Write theme to integrate Drupal installation to existing web site

Project Overview

Customer has a fully functional, satisfactory web site. This project is to add a Knowledge Base (KB) to the existing web site. Drupal has been chosen as the technology behind the KB because it has excellent CMS, tagging, and search capabilites.

This project is to write a Drupal theme that will keep the same look and feel of the existing site.

Background

The existing site has 3 basic styles: The home page; the 2nd level pages; and landing pages. This project will focus entirely on the 2nd level pages.

The 2nd level pages have these characteristics:

• A background that fades from dark blue at the top to grey at the bottom;
• The content is inset from the left, right, top and bottom, with rounded corners;
• The customer's white logo at the top left;
• An image near the top of the right column;
• A menu on the left column, with Javascript control, from a PHP include file so it can be modified;
• An advertisement box centered under the menu.

Project

When in the Knowledge Base, the page will still have the elements of the other 2nd level pages, as described above. This will be done without frames, and will be run using Drupal. The person browsing the KB should not even know the page is a Drupal page.

Drupal is already installed, and all KB pages that need to be available have already been entered in Drupal. New KB pages may be added at any time. This project should not involve installation of Drupal, only the new theme to be designed. This will be done without any modifications to the Drupal core, in order to allow easy upgrades to new versions of Drupal.

Because this web site is currently in production, general access of the web site files, other than the Drupal section, will not be given. If a file outside of the Drupal section needs to be modified, this needs to be done through the customer.

Requirements

All site visitors can view, browse, and search the KB. They can also easily navigate to areas of the existing web site. There is no current requirement for them to be able to log in or sign up for an account.

All staff members can edit the KB pages, add new ones, and delete old ones.

Customer

Customer is a private software company. The web site is important to the customer's business.