Theme development

Hi, folks! I have a design problem that I'm hoping someone familiar with Chameleon and/or Marvin can help me with.

I'm upgrading my site at YoungWizards.com as a Drupal installation. There are some aspects of the original site which I want to keep, specifically the banner at the top.

The banner itself is handled by this PHP-based image rotator from AutomaticLabs, which brings up a different banner each time. In my new Drupal installation I want to keep this feature, and keep the positioning at the top left, just as it is. But I'm having trouble figuring out how to manage this, in terms of where exactly to place the code to call the rotator.

In normal HTML, you simply call the installed rotator like this:

<IMG SRC="http://www.youngwizards.com/006699/rotator.php">

The called images live in the same directory with the script. On the present web page, I haven't bothered adding any CSS styling to this element in terms of "position: absolute;"... or anything similar, since in a normal HTML page it's the very first thing that loads, and the way it's called has been working fine.

I have heard that 5.0 has the functionality to enable a seperate admin theme. I have seen this post - http://drupal.org/node/52389, but it covers 4.7. I just upgraded and am in the process of creating my own theme. I would rather use one of the default themes for users that I give permission to change content. Does the information in 52389 still apply to 5.x, or is there a better way? I have recently upgraded, but have yet to find this setting. Thanks!

Hi,

I am using the friendseletric theme for my website. Although it isn't upgrade to 5.x it mostly works like a charm. I only had to change a couple of small things. But one of these, I am not able to figure out. When posting story-items to the frontpage the get cut off after the specified number of characters, but no "read more"-link is being displayed.

This is how my node.tpl.php file looks:

<div class="node<?php print ($sticky) ? " sticky" : ""; ?>">
<?php   if ($node->type == 'story'):?>
  <?php if ($page == 0): ?>
    <h3 class="title"><a href="<?php print $node_url ?>" title="<?php print $title ?>"><?php print $title ?></a></h3>
  <?php endif; ?>
<?php else: ?>
  <?php if ($page == 0): ?>
    <h2 class="title"><a href="<?php print $node_url ?>" title="<?php print $title ?>"><?php print $title ?></a></h2>
  <?php endif; ?>
<?php endif; ?>

  <?php print $picture ?>

  <div class="content">
    <?php print $content ?>
  </div>
  <?php if ($picture): ?>
    <span class="clear"></span>
  <?php endif; ?>
  <?php if ($submitted): ?>
    <div class="info"><?php print theme('username', $node) . ' â^À^Ó ' . str_replace('-', ' â^À^Ó ', format_date($node->created)) ?></div>
  <?php endif; ?>
<!--  <?php if ($links): ?>
    <div class="links"><?php print $links ?></div>
  <?php endif; ?> -->
</div>

What do most people do here for themes? Being a drupal noob and coming from joomla where I can buy an awesome theme over at joomlashack.com and have it up quickly. Do most just tweak the themes available here to their liking? I have no idea on how to theme so not sure what to do here. I like the color scheme of the theme being used here. Is this one available on the site?

Weird problem.. First time customizing a theme and I've got background images and regular hard coded images in the page.tpl.php file that disappear when the page is loaded. They appear very briefly while the page loads then just disappear, like they never existed. Any idea where I could start to troubleshoot this?

I used the Zen theme as my base.

Thanks,
Greg.

Could anyone take a guess as to the steps taken to create this site: http://www.emigre.com/index.php

I have a background in print, and am now getting into reading up on web design. There is such a great amount to study, and so I'd like to focus on something fairly straightforward.

If you could just set me on the right path of study, I would greatly appreciate it (I do have Dreamweaver mx2004 and the Adobe CS2 Suite).

thanks,
John