Review - Theming Drupal: A First Timer's Guide

April 22, 2010 by Steve Hanson

Many of you are probably familiar with the book Front End Drupal: Designing, Theming, Scripting. One of the book's authors has just released a new Ebook for the first time themer.  Emma Jane Hogbin has written a succinct Creative Commons book that is adapted from her big Front End book, but which goes into more detail about how to get started in theming. This book is a very good introduction, leading the novice themer down a gentle path of gettting a working theme while starting with a mockup in Photoshop, GIMP, or some other design tool.

The ebook covers theming concepts, building regions, using template variables, style sheets, and much more.  Although there are many different sets of documentation on theming Drupal, I don't think I have seen  another document that explains so many topics on theming in such a clear manner (and in so few words).  The book is 29 pages of dense, yet easy-to-understand text.  If you follow through the book, you will end up creating a basic theme, and more importantly you will have a pretty thorough understanding of what all those mysterious files actually do, and how you can use them to build more powerful and exotic themes yourself. 

The book is broken up into a number of tasks, which are real-life examples of the steps toward building a working theme either from scratch, or by expanding on a starter theme. 

This book covers several topics that are generally not discussed, such as theme licensing, and ways to either sell your themes or contribute them to Drupal. It also covers some  more recent topics that are often given short shrift, such as the use of grid systems to build themes. One of the things I like about the approach in this book is that it seems to assume just the right amount of background - it assumes you know something about Drupal, and something about setting up PHP - but it doesn't assume that you have much of a concept of theming.  Note that having a copy of the main book Front End Drupal will be useful when you are using this short introduction, but not essential.

This book is a clear, brief addition to the Drupal canon, and will be very useful to anyone who wants a short and simple tutorial for building themes, and who doesn't want to be treated like  an idiot in the process. It is full of information and ideas that I really wish I had understood before I started building my first Drupal theme.  Now there's no reason for you to tear out your hair in the process as I did.  Drupal theming skills are in high demand, and this short book is a good way to get started in understanding Drupal theming. 

I'm looking forward to seeing more of these ebooks in the future from Emma Jane's new web site, Design To Theme. This book  is largely based on the class notes from one of the Drupal seminars that she teaches around the country, and is apparently the first in what will be a series of straightforward tutorials. The book is available for download from Design To Theme for $11.95.

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