a Themers toolbox # 1
You dont need a bass (or a guitar) to be a badass rockstar Drupal front end developer aka a themer.
To be imortalized forever and get more groupies than nikki sixx, you need some cool stuff, besides of black hair color, tatoos & cheesy songs about coding all night ;)
Modules & Themes for your steaming hot theming pleasure
This is gonna be the first part of the Themers toolbox a bunch of infomation that i signed up to collect for the Design For Drupal group
The post will be splitted into 3 post, and then later collected into a resource for the grop.
- Modules & themes.
- Browser (Hell)
- code is beautiful
I cant get into all modules out there, so I expect that if it should happen that i missed one youre a good geek and ping me about it.
First of though Im assuming that you have views & cck installed.
All this for drupal6, and its only targeted at browsers, so no iphones etc. Were gonna take that on another day.
Modules
Theres a couple of modules that are an absolute must so lets start out with them:
Devel
http://drupal.org/project/devel
I cant say this loud enough - If you work with anything drupalish and you dont have devel module - Youre doing it ALL wrong!!
So before you reading more download devel now
If youre curious what devel module gives you please read my post about the hidden treasure
Got it?
Ok then lets move on
imagecache
http://drupal.org/project/imagecache
Another "no-brainer" module. Gives control over the images size from cck, so get it now.
Stylestripper
http://drupal.org/project/stylestripper
Remove the trillions of css files that every module is trying to force into your theme.
Yup you can loose some of the functionality that modules are coming with, but with a bit trial & error - you dont need to overwrite all the developers bad habits they have been putting in to your css ;)
switchtheme
http://drupal.org/project/switchtheme
Supercool for local development, i got all my drupalwork inside a multisite setup, so its quick & easy to shift back & forth between themes. Cause its a pain to go all the way down to your user profile and shift the theme and go back.
semantic views
http://drupal.org/project/semanticviews
you wanna have über control the markup that the mighty views gives you - Then semantic views is gonna be you new best friend
A video intro by is a good intro
This is so übercool i cant stop my praising for it !# rocks
menu block
http://drupal.org/project/menu_block
Tired of bitching and moaning over the 2 & 3 level of a menu you want to place on a page?
menu blocks takes care of business.
404-blocks
http://drupalmodules.com/module/404-blocks
No more "WTF where did all blocks went" on your 404 pages
string-overrides
http://drupalmodules.com/module/string-overrides
When ever you have a string ("read more" etc) then this little module comes in handy.
page title
http://drupal.org/project/page_title
Another "small" module, but you seo loving boss will love you, and you can get back to play with some jQuery magick
skinr
http://drupal.org/project/skinr
Skinr is from badass powerthemer Jacine the purpose is to give the user a bunch of reusable and modular CSS styles - that they can add and remove as needed.
Administration hell
Its alway a hell to take care of everything in your theme.
admin theme
http://drupal.org/project/admin_theme
Changes the theme when your doing administration stuff - aaah now you dont have to fubmle around with forms the size of new yourk.
The kick ass admin theme rootcandy usually gives you admins a smile on their face.
admin menu
http://drupal.org/project/admin_menu
Adds a menu at the top of page, so you cant remove that pesky admin menu from the page.
admin
http://drupal.org/project/admin
The new hot kid on the block, build around the ideas of the upcomming sexy Drupal7 UX
admin language
http://drupal.org/project/admin_language
When you working with a site thats not in english (like danish) Drupal haves the idea that offcourse you would like to have the admin in the same language ... Thats a clear fail. So now your admin can change the backend language back to English. - iknow its not a "theme" module, but its a real killer for admin stuff (oooh and yes i sponsored the module!)
More modules
Want more modules well check out:
Themes
This is themes that are ment for development, So these are not "pretty themes" you would use for quick & dirty setup, and make the client happy ;)
I have only added themes I have knowledge about So if you think I missed something please let me know.
mothership
http://drupal.org/project/mothership
My preloader theme thats build to cleanup and remove markup from Drupal
zen
http://drupal.org/project/zen
The standard drupal starter theme, that everyone with respect for his trade have played with.
The documentation inside it is absolutely awesome, so this is really place to learn the inner workings of a drupal theme.
I got a 20$ for John Albin the next time i see him ;)
Studio
http://drupal.org/project/studio
If you really wanna go nutter and really push the theming to the max (and your not afraid of arrays) then the Studio theme is well worth a look
Genesis
http://drupal.org/project/genesis
Havent worked with genesis but heres a lot of nice words about it.
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designers should say 'hello' to drush.
We should add 'drush' to this list. It's not a module, very easy to install it. i use only some basic commands for everyday work. (dl, enable, disable, cache clear). It's a real time saver.
your kidding right?
yup cause themers & designers really loves the terminal ;)
if you only have the needs for clearing cache then i would argue that theres absolutely no reason for a themer to add drush to his arsenal of tools (afaik drush an develpers powertool)
For basic cache clearings etc we have the devel block or the admin_menu module. that makes it simple point & click
yes i was kidding! :)
Not just for cache clearing. I use it for downloading modules and enabling it in seconds, rather than the tedious 'normal' way. As designers, we can always go for easy way. If we are ready to invest some time and energy, drupaling can be a better experience.
thanks, noussh.
Drush looks sweet though
Drush looks sweet though :)
beter gotta learn it someday
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The menu_block module
The menu_block module contains a bad link, should be http://drupal.org/project/menu_block Without the 's' in the end
thanx for the heads up - my
thanx for the heads up - my spelling dosnt get better by watching NFL while dooing writeups ;)
basic theme
I would personally add the "Basic" theme. I find it very good and well organized!
http://www.drupal.org/project/basic
Kickass list anyway! I'll definitely check the ones I didn't know about.
Nice collection
Morten, thanks for the juicy list, i've learnt couple of fresh things!
My 2 cents for the Toolbox go for the Block Theme module:
it "allows an admin to define tpl files for standard block templates
and provides a select box on the block configure form so the user can select
a tpl file to use as opposed to having to override the templates by block ID".
more end user than themer's, still worth mentioning in the modules' Heaven ;)
yup but skinr does shitloads
yup but skinr does shitloads more than just blocks so you should give it a check :)
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