Changing the theme

By rucasz on 5 Oct 2015 at 15:38 UTC

Hi there! I need some help from you guys!

I'm a really begginer with Drupal and HTML in general but I need to manage my website which was made by another person. OMG, it seems like spaceship to me!
So firstly I would like to change my theme because the old one is not good-looking for me. What do I need to do first? Could I download a theme like a template, so it won't be necessary to edit it by myself? And when changing the theme, do I need to save my website data somehow? I'm afraid of experimenting because I think I can lose the whole page.

Thank you for your answers!
I really appreciate your help! ♥♥♥

Comments

Welcome to Drupal.

Sam Moore

he/him

Sandy Hook, CT

commented 5 October 2015 at 15:49

Welcome to Drupal.
It's a powerful system that has a learning curve, so please give yourself a break - it's all workable.

You can certainly download and install a new theme, one of many available here on drupal.org. Start here: https://www.drupal.org/project/project_theme
Just make sure the one(s) you like are available for your version of Drupal (which will be Drupal 6, 7 or 8 at this time).

You may want to back up your database first, just to be safe (and it's a good thing to know how to do).

Once you find some themes you like, you can install one or more using the form on your site, at /admin/appearance/install
The installer won't let you install a theme that's for a different version of Drupal than you have.
Then visit the Appearance page (/admin/appearance), scroll down to the Disabled themes section, and set your new theme as the default. You'll probably want to clear cache after doing this (/admin/config/development/performance)

A new theme won't delete any of your content.
However it my greatly change the display - so don't panic if stuff moves around or disappears.
You can always set the old theme back to be the default.

If things get really weird for some reason, just restore the database from your backup.

============================
Resonetrics: Better Tools for Building Brands
http://resonetrics.com
http://technologyformarketers.com
http://kittenassociates.org
http://www.linkedin.com/in/sammooreatresonetrics

And how can I look how the

rucasz commented 6 October 2015 at 09:48

And how can I look how the perticular theme looks like? Does something like demo page exist?

Thank you A LOT!

Some themes have demos

Sam Moore

he/him

Sandy Hook, CT

commented 6 October 2015 at 14:59

Some themes have demos available - have a look at https://www.drupal.org/project/adaptivetheme , as well as adaptivethemes.com for example, for their free and paid themes.
For any theme hosted on drupal.org, look in the right sidebar of the theme's project page and you MAY see a "Try a demonstration" link in the Resources section.

You might also have interest in Drupal Gardens, a SAAS offering that lets you tweak your own theme: https://www.drupalgardens.com/themebuilder
Not sure this is useful if yo're not a customer, but worth a look anyway.

Themeforest have a bunch of paid themes you could look at:
http://themeforest.net/category/cms-themes/drupal

In the end you may want to start with one of the more powerful theme frameworks (Omega, Bootstrap, Adaptive, Zen) and learn theming yourself, so you can really get what you want. But perhaps not today :-)

When I'm trying to install a

rucasz commented 7 October 2015 at 16:20

When I'm trying to install a theme, some kind of warning appears:
WARNING: You are not using an encrypted connection, so your password will be sent in plain text.
To continue, provide your server connection details

And then I'm asked to type a username and password.
I think I have the password of the server because the username is "root" but it doesn't suit here. Maybe there is another kind of password? I have no idea what should I do here...

Are you using the install new

Sam Moore

he/him

Sandy Hook, CT

commented 7 October 2015 at 18:35

Are you using the install new Theme link on the Appearance page? It likely needs FTP credentials, so it can write to your server.
Do you have FTP access to your site?

Well, I'm trying to install

rucasz commented 11 October 2015 at 11:26

Well, I'm trying to install theme like this:
Appearance -> Install new theme -> Upload a module or theme archive to install
And then i'm uploading a downloaded zip file theme. Or should I try to install a theme from a URL? I don't understand how could I do this.

I think I have the FTP access, but that warning says that my password will be sent "in plain text". Could it mean that it doesn't read caps lock letters? Because my password contains some of them.

All the Plain Text warning

Sam Moore

he/him

Sandy Hook, CT

commented 11 October 2015 at 16:40

All the Plain Text warning means is that your FTP password is unencrypted when it's sent to the server for authentication. This is typical for FTP; this renders FTP somewhat unsafe, and is one reason a lot of people prefer SFTP for file transfers. (But I don't think the Drupal theme uploader can do SFTP. There's a feature request in there somewhere...)

To install from a URL, go to the theme's project page on Drual.org and copy the URL for either the tar.gz or the .zip version of the theme you want (in the Downloads section of the project page). Paste that into the field on your site's Install page.