Drupal Theming: How To Create

After working with Drupal for over a year now I have learned different ways to go about setting up a custom Drupal theme. I have tried taking existing Drupal themes such as Garland and Blue Marine and hacking them to pieces while inserting my personal DIVs and classes trying to get things to work and look right. That just creates a huge mess of code and often contains unneeded elements (code bloat = not a good thing).

I have found that the best method for me to create custom Drupal theming is actually to first code up the site using static HTML/CSS, as in create an index.html file and go to town. I always code my own sites using Notepad2 and then view/test them in FireFox. Furthermore use the WebDev Toolbar so I can see how everything looks on-the-fly as I code my CSS. This seriously helps as I can code a LOT faster and see my CSS changes instantly.

Once I get everything looking decent (doesn’t have to be perfect yet) in FireFox I then open the index.html file in IE7 and begin making IE7 specific changes to my CSS so everything looks decent there as well. I then load the index.html file in IE6 and do the same. Once things look the same across FireFox and IE7/IE6 I load it in Safari to see the actual way it looks there. For this site I kinda ignored some issues with IE6 as it’s a pain to work with and I’ll get around to fixing them eventually.

So once the site looks a similar in FireFox, IE6/IE7 and Safari it’s time to add Drupal code to our static HTML file. This is easier than it used to seem to me so if you follow these code snippets you should be all set…
Doctype to

Once these snippets of code have been put in place of your existing HTML code in the index.html file, save the newly edited file as “page.tpl.php”. Now is your Drupal theme page and every page on your site will have exactly the same layout as this one.
Different Home Page Layout

Say you need to have a custom web page that looks unique of the many other pages. To create a custom Drupal Theming webpage you need to copy the code in the “page.tpl.php” file and create a new file named “page-front.tpl.php” and paste that code in the administration area.

Now you can edit the code for that “page-front.tpl.php” file to restore look however you want. Drupal will on auto-pilot detect and load the “page-front.tpl.php” file whether it’s specific to your theme directory.

What that can is inform Drupal when the consumer is on the home page to go ahead and load the file named “page-front.tpl.php” rather than the “page.tpl.php” file. Today you can go back to the “page-front.tpl.php” file and edit it as you observe fit. This offers you the option to have a different layout for the internet site and sub pages.

Today that you’ve a “page-front.tpl.php” and page.tpl.php” file it is time to copy on the images and CSS through the static HTML site to the newly made Drupal themeing list. So just about your directory structure should now look something such as:

Drupal Theme Dir:
page-front.tpl.php
page.tpl.php
images/
css/

Now you need to copy the other files through which Drupal theming tactic depends on to your theme directory. Be sure to copy these files over from the Blue Marine theme (that’s just what theme I take hold of them from).

Blue Marine Theme:
block.tpl.php
comment.tpl.php
node.tpl.php
template.tpl.php
screenshot.png

So now you should have a fully working Drupal theming method. It is possible to copy the files over to the server and place them in the “/themes/newtheme” and then log in to your Drupal site through your browser and select your newly created theme. As we discussed immediately there may be quite a bit of editing needed to be carried out get the theme to figure completely in Drupal theming.. This is when the net Dev Toolbar comes in handy again.

So now it’s time to edit/tweak your “*.tpl.php” files plus your CSS. This is a quick and dirty way to get a custom theme installed and operating but preferably you get the drift.
Someone else have an ideas about what I can improve on here or a few things i did not really cover via a tunnel? I have produced about 10 custom Drupal themesing so I think I overlooked a thing here. Leave a brief review or question and I’ll do my personal better to help you out.

Drupal Performance tuning, considered as one of the most commonly used methods to speed up a Drupal CMS website

There’s lots of ways to optimize and increase the speed and Drupal performance of the Drupal based website.

Everything you actually need are the right tools or the right trained in Drupal Performance

Is your own Drupal based website getting slower, day by day, due to heavy loads? Do you need support and information on Drupal performance optimization? Are you actually aware of Drupal performance tuning?

