Which theme engine I should use?
SirBerberitz - November 10, 2007 - 15:30
Hello all,
We want to create a community website and decided to use this great drupal system.
Now we are a bit confused as we do not have a clue which theme engine would be the best choice as there are five of them:
XTemplate
PHP-Template
Plain PHP
Smarty
wgSmarty
Could somebody please tell us, which engine would be the best or easy to handle and to modify as we think that we would need some modification eg. user and registration menu and so on ...?
Thanks in advance
SirBerberitz and friends °°
=-=
phpTemplate is in core and my suggestion is to stick with it.
_____________________________________________________________________
My posts & comments are usually dripping with sarcasm.
If you ask nicely I'll give you a towel : )
More information about theme
More information about theme engines...
http://drupal.org/project/Theme%20engines
Anyone care to explain what
Anyone care to explain what a 'theme engine' is?
I've read some documents, but I still don't understand what 'engine' means.
Is it an executable that you run on your machine?
Is it a module?
Is it just a bunch of tpl files with all the extra php stripped out?
If I'm looking at the source of the core themes (Garland, Blue Marine, etc), am I looking at the engine script?
I come from e107 which has the best themeing I've ever seen; basically once you've created your wireframe layout, you simply use what e107 call 'shortcodes' to place your content.
For example {MENU=1} places 'area 1' into that div. No php required - it's all taken care of - in the backend, you simply assign the different content and plugins to the 'areas' you've put into your wireframe theme.
So when the Drupal documentation for a 'theme engine' says that you still need to use php script in your theme, I ask myself 'where does the 'engine' part come into it? What is the 'engine' doing, if it doesn't assist the user to avoid php/javascript'?
On the Bryght site, for example, they have this:
<div id="navlist">
<?php if (is_array($primary_links)) : ?>
<ul id="primary">
<?php foreach ($primary_links as $link): ?>
<li><?php print $link?></li>
<?php endforeach; ?>
<?php if ($search_box): ?>
<li class="input"><form action="<?php print $search_url ?>"
method="post" id="searchform">
<input class="form-text" type="text" size="10" value=""
name="keys" id="s" /> Search
</form></li>
<?php endif; ?>
</ul>
<?php endif; ?>
</div>
Now, is this the 'template engine' at work? This is supposed to be the easy way to get a nav menu into your Drupal site? IMO, those 'if' statments and that 'for' loop should not be in the theme - they should be in the php files which are creating the nav menu. Please explain, because I'm obviously lost on this subject.
Thanks.
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investigate the themes/engines/phptemplate/phptemplate.engine file
theme engine = template engine
documentaion reagrding some other theme engines that have been integrated in past = http://drupal.org/node/176129
_____________________________________________________________________
My posts & comments are usually dripping with sarcasm.
If you ask nicely I'll give you a towel : )