theming

Sometimes, you need to change the HTML markup output by some module, and you want your changes to keep whichever theme you will use. The need came up for me recently when I had to provide special markup for pages that display a webform. I had to quickly put together a module for a client, a module that would provide a template file, which I decided to name (arbitrarily) page-webform.tpl.php.

The situation may arise for you as well, so I will share my technique with you. Say you want to provide a template file for all pages that display one node of a content type with machine-readable name CONTENT_TYPE_NAME. And say you want to use a module to provide such template. Say you decide to name your module special_page. Read more →

You may read the rest of my article, which was published on Wednesday, April 11th 2007. Read more →

You want to print the content type name along with the 'submitted' info. This will be particularly useful for those who have created custom content types, with or without CCK. Read more →

You want the comment style to be different for comments added by the author of a node — who's commenting on his own node. For example, you may want to highlight the node's author's comments, so that any visitor skimming through the comments will easily differentiate them from other comments. Read more →

Here is a collection of my 10 favorite 'tweaks' to content template files in Drupal 6. I will add one simple tweak a day, starting today.

The following exercise consists in theming the contact form in Drupal 6. Once we're done, it will look like we'll have created two fall-back-on 'pages' for contact forms, one page/form to 'request a quote' at Randy.com/contact/quote, and an other page/form for general inquiries at Randy.com/contact/info. The trick here — if there's one — consists in theming the contact form differently based on the requested URI.

This exercise will show you how to:

• recognize when a module has not registered a specific theming function for a form it generates,
• register a theming function for a Drupal form in your theme, using HOOK_theme,
• work with template suggestions,
• use the Devel module function dsm() to inspect complex variables, such as Drupal forms.

 Read more →

The following exercise consists in moving pieces of code around, code that I did not write myself. Credit for the code goes to Joakim Stai (nicknamed 'ximo' on Drupal.org), the maintainer of the excellent Node form layouts module, as well as to the Usability group.

This exercise is all about gaining experience in:

• adding theme settings to a theme configuration page
• theming forms inside a theme, as opposed to writing a module for the same purpose
• creating a sub theme

 Read more →

Packt recently published an expanded and updated edition of Drupal: Creating Blogs, Forums, Portals, and Community Websites. The new title is Building powerful and robust websites with Drupal 6, and it contains 362 pages with the index — 100 more pages than there was in the first book. The author, David Mercer, would like his book to become the Drupal community's de facto title for learning the technology Read more →

I’m currently working on a Drupal 6 theming ebook. The beta ebook attached to this posting is for Drupal 5.
— Update, March 29th, 2008.

I am in the process of writing a 50-and-some pages ebook on Drupal theming. I have an outline and a spiral book full of notes, and lots of sections are already written. My current draft (call that a beta-book) is 15 pages long and if you log in you may download it. Read more →