There are many ways to optimize and maximize the speed and performance of your own Drupal based website. All that an individual need are the right tools or the right training in Drupal. For one, Drupal performance tuning is considered as one of the most commonly used methods to speed up a Drupal CMS website.

Well, to start with, why do anyone need Drupal performance optimization for your own website? Is the site too heavy and you just wanted to deal with the ‘slow site’ issue? Or do anyone have other additional agenda in mind, like making the Drupal website very interactive to enhance your own visitors/users satisfaction?

Generally speaking, for the better performance of your website, anyone really need a straightforward and quick Drupal training to;

•Closely study and observe the performance of the Drupal performance web site to identify the flaws and errors
•Configure and build up a Drupal multisite environment for best Drupal performance, and
•Select the most effective Drupal modules that can enhance your own site’s performance.

Drupal provides extensive built-in features and capabilities that may be optimized with Drupal functionality tuning. Information on Drupal performance optimization would include three pronged basic concepts of caching, compression and client optimization.

Caching:
To start with, an individual should ‘enable’ the page caching of your Drupal application. For this, anyone need to login as the ‘admin’ and then go through the site configuration to the ‘performance’ menu, and set the caching mode to ‘normal’ and the block cache to ‘enabled’. You can then finally click on the ‘save configuration’ button located at the bottom of the page.

Compression:
The second phase will help you minimize the bandwidth, that will accelerate your website loading process significantly. Every one of the modules or blocks which aren’t required might be disabled. With this an individual need to go to the ‘admin’ through the ‘site building’ towards the ‘modules’ menu. Once there, a person can remove the ‘check’ for all your segments anyone don’t require and click on the ‘save configuration’ button at the end in the display.

Client Optimization:The ultimate phase enables bandwidth seo. In case you have executed the two phases, you can optimize the Drupal database i.e. the client site optimisation. Drupal uses MySQL database, to keep the whole site content, that could decrease the strain some time to quicken the effectiveness of one’s web site.
You don’t need a college degree to understand Drupal performance marketing; you just need to a hands-on tactics pertaining to Drupal, like Drupal Performance tuning to hold your internet site fun and easy for users.

Article Source: http://technology.ezinemark.com/easy-effective-training-in-drupal-performance-optimization-7d2d7de06a3d.html

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Eric Jhonsan has 7 articles online
Mcdougal from the piece is experienced on Drupal CMS, Drupal Training and publishes articles carefully on free growth. The guy can be reached via email at eric@osscube.com.

More info about Drupal performance optimisation

Drupal Module Development: Be able to customize and extend Drupal’s elements

This video is ginormous! Actually, we anticipated we’d have two smaller sized videos with titles like “Module Development Basics” and “Advanced Module Development”, but they just wouldn’t hold up on their own. We didn’t want people to end up with only half the story, so we decided to just create one massive comprehensive video with everything you need to know to produce Drupal modules of your family. It makes sense “Drupal Module Building”, the first Lullabot double-album – 5 hours and 10 minutes of action-packed PHP coding, Drupal hooks, and Form API arrays. After watching this video, you’ll be a module building ninja, ready to pimp out and extend Drupal and bend it to your will!

In this video, James Walker, Jeff Eaton and Matt Westgate walk you through all you need to know so that you can build, extend and contribute a Drupal module development. Beginning with some of the essential development tools, they’ll show you how to use the Drupal API reference material and explain all of Drupal’s major conceptual systems. After creating the proper files to register the module, they’ll implement a few Drupal hooks that plug into Drupal’s event-driven architecture. You’ll learn how to register both static and dynamic URLs with Drupal’s menu system. Then you’ll get an summary of Drupal’s database abstraction layer, how to select and insert data from it, and the way to update the database schema. You’ll figure out how to securely capture and sanitize user-submitted data while using the Forms API, as well as how to properly alter any Drupal form on the site. Finally, you’ll learn how to write secure code, mould to Drupal’s coding standards, and the way to contribute your module returning to Drupal.org and apply patches offered by town.
Over this video, they builds the Stalker Module, so exactly over and down load that module if you need to have the ability to open the case in point program code and “play along at home”.

