By sarsippius164 on

Is there a plain English site that has easy instructions on how to create a custom theme? I'm looking for the absolute beginner/dummies version, if there is one avalible.

Thanks for any help!

⋅ Categories: Drupal 4.7.x

Comments

sepeck’s picture

sepeck commented

http://www.blkmtn.org/node/336
It applies to porting Yahoo GRID CSS two column template but the theory is the same for any type. So see if that works for you as a starting point.

-Steven Peck
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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

Reverend’s picture

Reverend commented

If you mean one comprehensive site that explains it all in a simple and thorough manner, you may have to do some digging. Even though the handbook (http://drupal.org/node/509) might seem a little unfriendly to beginners, it really does outline how to approach new theme development.

You can also find some tips from Nick Lewis (www.nicklewis.org).

It is assumed that those who want to create their own layout will have a good understanding of html, css, and (to an extent) php. If you do not, then start there. If you do, then you may find it helpful to search through the available themes for something structurally close to what you want and download it. Browse through the css and the template to see how the author did it and learn from his or her work. At its most basic, you'll find that creating a theme relies primarily on page.tpl.php for the markup and style.css for the appearance. Drupal has it's own css file that dictates how things will work. The style.css file that you will create will then over-ride many of those rules.

The process looks a lot harder than it actually is. It's one of those 'learn by doing' things. You'll get much more from examining the themes and code than from reading how-to's.