Drupal Theming

After working with Drupal for over a year now I have learned plenty of different ways to carry out preparing a custom Drupal theme. I have tried taking existing Drupal themes such as Garland and Blue Marine and hacking them to pieces while inserting my DIVs and classes trying to get things to work and look right. That just creates a huge mess of code and often contains unneeded elements (code bloat = not a good thing).

I’ve found that the best way for me to create custom Drupal theming is actually to first code up the site using static HTML/CSS, as in create an index.html file and go to town. I always code my personal sites using Notepad2 and then view/test them in FireFox. Furthermore use the WebDev Toolbar so I can see how everything looks on-the-fly as I code my CSS. This actually helps as I can code a LOT faster and see my CSS changes promptly.

Once I get everything looking decent (doesn’t have to be perfect yet) in FireFox I then open the index.html file in IE7 and begin making IE7 specific changes to my personal CSS so everything looks decent there as well. I then load the index.html file in IE6 and do the same. Once things look the same across FireFox and IE7/IE6 I load it in Safari to see the way it looks there. For this site I kinda ignored some issues with IE6 as it’s a pain to work with and I’ll get around to fixing them eventually.

So once the site looks the same in FireFox, IE6/IE7 and Safari it’s time to add Drupal code to our static HTML file. This is less of a challenge than it used to seem to me so if you follow these code snippets you should be all set…
Doctype to

Once these snippets of code have been added in place of your existing HTML code in the index.html file, save the newly edited file as “page.tpl.php”. This is your Drupal theme page and every page on your site will have exactly the same layout as this one.
Different Home Page Layout

Say you want to have a custom webpage that looks diverse from the many other pages. To create a custom Drupal Theming webpage you need to copy the code in the “page.tpl.php” file and prepare a fresh file named “page-front.tpl.php” and paste that code in that room.

Now you can edit the code with the “page-front.tpl.php” file recover look however you want. Drupal will routinely identify and load the “page-front.tpl.php” file if at all within your theme directory.

What that can is convey to Drupal when the consumer is on the website to go ahead and load the file named “page-front.tpl.php” rather than the “page.tpl.php” file. Now you can go back to the “page-front.tpl.php” file and edit it as the thing is fit. Thus giving you the choice to have a different layout for that internet site and sub pages.

Today which you have a “page-front.tpl.php” and page.tpl.php” file you’re ready to copy above the images and CSS from a static HTML site for the newly built Drupal themeing directory website. So basically your directory structure should today look something similar to:

Drupal Theme Dir:
page-front.tpl.php
page.tpl.php
images/
css/

Now you need to copy another files during which Drupal theming tactic relies upon in your theme directory. Make sure you copy these files over from the Blue Marine theme (that’s precisely what theme I take hold of them from).

Blue Marine Theme:
block.tpl.php
comment.tpl.php
node.tpl.php
template.tpl.php
screenshot.png

So today you have to have a fully working Drupal theming plan. You can copy the files over to the server and place them in the “/themes/newtheme” and then log in to your Drupal site through your browser and select your newly created theme. Basically immediately there’s a considerable amount of editing must be implemented to get a theme to work flawlessly in Drupal theming.. This is where the Web Dev Toolbar is useful again.

So now you have to edit/tweak your “*.tpl.php” files plus your CSS. This is a quick and dirty way to get a custom theme up and running but hopefully you get the idea.
Others have an ideas on which I’m able to improve on here or a few things i really didn’t cover via a tunnel? I’ve got created around 10 custom Drupal themesing so I’m sure I overlooked a thing here. Leave a brief review or question and I’ll do my own far better to help you along.

Joomla Vs Drupal

 

Flexibility & Power

Joomla can be made a flexible and Powerful framework with various modules or plugins supported. We can do Joomla Customization them according to our Needs, but Drupal has a Powerful Framework right out of the Box. Drupal has these Views, CCK and Panels that give a great advantage over any other CMS in here. It can be made even more flexible and Powerful with some additional modules to the Drupal Customization. Joomla Developers design and develop their own architecture and framework with very little flexibility that satisfies the requirement at that moment, but it’s not going to be a solution for Future Proofing. Hence Drupal has a better upper hand when it comes to Flexibility and Power.

