Front End Drupal: Designing, Theming, Scripting

by Konstantin Kafer, Emma Hogbin

“For Drupal to succeed, we need books like this.” –Dries Buytaert, Drupal founder and project lead “Drupal faces a common problem on the Web–the relative lack of new, high quality themes. Front End Drupal tackles this problem directly and is designed to help both experienced designers and rank novices get an understanding of how Drupal theming works. In fact, I’ll be the first to admit I learned a lot from this book.” – Dries Buytaert, Drupal founder and project lead The Practical, Complete Guide to Customizing Drupal Sites with Behaviors, Themes, and Templates Drupal is now the world’s #1 open source content management Thousands of individuals and organizations are using it to build and update Web sites of virtually every kind. As Web designers and developers adopt Drupal, they need ways to quickly customize the visuals and interactivity of their sites. Drupal offers powerful tools for doing so, but little guidance on using them effectively. Front End Drupal is the solution. In this book, two expert Drupal developers cover everything you need to know to create great visual designs and state-of-the-art interactivity with Drupal’s behaviors, themes, and templates. Front End Drupal is 100% focused on issues of site design, behavior, usability, and management. The authors show how to style Drupal sites, make the most of Drupal’s powerful templating system, build sophisticated community sites, streamline site management, and build more portable, flexible themes. You’ll also gain hands-on experience through several case studies that walk you through the customization of everything from page templates to Web site forums. About the Web Site The accompanying site, frontenddrupal.com, contains all sample code and themes presented in this book.

456 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2009

Reviews

[Chris Chinchilla · Rating 3 out of 5]

“For Drupal to succeed, we need books like this.”

–Dries Buytaert, Drupal founder and project lead

 

“Drupal faces a common problem on the Web–the relative lack of new, high quality themes. *Front End Drupal * tackles this problem directly and is designed to help both experienced designers and rank novices get an understanding of how Drupal theming works. In fact, I’ll be the first to admit I learned a lot from this book.”

– Dries Buytaert, Drupal founder and project lead

The Practical, Complete Guide to Customizing Drupal Sites with Behaviors, Themes, and Templates

Drupal is now the world’s #1 open source content management system: Thousands of individuals and organizations are using it to build and update Web sites of virtually every kind. As Web designers and developers adopt Drupal, they need ways to quickly customize the visuals and interactivity of their sites. Drupal offers powerful tools for doing so, but little guidance on using them effectively. *Front End Drupal * is the solution. In this book, two expert Drupal developers cover everything you need to know to create great visual designs and state-of-the-art interactivity with Drupal’s behaviors, themes, and templates.

*Front End Drupal * is 100% focused on issues of site design, behavior, usability, and management. The authors show how to style Drupal sites, make the most of Drupal’s powerful templating system, build sophisticated community sites, streamline site management, and build more portable, flexible themes. You’ll also gain hands-on experience through several case studies that walk you through the customization of everything from page templates to Web site forums.

Prepare and organize content so it’s easier to integrate into Drupal Web sites

Structure Drupal page templates that are easy to work with

Configure Drupal with the modules and browser tools you need to customize your site

Utilize Drupal’s Starter Themes and themes converted from WordPress, Joomla!™, and Drupal 5.x

Maximize the power and usability of Drupal’s content editing forms

Build usable community sites with user profiles, comments, and user-generated content

Use JavaScript™ to make your themes interactive and to enhance usability

Create powerful animations and AJAX callbacks with jQuery, Drupal’s JavaScript library

About the Web Site

The accompanying site, frontenddrupal.com, contains all sample code and themes presented in this book.

About the Author

Emma Jane Hogbin has been working as a Web developer since 1996, helping individuals and organizations to realize both their own potential and the potential of their online presence. She creates systems that enable her clients to succeed–by using her infectious enthusiasm and ability to explain concepts without using technical jargon that puts even the greatest technophobes at ease. Passionate about helping people to acquire knowledge, Emma volunteers with the Drupal and Ubuntu documentation teams. She is well known in the Drupal community not only for her technical knowledge, but also for her engaging and humorous means of bringing Drupal to a wider audience–such as the Drupal socks and their GPLed pattern. Through her consulting company HICK Tech, and at conferences around the world, Emma has inspired people to overcome fear, uncertainty, and doubt and to tackle problems head-on. She is known as “emmajane” on drupal.org and chronicles her adventures at http://www.emmajane.net.

Konstantin Käfer started his adventures into Web development in 1999. In high school, he led the Web development and school Web site class for several years. While still in high school, he also participated in Google’s Summer of Code 2006, doing usability enhancements for the Drupal project. In the Drupal community, he is widely known for his JavaScript skills. Konstantin has been a speaker at several DrupalCons and other Open Source conferences. He is currently studying IT Systems at the Hasso Plattner Institute Engineering in Potsdam, Germany. He also works as a consultant for NowPublic, a large citizen journalism Web site based on Drupal. He can be found blogging on http://kkaefer.com about design, Web development, and Drupal.

[Derek Bridge · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is supposedly a book for those who, like me, know a little Drupal and want to customize the front-end of Drupal-generated web sites. While I'm sure the authors know their stuff, unfortunately there was something about the way this book was written that just failed to connect with what I knew. I feel no more able to tackle front-end customization than I did before. There may be a point in the future when I find myself digging into this book for some nugget, but I can't envisage that right now. A disappointment.

[Glenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a nice introduction and reference of real-world use of Drupal for a more GUI perspective. This includes some good advice on skinning and themes. There is also some nice advice on module selection for front-end developers. The title says it all. If you are interested in writing Drupal modules, then this book is not for you. If you are interested in customizing Drupal GUI, then you have arrived at the right selection.

[Alozie · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're using Drupal for the first time to build a website, have this book with you at all times. The first three chapters will kickstart you into using this system and will undercut the confusion that comes with starting to use any CMS. If you use Joomla!, download Drupal then pick up a copy of this book. You'll be very glad you did.

[Edward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Way more than I needed to set up the library's website at www.oswegopubliclibrary.org Very thorough and allowed me to do everything I wanted with the site.