Design Drupal Websites with Drupal Templates for Themes

The wide variety of Drupal templates for setting website themes available for download over the Internet is a sure sign of the popularity of the Drupal Content Management System (CMS).

The numerous Drupal templates for themes cater to just about any website design preference, be it for sophisticated business websites, individual blogs or for government websites.

As an open source Content Management System and Framework, Drupal allows external modules and themes to be added to a core group of code files, also known as the Drupal Core.

Following the development paradigm of other open source software, a community of developers and designers contribute their expertise to develop these add-on modules for functionality and Drupal templates for themes for design to the Drupal framework.

Thinking of using Drupal CMS for your website? Then this article can give you an introduction to Drupal themes and guide you on using Drupal templates for themes to design your website.

Getting to Know Drupal CMS

Drupal CMS achieved a popularity boost when the administration of US President Obama decided to use it as a backend for the official White House website in 2009.

The open source nature of Drupal software was one of the reasons behind this move. Open source software is exactly the opposite of copyrighted software. This means anyone can access the code of open source software and make changes to it. The core of the software code in open source solutions is free. The other powerful feature of open source software such as Drupal is the development model where a community of developers contributes to building various modules of the software for free.

The Drupal framework allows for a stable core set of code using PHP to implement basic functionalities of a CMS. This would include user registration, adding and managing posts and comments. In addition to this core, modules can be added to Drupal to implement enhanced features.

Drupal ranks right after other CMS systems such as WordPress and Joomla! in terms of downloads and usage for websites.

Introduction to Drupal Website Design and Drupal Templates for Themes

In Drupal website design, the concept of themes is very important. The design of a Drupal website is controlled by a theme which would specify the layout, colour palette, font types and other presentation aspects.
A standard Drupal installation comes with a default theme. In Drupal 6, the default theme was called the Garland theme.

As in the case of modules, developers and designers can contribute different types of Drupal templates for themes to create different website designs.
Themes can also be changed to accommodate new website features or to give the website a fresh look.

Drupal web templates for themes can be developed and submitted to the Drupal website or can be offered for download on other websites.

The high usage of Drupal CMS has meant that there is demand for different templates for Drupal themes to implement various presentation styles for websites. Drupal templates for themes are useful in giving unique and aesthetic look and feel to websites.

How Drupal Themes Templates Work

Drupal templates for themes are ready-made theme blueprints or designs which you can customise with your own data. They can replace the default theme.

A single theme implements website layout, colour palette and style specifications for the various elements of a website. A theme can also contain PHP code for conditional or dynamic displays.

For example, the default Garland theme included in Drupal version 6 has a clean layout with header, footer and left side section with different menu options. You can also select different colours for the page from a colour picker provided with the theme.

Lets take a look at the components of Drupal themes templates.

• A (theme-name).info File A file with the extension .info is the most important component of Drupal themes templates. The prefix of the .info file is the theme name. The .info file has information regarding the theme layout elements such as the header, footer, and side menu bars. This file can also contain JavaScript functions and link to a style sheet.
• Style.css A Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) file entitled style.css is used to specify the presentation styles of various individual elements in a website such as background colour, font types, and font size. The .info file refers to the style.css file.
• Standard Images Templates can include standard images such as a logo image and a screenshot image of the theme. This is a requirement for all themes that are submitted to the Drupal website.
• Images Folder As the name implies, the images folder has other image files used in the themes such as background images and icons.
• PHP Files The themes templates can include standard PHP files such as templates.php which has PHP code for dynamic and conditional displays and .tpl.php files which contain HTML code and variables for PHP code.

Drupal also supports subthemes which can inherit the characteristics of main themes. Subthemes can be used to add to the features or design provided by main themes.
You can either use Drupal templates for themes containing these files or download plain design templates and implement them in the above mentioned files.

Drupal Website Templates for Themes Available on the Internet

There are many Internet resources where you can download Drupal website templates for setting themes. It is important to select templates which can help you create a unique and user-friendly design for your website.

Buytemplates.net offers a large selection of templates for Drupal CMS. All the templates are professionally designed and have W3C standards compliant code. They cater to a variety of topic categories.

You can download the templates for Drupal themes and edit the content to include your unique data. You can also opt for the customisation services offered by buytemplates.net. The site also provides custom template creation for the Drupal CMS, where you can specify the kind of design you want.
Before downloading Drupal templates for themes, make sure of your design requirements and choose accordingly. You can download a free template sample from buytemplates.net to get an idea of how a typical template works.

Do explore the entire range of Drupal website templates at buytemplates.net now, and find your favourite theme!