Oraganizing your web site
A web site plan consists of planning for:
- Elements on a page
- lists of content
- page design and layout
- Interations
- Markup
- Workflow
You should plan to get
- content organized
- ways to navigate
- How do the users interact with your sites
There are three contributed modules that you will need to include in your theming toolkit:
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Content Creation Kit (CCK) module: used to extend the basic content type additional field.
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Views module: used to create lists of content.
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Devel module: includes the Themer Info module, which allows you to identify the Drupal characteristics necessary to theme any item displayed in a Drupal Web site.
Firebug
Firebug is a Web browser plugin available for Firefox. Using this tool, you can easily get information about any page element, including its location in the page and styles that have been applied. For more information about Firebug, and to install it on your machine, visit the project's Web page at http://getfirebug.com. Once you have installed Firebug, you have access to a powerful diagnostic tool that offers the following features:
Language References
Four machine languages are used in the creation and maintenance of a Drupal theme: PHP, XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Although you do not need to attain true mastery of each of these languages, theming Drupal is easier if you know enough about them to shuffle things around while still maintaining the integrity of how the machine language works. This book does not include a full reference for these languages, but rather assumes you understand the basics of each one. This section serves as a reminder of some of the excellent resources that are available online if you do need a quick reference for the code that appears in this book.
XHTML
The elements in XHTML are literally the building blocks for any page on the Web. If you are reading this book, chances are good you have dabbled with HTML or XHTML at some point. If you need a bit of a refresher, or if you want to know how to mark up a page the right way, head over to the Opera Web Standards Curriculum site (http://www.opera.com/company/education/curriculum/) and work through each of its lessons. It is important for you to use valid XHTML markup for your Drupal Web site. Failure to do so may result in pages that do not display correctly. The Web Developer's Toolbar includes a quick link to the W3C Markup Validation Service. You can also access this free online service directly at http://validator.w3.org/.