Designers/themers

Publisher’s description:

If you’re a solo website designer or part of a small team itching to build interesting projects with Drupal, this concise guide will get you started. Drupal’s learning curve has thrown off many experienced designers, particularly the way it handles design challenges. This book shows you the lifecycle of a typical Drupal project, with emphasis on the early stages of site planning. Learn how to efficiently estimate and set up your own project, so you can focus on ways to make your vision a reality, rather than let project management details constantly distract you.

• Plan and estimate your project by discovering your client’s goals and audience perceptions
• Discover how Drupal works under the hood, and learn basic DrupalSpeak
• Frame the UX design challenge through a deeper understanding of your site’s intended users
• Get real content for your project as early as possible—before you start prototyping
• Choose the right modules for your project, and learn about several go-to modules
• Understand how to walk clients through the Drupal design and development process

Publisher’s description:

Itching to build interesting projects with Drupal, but confused by the way it handles design challenges? This concise guide helps small teams and solo website designers understand how Drupal works by demonstrating the ways it outputs content. You’ll learn how to manage Drupal’s output, design around it, and then turn your design into a theme.

In the second of three volumes on Drupal design, award-winning designer Dani Nordin takes you beyond basic site planning and teaches you key strategies for working with themes, layouts, and wireframes. Discover how to use Drupal to make your vision a reality, instead of getting distracted by the system’s project and code management details.

• Learn strategies for sketching, wireframing, and designing effective layouts
• Break down a Drupal layout to understand its basic components
• Understand Drupal’s theme layer, and what to look for in a base theme
• Work with the 960 grid system to facilitate efficient wireframing and theming
• Manage Drupal markup, including the code generated by the powerful Views module
• Use LessCSS to organize CSS and help you theme your site more efficiently

Publisher’s description:

Over 100 recipes that cover all aspects of customizing and developing unique Drupal themes.

• Spice up your Drupal themes
• A complete update for Drupal 7, with added information for the Field API, Views, and Panels
• Part of Packt's Cookbook series with lots of practical recipes for solving the most common theming problems

In Detail

The greatest strength of Drupal lies in its design which, when employed correctly, allows developers to literally handcraft every aspect of a site, so that it looks and performs exactly how they want it to. While it is reasonably straightforward to download a Drupal theme and install it, doing anything beyond that is not. Using custom themes requires familiarity and experience with Drupal's theming system, especially if you want to easily administer and maintain your themes.

Drupal 7 Theming Cookbook provides a plethora of recipes that enable Drupal template designers to make full use of its extensibility and style their site just the way they want it. It is a well-rounded guide which will allow users to take full advantage of Drupal's theming system.

This cookbook starts with recipes which address the basics of Drupal's theme system, including regions and blocks. It then moves on to advanced topics such as creating a custom theme and using it to modify the layout and style of content. With the introduction of the Field API and the growing importance of Views and Panels in Drupal 7, chapters have been dedicated to each feature. You will also learn many techniques for dealing with Drupal's templating system, which will allow you create themes which surpass even the existing Drupal and contributed modules.

What you will learn from this book

• Customize the look of your website by configuring and extending your existing themes with sub-themes
• Create custom themes from scratch for websites that demand a fresh looks
• Use the PHP Template theming engine to override module output and style it using a theme
• Style and manipulate the content of your website by adding CSS and JavaScript files via themes and modules
• Manipulate images on the fly using the Image API and the Image module
• Jazz up the design of your site by incorporating JavaScript elements
• Design complex site layouts rapidly with Panels

Approach

Part of Packt's Cookbook series, this book offers solutions to common theme design problems in the form of recipes. Each recipe contains step-by-step instructions and screenshots. The book is designed so that you can read it chapter by chapter, or you can refer to each recipe in no particular order.

Who this book is written for

This book is for Drupal developers and administrators who want to refresh the look and feel of their site. We assume that readers are familiar with basic PHP, CSS, and XHTML as well as the general use of Drupal.

Publisher’s description:

Transform your existing Drupal site into one that is completely compatible with mobile and tablet devices.

