I love all the features and power that Drupal gives me, but for my taste, I find that some of the Joomla templates are far more attractive than those available in Drupal. I would like to port some of them to Drupal, but I see some basic problems.
For example, when I look at the Joomla MOS (Mambo OS) templates they use TemplateDetails.XML file to define images and other parameters. Then the Index.php file starts with "defined( '_VALID_MOS' ) or die( 'Direct Access to this location is not allowed.' );" which is obvously looking for the .xml file and just stops processing there when it doesn't find it.
How do I convert that to the PHPTemplate engine system in Drupal?
I am willing to spend the time to learn if someone would point me in the right direction and I will share the results if they are usable.
Happy Holidays,
Maury
Comments
I'll get you some help if you're serious
I sent you an email through the system but if you don't get let me know. Just use the contact manager and send me a note. Thanks
Why that way?
Why that way? It would be nice if all can see and contribute in converting templates.
I would like to know how it is possible.
Is there any step-by-step tutorial? How to Joomla template transform to Drupal theme from schratch? I have downloaded many Joomla templates, opened with Dreamweaver and want to change the code. Where to start?
I couldn't agree with you
I couldn't agree with you more. My Joomla sites look gorgeous. If you've found a way to do this, I'd be grateful if you could make this info available.
Unfortunately I don't think there is such an easy way. There are many Joomla specific calls in the templates that suggest it might be a little more challenging to get the output looking the same from your standard template. May need to rebuild from scratch and use the existing graphics.
Having themed in both Joomla
Having themed in both Joomla and Drupal, they are apples and oranges, and there's really not much "conversion" possible unless you're talking about having a themer use the Joomla theme as basically a design file/style guide to port over your design.
I agree that there are much nicer themes available for Joomla, but I just walked out of a DrupalCon session that is looking to change that :) I strongly prefer theming in Drupal now that I'm comfortable under the hood.
You could use PSD2HTML
This service is highly recommended by a person I respect:
"
PSD2HTML.com launched a bunch of options allowing clients to implement their design as skins / themes / templates for Wordpress, Movable Type, Drupal, Joomla, Pligg, Blogger, Shopify, X-Cart, CMS Made Simple, CubeCart and others. This set of options is available on order page right under "Advanced Markup Options" section."
She says she has run something like 20 designs through them, and they send back perfect templates, themes, etc.
Let us know how it goes....Thanks.
Joomla Templates
We use Drupal 4.7 on our Intranet. During a site redesign this past year our designer selected the Elixer2.0(Dec 06) template from Rocket Themes as the starting point for the new theme. I discovered that It was not that difficult to adapt a Joomla template to a Drupal theme engine. Over the past 6 months it has been running fine with 400,000+ hits a day(M-F) from almost 5000 users. Now we are looking at an upgrade to 5 or 6, so we hope to package the code for release sometime in 2008.
visit this link for tutorial
http://dreamweaverdrupalthemeextension.blogspot.com/
Porting vs Emulation
The typical approach has been to port the themes to Drupal by rewriting them. Our approach was to run the Joomla template without requiring all the changes. To do this you must emulate the Joomla template environment. Then you can just drop in templates as if it were a native Drupal theme.
could you explain
http://dreamweaverdrupalthemeextension.blogspot.com/
Hey jsloan, Could you please
Hey jsloan,
Could you please tell us a bit more as to what you mean by emulate the Joomla environment?
Looking at some of these commercial Joomla templates has my head swimming with all their variables and custom paths etc etc.
If you've found some shortcuts or easier ways to get them to work, I for one would love to hear to more.
...
Maybe this is naieve as I've never seen a Joomla template, but why not just take the HTML and the CSS and change them over to Drupal classes? Then stick the Drupal code in just like if you were converting an OSWD template.
Michelle
--------------------------------------
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.
Maybe it is as easy as that
Maybe it is as easy as that for some people - I know I have the Elixer template here and thought I'd follow along with the tutorial mentioned at http://dreamweaverdrupalthemeextension.blogspot.com/ however all of the commercial Joomla templates that I have must be far too complicated for the tutorial to make sense or I'm the one without the sense.
Maybe it's the tutorial that presumes too much. I know I'm not the greatest coder or themer so looking for alternatives.
Perhaps a non code approach
Quick intro to theming.
http://www.blkmtn.org/Quick-and-dirty-OSWD-theme-to-Drupal
Followed by
http://drupaldojo.com/lesson/theming-like-a-pro
Now, rather then try and decipher Joomla theme code, why not setup a Joomla site, generate some content, add the theme. Then use a tool like Firefox plug in Web Developer or Firebug to pull the HTML and JS code from the theme. Plug in Drupal variables where appropriate.
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
What he said :)
sepeck's post is exactly what I meant. He just said it better. :)
Michelle
--------------------------------------
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.
Well, it looks just as
Well, it looks just as complicated and confusing and probably more so since the index.php is now populated with additional content.
Have you actually done a Joomla theme conversion?
No disrespect - it's often helpful to hear from someone who has actually done a conversion such as these.
I'd be more than happy to send you a Joomla template so you can have a look over it for your opinion.
my tutorial is the very basic one
it is not the ultimate tutorial on this topic, but this is helpfull in converting hundreds of simple theme from joomla. And also a begining of solving an issue
If one tries to convert an advanced joomla theme to drupal that is foolishness because
1) creating a new theme for dupal may be less time consuming than porting one
2) the css classes and ids may differ from one to other.
3) theme override functions are totally different in both systems.
4) As long as the things goes advanced it becomes a job of an expert.
It is possible to convert any feature of a joomla theme to drupal, I invite people to contribute to it, I am personally not interested in writing any thing on this topic.
