If you are new to Drupal theming, my suggestion is to actually
customize a theme first rather than start a theme from scratch. While
there are lots of great resources out there, the newbie themer is much
better off modifying a theme that has all of the critical pieces.
After you've done this a few times (maybe more than a few), then it is
much easier to create a theme from scratch.
A while back I tried demonstrating to a bunch of designers the
simplicity of building a theme from scratch and it got hairy pretty
quick.
The first thing you should learn is about theme requirements
(what files are required for a basic theme, what are the naming
conventions, etc.).
Then you will have to know the Drupal template variables and the
concept of regions and blocks.
Assuming that you know CSS, these will put you in good shape.
However, you will also need to theme items that the basic HTML web
designer doesn't know about: Drupal messages and errors, tabs, etc. If
you don't add these variables to your template you won't be able to do
simple things like switch between view and edit or see other messages
that Drupal sends to the screen.
Then, you can begin getting more complex if you want to build new
areas that function differently on different pages or if you want to
let the user customize the theme via the browser, also known as
configuring features.
So - with all of that said, I do like
http://tips.webdesign10.com/how-to-make-a-drupal-theme. This was
created a while ago, but I believe has been updated. This is very
helpful. It was a good way to get introduced to the basics of the
theme without having to know the finer grain details. I also heeded
advise to use Zen (http://drupal.org/project/zen) as a starting theme,
but easily got lost when I first started theming. It is documented
well with comments throughout the code, but is is a complex maze to a
newbie. Since then, there are a few great "streamlined" themes out
there that are good to start with. I like to go with SuperClean
(http://drupal.org/project/superclean) and Clean
(http://drupal.org/project/clean). I've also found a few good themes
that have the features that I like and then I modify these as needed.
In this case, it's best to start with a "solid" theme that can stand
the test of time, functions, etc.
I'd recommend "Drupal 6 Themes" by Ric Shreves as well. This was a
good place to learn the D6 theming. (I'm sure that I'm missing some
great resources here, but just wanted to share my thoughts on theming
from scratch.)
Sorry for the long message. I hope this helps.
-Tina
Martin Hooper wrote:
Anyone got any links to docs that will tell me how to go about
creating a theme from scratch? Drupal 6.13...
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