Performance

When it comes to Performance, Hands down it’s Drupal the winner.

Drupal Support for the Latest trend in the Web Application Development and it’s robust framework gives Drupal a strong base to handle any kind of stress. On the other hand Joomla Support, Having boosted it’s performance with utilizing these updates quite a bit. Joomla still lags behind in performance when compared Drupal

Learning Curve

Drupal supports easy to use Interface and ability to create and delete contents in Graphical Mode, Even then Drupal bit Heavy for anyone who wants to learn Drupal Development. Its Graphical interface is bit complex and beginners are prone to make a lot of mistakes without proper guidance and support. Joomla has the graphical that is much popular and pretty straight forward, Joomla Development is much simple and easy for any beginner work with.

Templates

Both Drupal and Joomla supports adding templates to its core. There are many sites that offer these templates for these CMS. Drupal theming companies are simply not up to the mark. What is required for a Template designing is that it emulates the requirements for the top web sites around the globe and, bundles modules, blocks that would work out-of-the-box to give businesses a head-start. That’s why Drupal Developers face a tough time in Theming a custom design for Drupal when compared to Joomla. Drupal uses smarty template whereas on the other hand Joomla does not. Joomla has various default template stacks that has various themes and Galleries modules. There is a vast number of Joomla Developers creating Templates for Every need.

Code Developers

When it comes to coding, The Drupal developers have to follow the standards in one way or the other, so they are much skilled and Professional. Drupal support team and Drupal Developers are much standardized while compared to the Joomla Support Team and the Joomla Developers. Joomla still needs to keep standards for coding structure.

Website Development: Basics Of Magento, Drupal & Joomla

Article by Manish Shrivastava

Website development is obviously a technical thing and it demands a lot of knowledge about codes and all. But apart from the technicalities that the job carries, it also asks for a lot of creativity as well. Although it?s true that how far a website will be successful vastly depends on various parameters, but one cannot deny the importance of face value. If a website is not looking good it may not be able to grab users’ attention which may cause harm to the business. Now the look and pattern of a website certainly depends upon the mode of business it has been developed for as well as the target audience it is serving. A business website cannot be much peppy and happening in look, while a website which is targeting the younger section of the mass should not look harsh and grieve. Now let’s talk about the other factors that also count in website development.

Magento, Drupal and Joomla are among the most popular software on which software can be developed. Let?s discuss some of the key features of these three website development platforms. Magento:Magento is an open source platform through which one can develop outstanding ecommerce websites. A Magento based website comes with customization and integration option and it further offers shopping cart integration option as well. These websites are SEO friendly so they can be optimized as well. Magento Application Development will further allow you to accept transaction from across the globe and its features and functionalities are making it popular day by day among online merchants.Drupal:Drupal is also a popular open source publishing platform among the lot. A Drupal website can generate traffic, can be optimized and can increase clicks thus your website is almost guaranteed to be poplar and can enjoy visibility & ranking in the search engines. There are various reasons why Drupal Website Development is preferred by users as well as developers.

Some of these are:? Highly configurable? Flexibility? Stays optimized? Eliminates duplicate content? Renders clean code? Search engine optimization friendlyJoomla:Joomla is among the most popular Content Management System (CMS) that helps a developer to create dynamic websites. Ecommerce applications and portals, blogs, online communities, multi lingual websites and many others type of websites can be developed using Joomla. Some of the basic utilities that a Joomla website carries are:? Administrative manager? Article manager? Menu manager? Media manager? Tamplate manager? Application framework? 3rd party extensions

About the Author

SynapseIndia is an Offshore software Development companyin India. We focuses on magento application development, Joomla Web Development Company and drupal developers. Clients get complete Drupal website development with a round the clock never-ending support.