By visionforge on

Newbie here again. Well I'm amazed at how easy it is to create a simple website with this awsome platform. Thanks to everyone for the enthusiasm and generosity that must have gone into creating Drupal!

I am interested to create my own theme, and I was wondering if anyone might be able to suggest how I might go about that. I would like to create beautiful well crafted designs, and am wondering what software or combinations of software I would use to do that.

Would I use something like Adobe InDesign for the front end, and then something else for the back end? (sorry if that's not the right terminology).

Do you know what I'm asking?

Comments

ChrisBryant’s picture

ChrisBryant commented

There is no software per say to create themes, rather it's a combination of tools and manual coding.

First you need to design the site look and feel in a program like Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator. Once you have a design you like you then need to cut it up into nice HTML/CSS. There are some programs that help with that like Dreamweaver, Adobe GoLive, etc but the preferred way is to manually code the HTML and CSS your self in a text editor. Once you have good HTML/CSS for the main pages or sections of your site, then you can start coding your Drupal theme. Currently you need to know at least some PHP to bet able to get this done. Here is the best place to start:

http://drupal.org/handbook/customization

or:

http://drupal.org/node/509

Good luck!
Chris


ALIAN DESIGN

visionforge’s picture

visionforge commented

Thanks much Chris. Yeah I figured it might be combination of different processes. It should be a good adventure...
Checking out these nodes you posted now.

Regards,
Craig