Drupal 7 theme settings in mysql

Question

I am new to Drupal and have been experimenting with some free themes. After installing one free theme called 'tb_sirate' my site is throwing exceptions and my admin controls are no longer available, just a page full of exceptions. Unfortunately, there is no obvious way to undo this.

It seems I have two choices to rectify this. First (and hopefully this is not my only option) is to start over completely. Second, if I could find where the theme is referenced in the database, I might be able to change it back to a known working theme.

Can anyone offer and advice on how to fix this? Anyone know where in the DB the themes are referenced?

Thanks! Viv

Answer 1

Don't worry there are only 3 simple steps to recover your site. Here are the steps and corresponding SQL queries you can run. If you run the 3 queries this will change your default theme from the "tb_sirate" to "bartik" the Drupal 7 default.

1) In the "systems" table change the status to "0" for the record that represents the defective theme. Note that there is one row here for each module/theme. With the status variable "0" means disabled, and "1" means enabled.

UPDATE system SET status=0 WHERE name='tb_sirate'

2) In the "variable" table find the key "theme_default" and change it's corresponding value to the theme that you want to use.

UPDATE variable SET value='s:6:"bartik";' WHERE name='theme_default';

3) Drupal caches these values so you will need to clear the "cache_bootstrap" table for the changes to take effect.

TRUNCATE TABLE cache_bootstrap;

To avoid similiar problems and to able to have peace of mind regular database backups are essential when doing Drupal development. The backup and migrate module can help with that.