• Follow the example of a 'Mom & Pop' restaurant site to make the transition to a mobile site easier
• Prototype a distributed team workflow with GIT version control
• Implement audio, video, charting and mapping solutions that work on Mobile, Tablet, and Desktop browsers

In Detail

How disappointing is it to log on to a website for a product or business you love only to discover the feature you were drawn to doesn't work on your mobile or tablet? Drupal has brand new features to adapt your existing site into a mobile site that will keep your customers coming back.

The Drupal Mobile Web Development Beginner’s Guide follows a humble “Mom & Pop” restaurant website which gets a makeover complete with cutting edge features that play to mobile, tablet and desktop audiences. By following the fun example, you will finish the book having effortlessly adapted your website so that it is accessible and, more importantly, looks good and functions well, on any mobile device.

Restaurant websites are notoriously horrible to navigate and our Mom & Pop example is well-intentioned but no exception to this rule. We bring this site out of the early 1990's with cutting edge development practices and a team development workflow. This pizza chain goes mobile with location services, audio, video, charting and mapping worthy of any multi-million dollar site. Each chapter examines the way the site works and shows you how to move the existing content and functionality into reusable features.

What you will learn from this book

• Set up Domain Access and Drupal Behaviors that redirect mobile and desktop browsers to the version of the website most appropriate for your client
• Share content across sites without resorting to a multi-site install
• Use context and image styles to create a customized view for the home page
• Create a mobile-friendly menu
• Bundle several exercises up into a feature that can push new content to your live site in one fell swoop
• Create a compelling audio and video experience without using Flash
• Customize a theme that will present your site to mobile and desktop clients alike with a unified marketing message

Approach

Follow the fun example of a family pizza restaurant to help you adapt your own website to one that is fully functional in a mobile environment. Each chapter covers a different aspect of mobile web development with plenty of step-by-step instructions and screenshots to make things clearer.

Who this book is written for

This book is for independent developers who may or may not have had experience with Drupal websites. We take some “deep dives” into customized functionality that will take your Drupal development and your development workflow to the next level.

Publisher’s description:

Take your Drupal skills even further with valuable tricks for making site building truly efficient. In this concise guide—the third in a series by award-winning designer Dani Nordin—you’ll learn how to set up your own development environment, quickly update your modules, and use version control to protect yourself from bonehead mistakes.

Handle repetitive tasks with ease, avoid hours of frustration, and devote more time to pushing the envelope of Drupal design—just by picking up the basics of a few developer tools. It’s much more than simple coding; it’s real, honest-to-goodness developer Ninja Magick.

• Learn basic commands and use them in Drupal on the command line
• Set up your local development environment, and learn ways to collaborate on code with others
• Download modules, themes, libraries, and more with Drush, the Drupal shell
• Use Git, the free version control system, and create a GitHub account
• Pack content types, views, and other functionality you use often into a custom module with Features

About the Author

Dani Nordin is the founder and principal designer of the zen kitchen, where you’ll find tasty marketing and design ideas with an eco-friendly twist. She has over 10 years of experience designing award-winning work for small to large businesses and non-profits.

Publisher’s description:

If you’re a solo website designer or part of a small team itching to build interesting projects with Drupal, this hands-on book will give you the tools and techniques to get you going. Award-winning designer Dani Nordin guides you through site planning, teaches you how to create solid, user-centered design, and shows you tricks for using real, honest-to-goodness, developer Ninja Magick.

With this book, site builders and designers familiar with HTML and CSS get a compilation of three short guides—Planning Drupal Projects, Design and Prototyping for Drupal, and Drupal Development Tricks for Designers—at a price that’s lower than these three books combined. You also get special “director’s material” you won’t find anywhere else.

• Plan and estimate your project by discovering your client’s goals and audience perceptions
• Choose the right modules for your project, and learn about several go-to modules
• Learn strategies for sketching, wireframing, and designing effective layouts
• Use LessCSS to organize CSS and help you theme your site more efficiently
• Discover how to work with Drupal on the command line
• Set up a development environment, and learn how to collaborate on code with others
• Learn the basics of Git—the free, open source version control system