Needed an overview about Drupal 7 Theme Development

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geohajj's picture

Hello Everyone,
I am a web designer and a front end developer with a fine familiarity with php and coding.
I used to develop websites on wordpress but ii think it is the time to move to drupal.

Can anyone tell me... is it the same custom theme development as wordpress?

Where can I have a really step by step tutorial or videos?

Can anyone provide me with a good example of a theme?

What theme is the best starter theme for custom development?

Thank you in advance.

George.

Comments

Hello Geohajj, welcome

alexrayu's picture

Hello Geohajj, welcome to the Drupal community!

Theming in Drupal IS to some extent the same. In a sense that there are template files that print out variables and functions.

At the same time, Drupal's theming can be much more powerful (and hard). You need to grasp one concept: THEMING LAYER. Theming layer is functionality, to which Drupal core and modules "feed" data, and it themes that data. So, there is a set of hooks to intercept those theming calls if needed, and a set of templates to theme certain parts of a page or certain sorts of pages.

This CAn seem overwhelming, but if you grasp the logic behind it, it will all become quite easy. There are existing descriptions of the theming layer:

Theming layer overview: http://drupal.org/node/337173
Theming D7: http://drupal.org/theme-guide/6-7
Video Tutorials: http://drupal.org/node/1351116
Templating system: http://drupal.org/node/190815 and http://drupal.org/node/1089656

And there is more info in docs and in forums. You can play with some simple themes - you only need an .info file to have your custom theme (and a css file declared in it to do css theming) - it can be as simple as that!

Big thanks

dpmzmdr's picture

Thanks !!!! itz very helpful seggestion :)
cheers

Video tutorials and theme suggestion...

rikabel's picture

Hi Geohajj!

Another great source of training videos is http://drupalize.me - which is created by the team at www.lullabot.com. However it is not free - subscription only - but the videos are of very high quality and well presented.

My favourite starter theme is Omega for numerous reasons - it is HTML5-ready, mobile-first & responsive, which means you'll be ready for the future when the majority of ppl access websites via mobile devices, has a built-in, customised 960.gs based grid system, allows a great degree of customisation and configuration from within the administration pages, has excellent CSS aggregation, and in combination with the Context and Delta modules allows you to create contextual, custom page layouts without having to create numerous .tpl.php (template) files. Finally you can quickly create Sub-themes via the Omega Tools module.

Cheers,

Rik Abel

frontend fellow | slashzero.co.uk

Big thanks

dpmzmdr's picture

Thanks !!!! itz very helpful seggestion :)
cheers

Thank you Alexei Rayu / rikabel

geohajj's picture

Hi Guys,

Thank you for your instant response and support.

I can see that I have a lot to do, referring to your posts :)

So, I am going to start learning and I will get back to you.

Thank you again.

George

Theme development

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