Why is drupal theming so difficult? Any tips for simplifying it or learning it faster?

Question

I've been coding in PHP for 4 years and even I find it so convoluted and hard to grasp. I have no idea how they expect designers to manage theming.

I know basic theming, theming with tpl files, views templates, contemplate templates etc. However I get lost whenever I enter the template.php file.

I needed to theme a node input form for a custom content type. I wracked my brain over it with like 7-9 tutorials and it's still not coming together. I understand why module building can be complicated - because most people who work with modules are developers anyway.

However, when even a developer can't understand theming, it's definitely over-engineered!

Maybe it's my fault, maybe I didn't learn Drupal properly. In that case, is there a step-by-step system to becoming a Drupal guru?

Answer 1

Theme is really not that difficult, if you only know basic php. You have 3 ways of altering the markup, the css and js, you should be able to handle.

• Template files. By creating a template file in your theming and naming it correctly, it will take precedence over other template files, and you can thus create custom markup for views, nodes etc. By creating a template for a noce type, you can do stuff like printing out the cck fields in any other instead of using $content. All you need is on the node object.

• Preprocess functions, which are placed in your theme, will give you the possibility to add or alter variables that will be used in your template. You name the functions like hooks: yourtheme_page for the page template yourtheme_node for the node template etc. Here you can create some custom logic, or modifications, to help make your templates more clean and just handle the printing of the variables.

• Theme functions. You can overwrite theme functions to alter the markup that's used. You only need to create a function called yourtheme_[theme_function_name]. You don't need to understand much php to do this. Often, you can just copy the original theme function, and make a few alterations in it to get the markup you want.

With the above you can do 90-95% of what you need. Forms are a bit special since you in Drupal 6 can't alter them (easily) in your theme. Instead what you want is to create a small module and use hook_form_alter, which allows you to modify the form, text used on buttons etc. This is changed in Drupal 7, which will be even easier to theme.

So it really isn't all that complicated, just use the 3 basic tools described above. The tricky part can be to name your functions and templates, but devel themer can help you with that. Another tool you use is devel which can assist you in printing out variables so you can inspect them and see what you have available, fx CCK fields on the node.

Answer 2

Maybe you should get a copy of Front End Drupal.

In my opinion, Drupal theming is not difficult once you wrap your head around the concepts like templates, overrides, .info files and preprocess functions. Those things are not directly related to php skills, it's all about understanding the system.

It's interesting to see that you're a themer, yet you only talk about php, not CSS and HTML. In my experience, a lot of theming tasks can be accomplished with CSS, without even touching php.

Finally, I don't know if you are using a base/starter theme (like Zen or Genesis) already. I recommend using a base theme and realizing your own design as a sub theme.