CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpdrupal
Bialecki
Bialecki

Reputation: 31061

Where is a good guide for Drupal themeing?

I'm new to Drupal, and frankly after reading through the Drupal documentation, their guide to themeing isn't all that helpful. Maybe I'm just misunderstanding, but it seems like there are certain variables you always have access to and different functions you can define to override or implement behavior.

Long story short, I'd like to be able to trace through the Drual themeing code to understand hwo it works. Doesn't seem like it should be all that difficult, but I'm having a hard time finding a good reference. Anyone know of one?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 197

Answers (3)

Matt V.
Matt V.

Reputation: 9809

I'd recommend Front End Drupal: Designing, Theming, Scripting over the Drupal 6 Themes book. I put together a Drupal 6 Theming Cheat Sheet that includes links to the resources I've found most helpful.

Honestly, though there are good links and books to learn from, the way I've learned quickest was to start creating a theme. Create your theme.info file, then begin converting an index.html to page.tpl.php or page-front.tpl.php using the snippets in the cheat sheet or the nerliness.com link mentioned in Robert Harvey's answer. Those two files constitute a bare-bones theme.

From there, you can override additional template files as needed. You can use the Theme developer to find just what templates to override, to customize a particular part of the site. Remember to clear the theme cache, as you add new template files.

Also, make sure your theme has the base template of any file you want to override. See the "Note: There is a bug which prevents derivative template files from being detected..." section of the Core templates and suggestions page, for more details.

Upvotes: 0

quickcel
quickcel

Reputation: 506

There are a few different resources you can use that might help out:

  • You can use the irc channel on freenode: #drupal-themes
  • A module that I hear a lot of themers like is the Devel module - http://drupal.org/project/devel. This is what will allow you to trace through the code and see what variables, function calls, etc. are being used.
  • You might also want to check out the Druapl 6 Themes book

Upvotes: 2

Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey

Reputation: 180858

http://www.nerdliness.com/article/2007/09/10/drupal-theming

Upvotes: 2

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