recommendations for newbie to start working with Zen

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michaelbr's picture
Posted by michaelbr on March 9, 2009 at 9:19am

I'm new to Drupal and have installed and configured a simple site using default Garland theme, now I'd like to make my own theme and after some research, it seems the best way is to use Zen, but I don't know where to start, can someone tell me if there's a tutorial or handbook for a newbie in theme, I did some research and found some tutorials for D5 but not D6, I'm using D6-10. I'm still in the learning curve, so any best practice, tutorial, handbook for Zen theme building is appreciated.

Thanks for your comments/suggestion
Michael

Comments

README.txt

Posted by qbnflaco on March 9, 2009 at 1:10pm
qbnflaco's picture

The read me file in the folder is THE way to start with it. It explains each step in the process.. this is really important! If you forget one thing it will come back to bite you later on. The directions are pretty thorough, so as long as you know your way around a css file, you should be good to go.

Ditto on the readme.

Posted by cleaver on March 9, 2009 at 7:09pm
cleaver's picture

Ditto on the readme. This is the most important thing. This is also the most obvious difference between Drupal 5 and 6 versions of Zen.

Aside from that, the most important thing is to have a good grasp of CSS. I'm not sure where you are with CSS, but this could end up where you spend all your time. There are plenty of basic CSS tutorials, but more advanced tutorials (like you will need) are less common. The link I use the most is: http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp and another thing you may find useful is this page: http://www.autisticcuckoo.net/archive.php?id=2004/12/07/relatively-absolute

It's going to take some trial and error. Each subsequent template you create is easier and more elegant.

http://cleaver.ca

Thanks cleaver & qbnflaco

Posted by michaelbr on March 10, 2009 at 4:42am
michaelbr's picture

Thanks cleaver & qbnflaco for your recommendation, I'll give it a try.

Thanks in advance for your suggestion/comment
Michael

Thanks in advance for your suggestion/comment
Michael

Useful CSS resources

Posted by Frank Ralf on March 12, 2009 at 5:02pm
Frank Ralf's picture

Here are some more general resources on CSS which I found useful:

  • A List Apart is a great resource for everything regarding web design, not only CSS.

The books by CSS guru Eric Meyer are highly recommended:

Webdesign mit CSS, 2. Auflage by Jens Meiert and Ingo Helmdach. The book is in German, but you can view all designs on the web site and download the complete code. You'll also find English comments about the book in the author's blog.

Frank

My LinkedIn profile

hello

Posted by anjali.gaur on April 28, 2009 at 6:28am
anjali.gaur's picture

Please Send me the link for step by step learning of Drupal..........

Theming screencasts

Posted by Kessin on March 9, 2009 at 4:51pm
Kessin's picture

Something that's helped me immensely w/ theming is this: http://www.mustardseedmedia.com/podcast There won't be much about the Zen theme there, but lots of good stuff for theming in general.

http://scottmckinnis.com

http://scottmckinnis.com

Thanks so much Kessin for

Posted by michaelbr on March 10, 2009 at 4:25am
michaelbr's picture

Thanks so much Kessin for your recommendation, I went to mustardseedmedia but it didn't show any podcast (I tried in FF & Google Chrome with the same result), is it in iTune? If so I think I'll need to install iTune because I don't have iTune apps in my pc.

Thanks in advance for your suggestion/comment
Michael

Thanks in advance for your suggestion/comment
Michael

I don't know

Posted by Kessin on March 11, 2009 at 1:45pm
Kessin's picture

You may want to try back again, I just checked it and the videos were there. Maybe they were working on the site when you were first there.

http://scottmckinnis.com

http://scottmckinnis.com