Theme engines
Theme engines control how certain themes interact with Drupal. Most users will want to stick with the default included with Drupal core. These contributed theme engines are not part of any official release and may not work correctly. Only use matching versions of theme engines with Drupal. Theme engines released for Drupal 5.x will not work for Drupal 6.x.
Awesomengine
Awesomengine is the most awesome engine. It allows for embedding of PHP code, not only in html templates, but in css files, allowing for dynamically set CSS. Otherwise, it is nearly entirely identical to the phptemplate theme engine.
| Version | Date | Links | Status | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6.x-1.x-dev | 2008-Jul-03 | Download · Release notes | Development snapshot |  |
ETS - Easy Template System
ETS, or Easy Template System, is a very clean template system that enables you to transform a set of data to any type of document.
Sample Themes
| Version | Date | Links | Status | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7.x-1.x-dev | 2008-Sep-11 | Download · Release notes | Development snapshot | |
| 6.x-1.x-dev | 2008-Sep-11 | Download · Release notes | Development snapshot | |
PHPTAL theme engine
This is a theme engine for Drupal 6.x, which allows the use of templates written in the PHPTAL language. This engine does most of its work by calls to the PHPtemplate engine, just replacing the underlying template engine with the one from http://phptal.sourceforge.net/.
| Version | Date | Links | Status | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6.x-3.0 | 2007-Aug-27 | Download · Release notes | Recommended for 6.x |  |
| 5.x-1.0 | 2007-Feb-01 | Download · Release notes | Recommended for 5.x | |
| 4.7.x-1.x-dev | 2006-Nov-13 | Download · Release notes | Development snapshot | |
PHPTemplate
A theme engine that allows you to use template files written in pure php. These template files do not need to be processed by the theme engine, and as such execute a lot faster than most other template engines. Another major advantage to using PHP as your template language, is flexibility, as the advanced user can access any information / functionality available in the Drupal API, and is not restricted to what the template engine / language allows him to do.
This is the default theme engine starting in Drupal 4.7. If you are using Drupal 4.7 and above, you don't need to download PHPTemplate here.
Several of the largest Drupal sites, such as Drupal.org and Spreadfirefox.com use PHPTemplate based themes.
The 'default' template for this engine is box_grey by Adrian Simmons.
Smarty theme engine
A theme engine that allows you to use template files written using Smarty Template Engine syntax.
The 'default' template for this engine is box_grey_smarty, which is ported from the original box_grey theme.
Installation
Because of a drupal-contrib policy, a smarty installation is not currently included in default release tarballs. You can obtain a tarball already including Smarty in the libs directory here (4.6.x) or here (4.7.x).
Please see installation instructions for installation details.
Details
Directories 'configs' and 'plugins' are parsed for files if they exist in the theme directory as well as if they are in the main engine directory.
Overriding other theme functions is accomplished in a manner similar to that described for PHPTemplate.
Preferred Download Link for 4.6.x - smarty-4.6.0+libs_rel2.tar.gz
| Version | Date | Links | Status | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6.x-2.0 | 2007-Oct-25 | Download · Release notes | Recommended for 6.x | |
| 5.x-0.1 | 2007-Aug-25 | Download · Release notes | Recommended for 5.x | |
| 4.7.x-1.x-dev | 2007-Sep-04 | Download · Release notes | Development snapshot | |
wgSmarty theme engine
This theme engine is no longer supported
Since Drupal 5, and even more so in Drupal 6 and beyond, the 'other' smarty theme engine (http://drupal.org/project/smarty) works much better. So there is no longer a need for wgSmarty, which is a good thing as it did confuse people anyway.
wgSmarty is an implementation of the Smarty template engine as a theme engine.
Advantages
- Template files are easier to create and maintain then with PHPtemplate
- Templates are compiled into PHP to avoid speed and memory issues with search-and-replace template engines like XTemplate
- wgSmarty is much more closely integrated with Drupal than the existing smarty theme engine
Disadvantages
- wgSmarty is currently experimental and is only available in CVS
- There is very little support for wgSmarty: even when it is released, it will still be poorly supported in comparison with PHPTemplate
Download wgSmarty
XTemplate
The XTemplate theme system uses templates to layout and style Web pages. It separates logic (PHP), structure (XHTML/HTML), and style (CSS), making it easy for designers to create or modify templates by working on XHTML/HTML and CSS without having to worry about any PHP coding.
This engine is compatible with both PHP 4 and 5 and is designed to be used with Drupal 4.7. I have no plans to update this module for 5.0. If someone would like to contribute a patch I'll be happy to review and commit it.
| Version | Date | Links | Status | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4.7.x-1.x-dev | 2006-Nov-13 | Download · Release notes | Development snapshot | |
Zengine
The Zengine theme engine is a CSS-oriented theme engine based entirely on PHPTemplate.
It is the continuation of the Zen theme project. Zen was designed to be a great starting theme, but this presented a problem because users who have already created their themes were unable to benefit from further development of the underlying Zen framework. Zengine attempts to solve the same issues as Zen in a more robust way which allows improvements to the underlying framework even for those who have already created their themes.
| Version | Date | Links | Status | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5.x-1.x-dev | 2007-Sep-02 | Download · Release notes | Development snapshot | |
