There is No Spoon: Bending the Theme Layer to Your Will

Too often, we see sites that “look like a Drupal website”. To me, that’s an obvious design FAIL. If you’ve ever felt restricted by Drupal’s default rendering of its content and HTML, this is a must-attend session.

We’ll discuss techniques for Themers and Designers to break out of Drupal’s default markup by using the tools already available to us. No kittens will be harmed.

Agenda

• Examples of “No Limits” Drupal sites.
• Unlearning what you know about Drupal.
• The CCK Display tab: what the heck does this “exclude” checkbox do?
• Breaking up the monolithic menu block to allow any IA navigation style.
• Tricksy PHP to move pieces of content from the main column to a sidebar (or anywhere on the page)
• Stupid Views tricks: the field config button
• Drupal forms! They’re accessible, but they're not very attractive. Just like that last person sitting at the bar during “last call”.

Pre-requisites

This isn’t a beginner’s theming section. You should have basic knowledge of:

• Preprocess functions
• Theme override functions
• CCK field configuration
• Views 2 configuration

Drupal’s limits are only perceptual. With some good tips, you’ll realize there is no spoon; You can do anything within Drupal.