Course Description

Drupal is a free and open source Content Management System written in PHP. With Drupal you can create a simple personal homepage, a company website, a blog, an ecommerce site, etc. Themes play a key role in the Drupal system. The theme is the most significant piece of your Drupal installation. It is responsible for your visitor’s first impression of the site. This online course is designed to take you through the development of your own Drupal themes. You will be setting up your own design environment on your personal computers. We will examine the Drupal System and the files that make up a Drupal theme. You will learn how to make a subtheme of an original theme, use a starter theme and style it to suit your needs, and build your own theme from scratch. When you finish this course you will be able to use your design environment for future projects and have a few new themes that you have designed for use on your website. This is a 5 week, self-paced, online course. If you need additional help understanding the material presented, you can communicate with the instructor and fellow classmates. The instructor will monitor and track your progress throughout the class. LVS Online offers many wonderful learning tools to help you get the most out of your online course, including an online portfolio service that manages all your course registrations, certificate of completion option, a class discussion board to interact with your instructor and fellow classmates, free hosting account, and a student upload area. LVS is a Corel Training Partner. LVS students may purchase Corel products at a significant savings. Follow this link for details. LVS students are eligible to receive software and hardware at a discount. Follow this link for details. Students are also eligible take advantage of special offers made available specifically for LVS by famous software developers such as Andromeda, AV Bros, Extensis, Harry Heim, namesuppressed, Nik Multimedia, and Ulead. Details are provided in the classinfo link found in the confirmation of registration. Show off your LVS Online spirit with an item from the LVS Store If you would like to receive more information regarding this course, click on the "Contact Us" link in the Information section and we'll try to answer any of your questions within the day.

Course Requirements

Students should be able to follow instructions to install their design environment on their own computers. Students should be able to work through the lessons step-by-step, accurately, with the course materials provided. Each lesson builds on the previous one so each should be completed sequentially. Students should have working knowledge of their operating system and must understand directories and paths: Free Windows Class Here Directory Structure Tutorial Here Zip files may be necessary to complete the exercises provided each week. WinZip, PKZip, Windows Compression or similar program is required to unzip these files. Winzip Tutorial Here Windows Compression All lessons are available in PDF format. Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view/print the lessons. Plan to devote 3 - 5 hours per week on the lesson and assignment; on this class that may vary according to how much experimenting you choose to do with actions and the other subjects of the class.

Course Prerequisites

Students should be familiar with the Drupal Content Management system. Students will be required to have previous knowledge of HTML and CSS. PHP knowledge would be helpful but is not necessary.

Course Syllabus

Lesson 1 What is a Theme? The Drupal System The Drupal Theme Engine Lesson 2 Setting up the Design Environment Installing Themes Using the Administration Area Lesson 3 The PHP Template Engine Theme Files Placeholders and Regions Lesson 4 All About Sub-themes Building Sub-themes Lesson 5 All About Starter Themes Styling Starter Themes Lesson 6 Building your own Themes

Course Excerpt

Drupal 6 Theme Design Programmers and designers usually have different agendas when evaluating and deciding on a Content Management System. Programmers have a tendency to focus on the development possibilities the system offers, the programming language involved, and tools like the theme engine. Designers are more concerned with determining what restrictions a system imposes on their ability to design the sites desired by their clients. They want to know if the system is easy to theme and if the presentation layer is easy to get to. With Drupal both requirements will be met. The system offers the ability to create custom templates and to specify the modified files over the default files without messing with the Drupal core. This is essential for designing themes for a content management system. Themes included in the initial installation of Drupal don't offer much in the way of variety. These default themes are simple and are best looked at as a starting point for designing your own theme. The Drupal system is flexible enough to be used to create a wide variety of layout styles. The theme is the most significant piece of your Drupal installation. It is responsible for your visitor's first impression of the site. When a visitor accesses a Drupal website what they see on the screen is direct result of a Drupal theme. Theme files have many purposes. They call functions that produce the data that you see on the screen. Themes also set the styling, position, and placement of the data on the screen. Themes play a key role in the Drupal system. In this class we will look at: Setting up your own theme design environment The Drupal theme framework How themes work in the Drupal system The various theming options available in the default system What subthemes are and how to make your own subtheme How to install additional themes and modify them to suit your needs The PHPTemplate engine, how it works, and how you can use it Identify the themable elements, where to find them, and what their function is What are starter themes and how to use them to design your own theme Building your own PHPTemplate theme I bet you can understand why we didn't go into more detail about themes in our introductory class, "Creating a Drupal Blog". There is so much to themes in Drupal that it takes a whole class to just scratch the surface! Continued... Please note: Lessons provide step-by-step instructions with detailed screen captures.

Course Goals

The goal is to make students familiar with how themes are set up and used in Drupal and get them started designing their own themes.

Course Reviews

New Class May 2010