which themeing system to use ?
leofaoro - April 20, 2005 - 19:16
Hello
I am in the process of creating a website using Drupal. There are several options to develop themes, but I'd like to know which one I should be using. With all the Drupal upgrades, I'd like to develop my theme using something that will be supported in the future.
thanks
Leo
phptemplate, without a
phptemplate, without a doubt.
http://disobey.com/
http://gamegrene.com/
phptemplate
At this time it seems to be the general opinion that phptemplate is the future of drupal theming.
phptemplate is moving to core
And phptemplate is considered the one to use, the vast majority of sites being down now are using phptemplate.
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The future is so Bryght, I have to wear shades.
the reason for phptemplate
there is a reason why people are using the phptempale engine. When you need the full strength of the Drupal theming system, it's there, you can implement theme hooks in template.php. When you do not that power, you can use just the .tpl.php files, which while using php do not use much more than
print. Maybe foreach. Definitely nothing that's not in a "learn php in 24 hours" type of book.Thanks guys, I appreciate it
Thanks guys, I appreciate it !
regards
Leo
cleanliness
i just took a look at phptemplate and some sample themes that use it.
boy!
one of the things that impresses me about drupal is its simplicity, elegance and general readability of the code. xtemplate themes couldn't be much simpler. granted, you don't have the power of embedded php, but you have the great advantage of having a template mechanism that lets you pass off that whole responsibility to someone who doesn't know any php, a fact which i suspect has something to do with xtemplate being the default engine.
after looking at several phptemplate themes, i see that this engine pretty much negates the MVC benefits of xtemplate and integrates core drupal code right into the templates.
i'm currently just looking to move the login/logged-in blocks to the header. but phptemplate will be my last choice. i can't send phptemplate files to a non-programmer, and they're much more difficult to read.
if you go with phptemplate, be sure you take a look at some sample themes in both this engine and the xtemplate engine before you commit. it may change your mind.
phpTemplate
has already been commited as the default template engine for 4.7. I do not recall reading what will happen to the xTemplate theme engine (i.e. whether is will be moved into contrib or not).
-sp
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mount
I assume it will be included
I assume it will be included in Fantastico's install?
I'm running Drupal 4.6.3 (straight out of the Fantastico box) and it's not included. Still playing with the features included there, haven't looked much all the other goodies available.
Will installing it manually now mean that I can't use Fantastico's one-click upgrade feature?
Cricket
No idea. There is no
No idea. There is no official 'Fantastico' install. Drupal is really easy to install from the command line. If you have that option, it ultimatly gives you more control and familierity with your site.
I've never seen Fantastico so don;t know the product or it's limitations. But you are relying on someone else to do the work preparing and securing your site.
When 4.7 rolls out though, phpTemplate will be included with it.
-sp
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
Insane power has its price.
Insane power has its price.
-zach
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harkey design
Smarty could be your answer
You have hit on the big problem with PHPtemplate - it is not actually a template, it is PHP.
Try one of the Smarty based template engines - I wrote wgSmarty so I prefer that one, but the one that is just called Smarty might be supported better in the long term.
--------------------- WEBg8 ---------------------
what i failed to mention
if you are a developer and need maximum control and flexibility, xtemplate is not a good choice.
but if your needs are simple and you don't know (or want to know) any php and just want to tweak html and css, xtemplate is very clean and simple.
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Want a stable development environment?
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I agree
I agree. XTemplate is the way to go I think when it comes to splitting work between coders and designers. PHPTemplate does not separate content from presentation well enough. It offers hooks instead of offering an abstraction layer that lets designers access all these featurs without having to resort to coding. It also poses a security problem when using freely available themes. When you download a PHPTemplate you will need to check the code as you essentially let the theme designer execute any sort of PHP code on the server, which requires understanding of programming, which, the Drupal people say isn't necessary. Right...
so far...
So far I have downloaded the latest phptemplate package and extracted the files to .../themes/engines/phptemplate. Now how do I get drupal 4.6.* to recognize this?
Thanks in advanced.
jweb
Just Get a Theme
You just have to install and enable one PHPTemplate based theme, the default one is box_grey.
Regards!
Alexis Bellido - Ventanazul web solutions