Guide Drupal Module Development

View online

Examples inside Drupal Module Development video are based on Drupal 6, however the basic logic and concepts of Drupal module development you should not switch much in between versions. This video will give you the base knowledge needed to develop for both Drupal 6 and 7. Once Drupal 7 is released, the differences involving the Drupal 6 and 7 APIs will be reported here.

Watching the new 5 hour Lullabot Drupal Module Development video. Why can’t anything be this awesome? – Lori (via Twitter)

Lullabot has guided such firms as MTV, Sony Music, Lifetime Television, IBM, Popular Science, and Fast Company in developing and growing their Drupal internet websites. Acknowledged as incorporate a influential and well-respected creators, consultants, and teachers inside Drupal community, the team is responsible for best-selling Drupal Module Developement textbooks and Drupal Module Developement training courses and tutorials world-wide.

Drupal Consulting: Centered on Eco Friendly Options

Evolving Web

Evolving Web is actually a Montreal-based Drupal Consulting and development company. We are centered on building flexible, eco friendly options using open source technologies. We meet our clients’ needs through the variety of services, including:

* Large, scalable infrastructure and deployments
* Multilingual content managing
* Strong Apache Solr search interfaces
* Information significance and synchronization
* Personalized theme development
* Tailor made module development
* Search engine ranking for Drupal (SEO)
* Drupal Consulting

Our advantages to the free society allow us to power the power of technologies like Drupal and Solr towards advantage of our clients. Giving back in the society is important to us, so we contribute in a variety of ways. We’re regular sponsors and presenters at international Drupal Consulting, Conferences and Camps. In Montreal, we help set up the annual Drupal Camp and also host regular meetups. Our developers contribute back to the community by submitting patches and modules on drupal.org.
If you need to work alongside us or find out more about our services, please get in touch through our website.

Joshi Drupal Consultancy Solutions

Joshi Drupal Consultancy Services is a internet service provider company using Free Technologies, with workshop spanning in Drupal, joomla! , WordPress, Ruby on Rails and CakePHP.
Experience

Joshi Drupal Consultancy Services is made by a experience Drupal developer. We now have contributed to Drupal modules and the owner of the firm is an active person in many groups on *.drupal.org sites.
Services

Joshi Drupal Consultancy Services offers services in following area including Drupal

Client sites improvement and implementation including e-commerce sites
Load balancing with query optimisation and server side caching
Security assessment, analysis and fixing
CMS to CMS Database migration
Customized Drupal module Development and porting
Customized Drupal theme Development and integration with portingSearch engine optimisation and link building
Website maintenance & up-gradation
Custom made Facebook Database integration
Custom made WordPress plugins and theme development
Joomla! templates, plugings, modules and compoenents Development
VirtueMart Development
Contributed Modules
Drupal Consulting

Joshi DruPal Consultancy Solutions is related to different projects/group activities on drupal.org sites. The owner of the firm is administrating the Gujarati translation group on localize.drupal.org. the group can be reached at http://localize.drupal.org/languages/gu. We also encourage and actively participate in forum discussion and IRC channels to help Drupal Developers.

Joshi Consultancy Services have launched website for Drupal developer to help develop customized modules and themes and make it easy to understand Drupal API. The website can be reached at http://drupaldeveloper.in
A number of the preferred articles with implementation example on http://drupaldeveloper.in are

Drupal hooks in .module file: http://drupaldeveloper.in/article/drupal-module-hooks-module-file
Drupal hook_menu: http://drupaldeveloper.in/article/drupal-hook-hookmenu
Programmatically create vocabulary: http://drupaldeveloper.in/article/programmatically-create-vocabulary
Drupal hook_cron: http://drupaldeveloper.in/article/drupal-hook-hookcron
Drupal hook_view: http://drupaldeveloper.in/article/drupal-hook-hookview
We are in continuous process of improvements to give most out of the Drupal. Anyone can join the internet site absolutely free and there’s no cost to use any content of the site.

Drupal Migration: Tools And Applications

Drupal Migration

* Target audience: Developers and coders, Site administrators
* Last modified: December 27, 2010

Drupal Migrating using their company platforms often requires information about PHP and SQL.

Drupal Migration consists of applying files fields from the original application’s database into Drupal’s database. For some applications this can be a basic task, with resources or scripts accessible to do the Drupal migration. Additional applications could have complex database schemas, lack records, and so are uncommon enough we now have no tools available.
The easiest method to find out if tools or texts exists for your application is to search on Google. For instance a search such as “migrate WordPress Drupal” returns a large number of useful links.

If there isn’t any tools designed for migrating from your application to Drupal, you will need to become acquainted with Drupal’s database schema, along with the schema of the application you are Drupal migrating.
You need to map your current users into Drupal’s users table. When you have different roles (for example, read-only, author, editor/reviewer, admin), you will need to assign your users to correctly set up and configured roles in Drupal. This can mostly be done through Drupal’s admin interface, although if you have a large number of users, you may want to find a way to automate the task. Editing each user yourself could possibly be cumbersome.

If the information being migrated is text, it would likely map to the node and node_revisions tables, with comments in the comments table.

It is usually feasible to import databases (MySQL, etc.) containing content and users from your previous CMS into Drupal.
They can do this by exporting the data source first to CSV (comma-separated values) or similar files. Tools like phpMyAdmin for MySQL will make this easier. You can then import these files with import/export modules such as Node Import, User Import, CSV Parser, Migrate, or Transformations (see a module comparison).

Note that submissions are often imported as Content Construction Kit (CCK) custom written content types. If your tables are available in your Drupal database, you can use the Table Wizard to expose them to Views, and then use the Migrate module to copy the data through the old columns towards the CCK content types. Also, the Node Convert module can convert imported node types to other node types; it supports, a minimum of, CCK fields, book and forum nodes, and probably others like blog, etc.
In the event that that your chosen chosen import module is not yet ready for the Drupal version you intend to use, then you will find the workaround of installing a site running on the previous Drupal version simply for the import, and then upgrading it.
On the flip side, if you prefer to migrate data into Drupal developing a custom PHP script, see for example Migration tips for some techniques.

Support for Drupal migrating can be located on the Drupal.org forum, Converting to Drupal. See also the Drupal group Content Drupal migration, import, and export, for discussion of guidelines in content Drupal migration. Drupal Groups also offers a comparison of modules for importing and exporting data.

Finally, try looking in the Drupal CVS contributions repository for a subdirectories named mt2drupal (code for migrating from Movable Type to Drupal), phpbb2drupal (SQL code for migrating from phpBB to Drupal) and slash2drupal (Slash 2.2 to Drupal) for SOME IDEAS. None could well be up to date with the most recent releases of Drupal as well as the respective source systems, in order that they will NOT assist latest variations associated with a of the foregoing. However, they may allow you to get close.

Drupal Maintenance For Database Upgrades

Drupal routine maintenance aids you set your online site into repair mode Drupal Maintenance, or so that you can deploy code and database upgrades safely. However, access to the site during preservation mode is by default controlled by a permission, which is generally only made available to administrative users. It’s not possible to test the site as a regular anonymous or authenticated user without giving all anonymous/authenticated users the “Use the site in routine maintenance mode” permission, so you generally have to test those things on the fly after moving the site back to “live” mode.
As yet, which is! This D7+ module (the necessary hook doesn’t exist in D6 and below) allows you to specify a list of IP addresses that should be exempt from upkeep mode, essentially exempting you from difficult Drupal Maintenance, allowing specific people to perform the necessary testing on the site with all role combinations without opening the site in place to your visitors.

The advancement in technology is driving everyone crazy and online businesses are taking shape of a necessity more than a fad. Therefore, people in this industry are coming up with new and newer ways of developing websites these days. During the last few years, the web designing and

Drupal Maintenance and advancement industry has witnessed an ever growing competition in the field of developing websites.
And, the open source advancement services has added on the effect. Joomla!, being one out of them, is the most popular tool used for web development. Joomla! is;
1.software is free, without any cost.
2.Joomla! customisation features creates it a tool to create each and every kind of website be it- e-commerce, SMEs, online portals, corporate websites, and even the personal websites.
3.One can modify and customize website by installing new templates and modifying them according your requirement. Joomla provides good support for custom website growth
The above being mastering french in france Joomla!, and there are a lot of them that people have not mentioned as yet. Taking in consideration that Joomla! improvement services in India, being the key concern of the article, there is no denying to the fact that India has a vast resource of expertise in all kinds of IT sector and Joomla! specialized designers being one particular. The dedicated designers here, give ample of energy to the project to be aware of its needs and requirements then, build a whole professional web design. Drupal is a personal wed desing with easy Drupal Maintenance
Since, the today’s world contain witnessed the emergence of getting a professional Joomla! based website that turns out to be adaptive, professional,use friendly, easy installation and care in the site. These web design and improvement companies, specialising in Joomla! based advancement in India offer the greatest services, at cost huge discounts.The reality is, there are numerous of available options if we speak about the freelance Joomla! Developers, and there is no denial to it. But an association with the web design companies would ensure sure shot results with the facility of excellent search engine optimization, that may help you creating a stand for your web blog in the listings of the search engines.Drupal Maintenance helps with the variety of options. It is really comparatively less complicated to style including a website than looking after your presence while in the online market place.
Thus, it truly is recommendable the time you choosed to develop your blog or perhaps begin a new online venture within the scratch, opt for a good web design and enhancement agency that specialises in Joomla! web development.

Drupal Support At The Top Of My List

Will Drupal support complex integration for E-Commerce?
Posted by hpoom on February 8, 2011 at 4:36pm
Aiming to upgrade our inhouse composed CMS with something else and Drupal is at the top of my list of possible options. We are struggling to find out if Drupal support will continue to work just how We need it to though. Can somebody help answer my questions?

1/ Will Drupal support integration in a inhouse built API to have stock of products and prices. I have seen Drupal E-Commerce solutions but they all seam to have the products and prices loaded into Drupal. I’d rather not, and can’t load the products into Drupal as the stock and prices come from 3rd parties with 3rd party API’s wrapped up behind our own request system which gets several products from back end sysetms and packages them together. We sell shortbreaks, which might be a hotel from one API and a ticket to the theatre from another API. All this stock and pricing is available from a single API Request system we have coded in house the difference is we need to build these items into a CMS/Templating system. Is this possible, and if so how?

2/ I’d want to create pages for items we sell like, hotels and show, but all of the data on they is held in a product data system. I would want pages to automaticly appear as new content is included in this product data system. So if a copywriter writes a couple of new hotel, then I want a web site to automaticly be developed in Drupal that links to the hotel, also if data is removed from the product or service data system the I’d personally really need to page to 301 to some place else.

3/ I would at the same time want any digital assets to come from a digital asset database to ensure that hotel images couldn’t survive managed in Drupal support but come in from our inhouse digital asset store which works closely with your product data store.

4/ I am in search of 2 login systems equally. Would desire LDAP for in house staff to handle content, but need Facebook Connect or Twitter OAuth (or both) permitting customers to firewood in a leave opinions or see their order history etc.
I wish to use the Drupal support system so as we can easily manage copy and static pages and also add forums, personal blogs etc. It would be a better tool then our existing CMS, but I have big concerns about the E-Commerce section of things. We’d at the same time want to run a number of sites (about 20) all off an individual Drupal support install in order that I can maintain the sites quicker. Most of these sites are typically in German along with English.
Certainly one of what I prefer to obtain is http://www.show-and-stay.co.uk/ the booking breaks part is hit once you perform a search make up the form. I do think the Drupal support would be accomplished at the homepage and product pages like:
http://www.show-and-stay.co.uk/dirty-dancing.html
And equally the blog part:
http://www.show-and-stay.co.uk/magazine/
We have worries finished it’s capacity support the booking pages though like:
http://secure.show-and-stay.co.uk/breaks/c/main,hotel?request=3&agent=ww…

Thanks before hand to any answers.

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