2008 onwards drupal will themes will start competing joomla.
http://dreamweaverdrupalthemeextension.blogspot.com/
not at all
This was more a generic approach to converting themes and is done from a non-coding perspective. By using the tools I describe, you will be left with the HTML of a site and can use that as a basis to convert it to a Drupal template. Different people with differing skill sets often use a variety of approaches to solve challenges.
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
Well I have a developer
Well I have a developer license at Rocket Theme (access to all their templates) and would be interested to see what you think would be involved in converting something like one of their latest themes - http://demo.rockettheme.com/dec07/index.php?option=com_content&task=view...
Certainly do check out the HTML as I'm not even sure where to begin on something like this. Most other commercial Joomla templates look much the same.
Joomla emulation
Joomla 1.0.* templates are just like Drupal phpTemplates in that they embed php functions and variables within the HTML. So to emulate Joomla for the Joomla templates you will have to declare the functions and variables expected by the template. This would be done in a Drupal theme engine.
List of Joomla template functions: http://help.joomla.org/content/view/33/125/
For Joomla 1.5 it will be different because they switched to patTemplate. So creating a patTemplate theme engine would be necessary.
patTemplate: http://trac.php-tools.net/patTemplate
Joomla docs for patTemplate: http://help.joomla.org/content/section/21/182/
Which J! template are you wanting to port over?
Can you provide a link to the J! template that you are trying to port over to Drupal?
I used both Joomla! and Drupal now and they really have a lot of overlapping functions.
As for the templatedetails.xml, it is in incorrect to say that is uses this file to find where all the images or files needed for the template. It is only used during the installation process via the backend. If you upload it manually then this file is not needed by Joomla and the only thing that Joomla requires from this xml file is to be able to know which template name it is to show up in the backend.
-------------------------------
Joomla uses index.php file, drupal uses page.tpl.php file. All template overrides in Drupal uses the template.php file.
Like Joomla, in Drupal there are custom CSS that are used but this can be overridden by adding your own {name of node or block}.tpl.php files. Look into one of the default Drupal theme to see some custom CSS.
Defining 'Regions' in Drupal is like Joomla module positioning name and then you assign the node (modules) in the backend.
Joomla modules in Drupal are called 'blocks'
Drupal modules in Joomla are like Extensions (Components and mambots).
There is a page in the Drupal Handbook about porting Joomla template to Drupal: http://drupal.org/node/198333
One problem i find about Drupal that i don't quite like is the menu system. There does not seem to be a way to easily generate a taxonomy menu (categories and terms). But there are contribute modules and snippets (from The Drupal handbook) to help you on this.
Last thing, make sure once you have installed a module in Drupal, after activating it, go to access permissions and set them up.
I hope these will be a good starting point for you.
thanks,
subscribing
subscribing
One problem i find about
i resolved this with the category module.
and actually, the drupal menu system is better than joomla's, and the whole templating is better, because J! uses tables, the J! 1.5 still has tables hard coded :(
in drupal you can make real tableless templates, and that's a major advantage in my opinion.
J! template to drupal theme conversion is possible in every case, it just involves some work. i must do that, cos' of all the templates i made for joomla, i would like to use them in drupal too, and i have websites to migrate from J! to D with the layout remaining the same.
i make this like this:
i have a joomla intsallation just for templates, and made pages (contents), that emulate blocks and other elements that appear on a D page.
i generate a page, and i change tha raw data only with the bare unformatted data codes from drupal. so i only have to rename index.php to page.tpl.php, and if i want to separate the J! modules places, then make a separate blocks.tpl.php.
and if i want to insert something new, or want extra regions, i make a template.php and declare them. it does leave some J! mess in the code like unused css entities, but i can always just take them out if i want smaller file sizes.
in the final stage i tweak the files a little to better suit drupal, and it's finished.
hope this helps in some way.
Joomla Templates as Drupal Themes
This is my sample drupal sites that use joomla templates as themes drupal:
http://cf.isgreat.org
http://times.cmsindo.com
http://times.cmsindo.com/dark
http://gavick.isgreat.org
= Drupaler's =
yeally happy to see
the list of sites you have benefitted drom the forum
sherif
http://dreamweaverdrupalthemeextension.blogspot.com/
Very nice work bassbetot,
Very nice work bassbetot, very nice indeed.
They've turned out to be great conversions. Did you happen to document your process as well as maybe make them available for others to use?
I'd love to look them over myself.
Cheers
Martin
SHOW MW
a few beautiful GPL themes for joomla, I will convert to drupal and document it in detail.
http://dreamweaverdrupalthemeextension.blogspot.com/
Good work, i d like to start
Good work, i d like to start convert some GPL template do you have any tutorial to start, you do a very good job, its not simple to convert some premium templates
---
emploi maroc
Morocco
Immobilier Maroc
Hi, May be I am too simple.
Hi,
May be I am too simple. Drupal plays short in theming related to wordpress and joomla.
But should it be possible to program a converter which builds drupal themes from OSWD, XHTML/CSS, joomla, wordpress, other themes automatically?
Rough themes which may be needs small tweaking after automatic process?
This way we could focus our attention within drupal to new themes which doesn't exist in any other platform yet?
EDIT: anyone have used this website: http://psd2cssonline.com. I will post a different forum-topic about this also :)
I would we willing to spend some bucks to get such converter working!
Greeting,
Martijn
www.trekking-world.com
Can you please share?
bassbetot,
Can you please share the way you converted these templates? I would really apreciate it.
I like some Joomla templates that I would like to be able to use in Drupal.
Thank you very much,
daspert