Sub-themes, their structure and inheritance

What I experienced is: the themeName is the name of the .info file. It seams to me that the name assigned int he "name = [name]" clause cannot be used as a reference for the base theme, but it appears in the administrators page for activating the theme. On the other hand in the users profile the name of the .info file is displayed.

So it seams a good idea to have the same name in both places, but if you don't it may be somewhat confusing.

I would recommend to change this in Drupal and use one name in all places.

sigi reimann

Having two names for the same theme can make it slightly more confusing for theme developers. However, there's a good reason for it. Drupal uses two names for one theme to make it less confusing for the end users by making it possible to use spaces (and other user friendly characters) in the theme administration pages.

Suppose I have a theme named "Corporate Chic". Because Drupal uses the internal name of the theme as a variable name, it has to conform to the PHP variable naming conventions, which prohibit spaces and most punctuation. We'd have to use either "CorporateChic" or "Corporate_Chic" as the theme name. The first is hard to read, and the second is ugly. Neither one will look good in the themes administration page. But prior to Drupal 6.x, that's exactly how the theme names appeared to the end user - either with no spaces, or with underscores taking the place of spaces.

A somewhat larger issue has to do with internationalization. PHP variable names are limited to ASCII characters (from 127-255 in the ASCII table). If you're writing a theme for use in a Finnish web site, for example, you'll need to change "Väestö" to "Vaesto", which makes it less familiar to Finnish readers and may change its meaning. In German, what do you do about the eszett character? (That's the ß character.) And heaven forbid that you ever try writing a theme in Japanese, Chinese, or any other language written with ideographs.

Splitting the theme name in two lets us get around all that. The INTERNAL theme name (derived from the file name of the info file, e.g. corporate_chic.info) can follow the PHP variable guidelines, whereas the EXTERNAL name of the theme can include spaces, punctuation, and non-English characters. The internal name gets used in Drupal's execution; the external name just serves as the label that the Drupal administrator sees in the administration pages.

So yes, the split makes it slightly more confusing for developers making sub-themes. On the other hand, developers will figure out the difference, and there are many fewer developers than there are end users. It's a good trade-off, and considerate to the end users.

It is worth noting for newbies, that if you want the Color module to operate in a sub-theme, you have to copy not just the color directory, but also:

* The image directory (or wherever the theme keeps all the bits and pieces to be recoloured.

* The style.css file. If you don't copy this, the recolouring all seems to work fine, but it then picks up the default copy of this file, and then by implication the default copies of all the graphics, and nothing in the end happens.

If you have defined non-standard regions (something other than left, right, content, header and footer) in your base theme and you want those regions in your sub-theme, then don't forget to add them to the sub-theme's info file.

Contrary to the implication on this page, if you create a sub-theme info file that does not reference any style sheets, style.css in the parent theme is not inherited; see issue #335106: sub-theme doesn't import parent's css.

If you create a sub-theme info file that does reference a style sheet with a different name to the stylesheet in the parent theme, i.e. by adding a line like this:

If you create a sub-theme info file that references a style sheet with the same name as the stylesheet in the parent theme, i.e. by adding a line like this:

I am trying to create custom template files in my sub theme to handle specific content types.
My base theme is marinelli-6.x-2.9 and my new content type is named event..
My sub theme is configured as a sibling (outside) directory of my base theme.

When I create a file named node-event.tpl.php it has no effect....
I have found that if I move my custom node-event.tpl.php to the base theme directory it works fine and is inherited in my sub theme..
it is just never picked up when it is in my sub theme directory..

I was doing this previously by specifying custom templates for my views i.e. I have a view
called news and I can specify views-view-row-node--news--page.tpl.php as my custom template in my
sub theme dir, and once I rescan the templates it is automatically picked up...

I think this is a bug, so previously created an Issue here http://drupal.org/node/405770

Thank you
John G

I'm trying to create a sub them of Pixture reloaded so that I can add a table style.

I created a folder in the themes folder called pixture_reloaded_sub. In it, I have following files:

logo.png
pixture_reloaded_sub.info
substyles.css

pixture_reloaded_sub.info has the following code:

name = Pixture Reloaded Sub
base theme = pixture_reloaded
description = Pixture Reloaded sub theme
core = 6.x
engine = phptemplate
stylesheets[all][] = substyle.css

substyles.css has the following code:

table.budget {
border-width: 1px 1px 1px 1px;
border-spacing: 0px;
border-style: outset outset outset outset;
border-color: black black black black;
}
table.budget th {
border-width: 1px 1px 1px 1px;
padding: 5px 5px 5px 5px;
border-style: inset inset inset inset;
border-color: black black black black;
-moz-border-radius: 0px 0px 0px 0px;
background-color: #9bc068;
text-align: center;
}
table.budget td {
border-width: 1px 1px 1px 1px;
padding: 5px 5px 5px 5px;
border-style: inset inset inset inset;
border-color: black black black black;
-moz-border-radius: 0px 0px 0px 0px;
background-color: #e1ecd1;
}

I see the sub style on the themes page and have enabled it. However, the table style isn't getting incorporated. I have to paste the style code directly into the page with the table in order for it to take effect. Am I missing a file in the sub-theme directory or something coded incorrectly?

If you change the parentage of a theme, you can get errors or a blank page due to a glitch in the way things are picked up -- the subtheme picks up that it has a new parent, but still looks at the old tpl files.
The way to get round this is:
1. visit admin themes page
2. edit theme info file to change parent
3. save configuration at the themes page.

I have a theme: "children" that inherit from zen, i defined also another subtheme: "grandchildren" that has as parent the children theme.
according to zen in the children_theme function i should call the zen_theme in order to inherit the hooks that zen implements and also in grandchildren_theme function i called the children_theme to keep the same flow.

Right know im having the problem that when i implemented a hook in children i'm not inheriting it in grandchildren, example:

In children_theme i returned in the arrays of hooks the 'uc_catalog_browse' and then declared the function children_us_catalog_browse.
When im using the grandchildren theme im getting the error:

warning: call_user_func_array() [function.call-user-func-array]: First argument is expected to be a valid callback, 'grandchildren_uc_catalog_browse'

According to the theme inheritance it should be calling children_us_catalog_browse instead of grandchildren_uc_catalog_browse????
thank you

Hi - I'm hoping to get some help here. I have a Zen subtheme "ets", from which I've created several sub-subthemes, one named "classrooms" (so "classrooms" is really a subtheme of "ets", which is a subtheme of "zen"). This is all working very well, except for breadcrumbs. The breadcrumbs show in the "ets" subtheme, but not in any of my sub-subthemes. Can someone tell me how to do this?

Below is the .info file of one of my sub-subthemes, in case that would be helpful: