Sharpen Your Theming Skills At DrupalCon

Submitted by Bevan Rudge

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December 8, 2008

Sharpen Your Theming Skills At DrupalCon

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Theming is one of the aspects of Drupal development that Drupalers most want to get better at, according to Dries' last survey. Trevor Twining and I (Bevan Rudge) submitted a DrupalCon DC 2009 session proposal on precisely this topic; Advanced Theming Techniques – getting from beginner or intermediate themer to advanced Drupal theme guru. The session will be targeted for Drupal themers who have done one, or maybe a handful of Drupal themes and are getting confident with Drupal, some common contrib modules and Drupal's theme layer. Advanced Theming Techniques will show you the tips and tricks you need to get to the next level. Things like;

all the different ways you can override and change appearance and HTML
creating sub-themes and base-themes
the theme registry and all the ways to use it
making a theme configurable
theming forms
managing theme code so that it is easily maintainable and upgradable in a year
when to use a module instead of theme code
optimizing your theme layer for faster rendering
tools and resources that get you the information you need faster and help you fix bugs
Drupal core's CSS styles

There will also be copies of Ric Shreeves' Drupal 6 Themes up for grabs. The session will be filled with code samples and examples and we'll leave lots of time for questions so we can give full and detailed answers with examples. Vote for the Advanced Theming Techniques session at the DrupalCon website. Trevor Twining is a themer on some of CivicActions' largest and most complex multi-lingual websites; Amnesty International and the Witness Video Hub Bevan Rudge is a themer and developer on JustCauseIt.com, Rare Planet, ACLU TV series and the Hub Map.

Manuel Garcia (not verified) December 8, 2008

This sounds like a session that would be interesting to attend, unfortunately, it's a long way from Barcelona... any chance it will be recorded in video? Or at least the slides? =) About the things you plan on touching, "when to use a module instead of theme code" would be nice if taken from a performance perspective as well as different possibilities in each case. Perhaps I should just suggest a topic that I think would benefit a lot of people: What a themer should not do in order not to affect performance of how to do things in a better way to work WITH drupal instead of against it on this subject. Some guidelines and why. Not sure if I'm explaining it properly, hope you see what I mean! :) And (last && !least), many thanks for taking the initiative on this, I'm sure it will be benefit a lot of people, and the community by extension!