[themes] php and learning to theme

[Laura Scott]

As someone who learned (and is still very much learning) PHP to work  
with Drupal, my recommendation is to focus on first things first:  
Basic syntax. Basic commands. The various conditionals arguments,  
especially. (if, elseif, case, switch)

You can gain a lot of understanding, potentially, by going through  
some of the existing contributed themes and see how they approached  
different things. That's a start.

Then maybe going into the theme snippets and php snippets in the  
handbook would be next. Refer to your textbooks for background and  
deeper understanding. (There are many online resources and books out  
there. I've used the O'Reilly and Visual Quickpro Guide books, both  
titled "PHP and MySQL".)

I hope this helps. My philosophy is it's best to learn by doing,  
whenever possible.

Laura


pingVision, LLC
4450 Arapahoe Ave, Suite 100
Boulder, CO 80303

www.pingv.com
303.415.2559
inquiry at pingv.com



On Jul 14, 2006, at 12:40 PM, brendan carney wrote:

> hello! my first post in this list..
> what areas of PHP should i get familiar with (first) in order to  
> really customize themes?
>
> a little background:  i've been poking around drupal for a while,  
> and am starting to get a feel for it.  i consider my knowledge of  
> modern table-less xhtml/css practices to be somewhere between  
> intermediate and advanced.  my knowledge of PHP (and programing in  
> general) is very limited.  i've made it through a few tutorials,  
> and parts of a rather poorly written php book.  in short, i know  
> enough about php to be willing to experiment, but it's still a  
> little scary. (but only a little) =)
>
> i love xhtml/css, falling hard for drupal, and am excited to start  
> learning PHP.  as i'm a graphic designer, being able really  
> customize themes is of extreme interest, and an area of the  
> community i'd like to be able to contribute to in the near future.
>
> i'm planing to start going through online php tutorials more  
> regularly in order to become more familiar with php in general, and  
> specifically so that i can customize and develop drupal themes to  
> my heart's content.
> so again, what areas in php should i particularly focus on with  
> regards to themeing?
>
> thanks!
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