Theme Anatomy 101
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File Structure
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Popular Drupal Terms
Hooks
Preprocess Functions
Theme Functions
Template Files
Regions
Nodes
Blocks
Delta
Content Types
Taxonomy
Settings.php
Template.php
Views
CCK
Menu System
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Create a Drupal Theme the easy way
Create Theme Name directory (mytheme) inside “/sites/all/themes/” (create new directories if they do not exist)
Copy Garland theme from “/themes” and move it to “/sites/all/themes/”, then rename it to mytheme directory.
Change the garland.info file to mytheme.info. Open new mytheme.info file and change all names with garland to mytheme.
Change the screenshot.png file to match your new theme.
Clear system cache. (/admin/settings/performance)
Go to Themes list page and select mytheme, to start using or editing your new theme. (/admin/build/themes)
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.info file
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Where to Find Help?
Mediacurrent.com/blogs
Drupal.org
Api.drupal.org
Drupal.org/project/Themes
AListApart.com
Lynda.com
Drupal.org/node/39451
Drupal.org/books
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Tools of the trade
Firefox
FireBug
Theme Developer Module
MAMP
Admin Menu Module
YSLOW
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Contact Me
dante.taylor@mediacurrent.com
404 537 2493
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Drupal Theming For Beginners – Danté SELF 2010

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Drupal Theming For Beginners – Danté SELF 2010 Presentation Transcript

http://www.mediacurrent.com	4
http://support32.avalonmis.net	2
http://projectmanagersite.com	1