How to Make a Drupal Theme- a Drupal theming tutorial - Webmaster Tips

8/8/2019 How to Make a Drupal Theme- a Drupal theming tutorial - Webmaster Tips

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How to Make a Drupal Theme

2006, August 27 - 7:29pm Webmaster Tips

Making a custom Drupal theme is actually quite easy. A Drupal theme is just a few PHP files, a CSS file, and an info file. I

prefer the PHPtemplate theme engine (the default one) but you have several choices. See the bottom of this post for a

link to the official Drupal Theme Developer's Guide which has information on other Drupal template engines.

The following information was originally written for Drupal 4.7, but has been updated for Drupal 6 on March 4, 2009.

Navigate to your /themes directory. You should have a theme there called /bluemarine . We will use that as an

example.

NOTE: before you edit any files you will copy the theme to another directory and rename it. Your custom themes go in the

directory /sites/all/themes/ . Details about that come later in this tutorial.

Here is a list of the files in the Drupal 6's Bluemarine theme:

The Files of a Drupal Themebluemarine.info A required file that is new to Drupal 6 which provides information about the theme.

page.tpl.php The main template that defines the content on most of the page.

style.css The CSS file that sets the CSS rules for the template.

node.tpl.php This file defines the content of the nodes.

block.tpl.php Defines the content of the blocks.

comment.tpl.php Defines the content of the comments.

logo.png Your logo, if you are using one.

screenshot.png This is a screenshot of your theme that is used in the admin panel and in the user account

settings if you have enabled more than one theme so that visitors can choose which theme they want to use.

box.tpl.php puts a box around things like comments. See also http://drupal.org/node/11814.

style-rtl.css this file is new to Drupal 6's Bluemarine. I think it's a CSS for right to left languages and can be

ignored if you're using a left-to-right language like English.

w to Make a Drupal Theme: a Drupal theming tutorial | Webmaster Tips http://tips.webdesign10.com/how-to-make-a-drupal-theme

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page.tpl.php and style.css

The page.tpl.php and style.css files are the main files for your Drupal theme. The page.tpl.php is a mix of HTML

and PHP. Look at the file and notice which snippets of PHP are used where. For example, the following snippet from the

page.tpl.php file inserts the site's information. Just copy that snippet into your own custom Drupal template.

The following code from the Bluemarine page.tpl.php file use PHP ifstatements to print out optional information such as

primary links, secondary links, and site slogan. You control whether those display in the Drupal control panel. The

Bluemarine template uses tables, but you can easily remove the tables and make it a 100% CSS-based template.


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Your First Custom Drupal Theme

Just make a copy of the default Bluemarine template and put it in your Drupal /sites/all/themes/ directory. That

directory doesn't exist by default, so you should create it if you haven't already. See the README file in /sites/all/ for

more information. Rename the copy of Bluemarine to the name of your new theme. Enable the new theme.

NOTE: In Drupal 6 there are also theme info files. To change the name of the theme you'll also need to change the name

in the bluemarine.info file:

; $Id: bluemarine.info,v 1.4 2007/06/08 05:50:57 dries Exp $

name = Bluemarine

description = Table-based multi-column theme with a marine and ash color scheme.

version = VERSION

core = 6.x

engine = phptemplate

Then strip most of the HTML out of the page.tpl.php file and replace it with the HTML that you would like for yourtheme. Leave the PHP, modifying it as desired. If you are using Linux for Web development, you can use Quanta Plus as

an editor to edit your template files directly on the server. Each time you save the file in Quanta Plus, the remote copy of

the file will be updated.

Use the Firefox Web Developer Toolbar'sDisplay ID & Class Details feature to view CSS information on your new template

that you are viewing the the browser. Either start a new style.css file from scratch, or modify the existing one to get

the template the way you would like. To edit the display of blocks, nodes, and comments, edit the block.tpl.php ,

node.tpl.php , and comment.tpl.php files respectively.

When you are finished with your template, take a screenshot and resize it to about 150x90 pixels. Upload it to your theme

directory as screenshot.png .

Drupal Template Variables

The PHP snippets in the examples above are just printing PHPtemplate variables. A complete list of available PHPtemplate

variables that you can use in your template can be found on Drupal.org's PHPtemplate variables page. Below are the

available variables from 24 July 2007:

$breadcrumb

HTML for displaying the breadcrumbs at the top of the page.

$closure

Needs to be displayed at the bottom of the page, for any dynamic javascript that needs to be called once the page

has already been displayed.

$content

The HTML content generated by Drupal to be displayed.

$directory

The directory the theme is located in , e.g.

themes/box_grey or themes/box_grey/box_cleanslate.

$footer_message

The footer message as defined in the admin settings.

$head

HTML as generated by drupal_get_html_head().

$head_title

The text to be displayed in the page title.

$help

Dynamic help text, mostly for admin pages.


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$is_front

True if the front page is currently being displayed. Used to toggle the mission.

$language

The language the site is being displayed in.

$layout

This setting allows you to style different types of layout ('none', 'left', 'right' or 'both') differently, depending on how

many sidebars are enabled.

$logo

The path to the logo image, as defined in theme configuration.

$messages

HTML for status and error messages, to be displayed at the top of the page.

$mission

The text of the site mission.

$node

(5.x and after only)If you are in page.tpl.php displaying a node in full page view then $node is available to your

template.

$onload_attribute

(4.7 and older only) Onload tags to be added to the head tag, to allow for autoexecution of attached scripts.

$primary_links (array)

An array containing the links as they have been defined in the phptemplate specific configuration block.

$scripts

(5.x and after only) HTML to load the JavaScript files and make the JS settings available. Previously, javascript files

are hardcoded into the page.tpl.php

$search_box

True(1) if the search box has been enabled.

$search_button_text

(4.7 and older only)Translated text on the search button.

$search_description

(4.7 and older only)Translated description for the search button.

$search_url

(4.7 and older only)URL the search form is submitted to.

$secondary_links (array)

An array containing the links as they have been defined in the phptemplate specific configuration block.

$sidebar_left

The HTML for the left sidebar.

$sidebar_right

The HTML for the right sidebar.

$site

The name of the site, always filled in.

$site_name

The site name of the site, to be used in the header, empty when display has been disabled.

$site_slogan

The slogan of the site, empty when display has been disabled.

$styles

Required for stylesheet switching to work. This prints out the style tags required.

$tabs

HTML for displaying tabs at the top of the page.

$title

Title, different from head_title, as this is just the node title most of the time.


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Why Drupal? up How to Make a Custom Front Page in Drupal

There are also other variables available for your Drupal theme. A good list can be found in Chapter 8 of the essential book

Pro Drupal Development. I believe that Chapter 8 is a free sample download.

Also check out these two books from Packt Publishing: Drupal 5 Theming and Building powerful and robust websites with

Drupal 6.

More Drupal Theme Documentation

For more information on how to make a Drupal theme, check out the official Drupal Theme Developer's Guide, the

anatomy of a Drupal 6 theme page, and the Themeable Functions list.

When you're ready to build a Drupal 6 theme completely from scratch, check out David Lanier's Minimal Drupal 6 Theme

Creation tutorial.

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How to Make a Custom Front Page in Drupal

CSS Poster and Drupal Template Customization

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2006, September 13 - 1:10pm Steve Blaze (not verified)

2006, September 13 - 3:54pm Webmaster Tips

Comments

Content Theme

I like this page. My question is can I theme a particular piece of content I created? Separate of course from the site

theme.

reply


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How to Make a Drupal Theme- a Drupal theming tutorial - Webmaster Tips