Drupal 7 Theme Development

Course Overview

In this course, you will learn to build your own custom themes for Drupal. The class covers Drupal 7 core theming, Views theming, responsive design with the Omega base theme, and using the Display Suite module. During this course, you'll develop themes step-by-step, while following best practices to ensure maintainability and interoperability with Drupal module updates. This course is taught by a practicing Drupal developer and themer and will take a pragmatic approach to theming based on real-world experience.

Who is it for?

This course is for anyone who wants to create their own Drupal themes or customize existing themes. It targeted a web designers, system integrators, and anyone who want to tweak Drupal's look and feel to meet their needs.

Pre-requisites: This course was designed for those who have experience with Drupal site building and knowledge of PHP, HTML and CSS. Students without PHP experience should consider taking our PHP Bootcamp for Drupal class. Those without Drupal experience should take Building Websites with Drupal 7.

Topics

In this class, you will learn:

The Drupal Theme System

• Using hook_theme()
• Overriding theme functions
• Using preprocess/process functions
• Loading custom CSS and javascript

Creating a Custom Theme

• Declaring regions and templates
• Adding CSS and Javascript
• Integrating standard Drupal elements (navigation menus, content, blocks)

Creating Responsive Themes with Omega

• Creating subthemes from the Omega base theme (http://drupal.org/project/omega)
• Customizing Omega regions and settings
• Using responsive design to optimize content for various devices

Display Suite

• Overview of the Display Suite module (http://drupal.org/project/ds)
• Using Display Suite layouts
• Configuring custom field templates
• Adding custom view modes
• Adding custom fields

Theming Forms and Views

• Theming Drupal forms
• Customizing Views output through the interface
• Overriding Views templates

Turning a Photoshop Design into a Drupal Theme

• How to decompose a static design into Drupal components
• How to theme components to build the design from the ground up in Drupal

Instructor

Wayne Eaker is the director and chief developer of Zengenuity. He's a Drupal expert with years of experience building highly-customized Drupal websites. He is also a seasoned trainer, having taught professionals, corporate clients and high school computer science students.

How is it taught

The class will consist of weekly video lessons, each around 2 hours, and weekly live lab sessions with the instructor. The lessons will cover all the topics listed below and can be watched anytime that is convenient for you. At the end of each lesson, you will be given an assignment to practice what you've learned. (We will provide web hosting for your practice work, so you don't need to worry about setting that up.) The lab sessions will be conducted online, using the webinar software GotoMeeting. During the sessions, the instructor will answer all your questions from and will help troubleshoot any issues you have doing the assignment. (GotoMeeting allows us to view your computer, and take control of your keyboard and mouse if needed. So, we can see any error messages that you're seeing and figure out how to fix it in realtime.)

In addition to the live sessions, students will have access to an online forum to discuss assignments with other students and ask the instructor questions.

Cost

The cost for this course is $495. This includes:

• 12+ hours of video lessons and 6 hours of live lab sessions.
• Permanent access to the recordings of the lessons and live session labs. Watch them again anytime you need them!
• A web hosting account for your practice Drupal site and custom themes.
• Access to an online forum to ask questions of the instructor and discuss with other students.