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The first definitive, in-depth guide to customizing Drupal web sites with
behaviors, themes, and templates
Reaches the fast-growing community of Drupal web site builders and developers,
and focuses on the area where they're most desperate for information: customized
visual and interactive design
Includes several step-by-step case studies showing how to build and customize
sites from scratch
Foreword and promotional support from Dries Buytaert, Drupal project founder and
community lead
Summary
Drupal has emerged as the world's fastest growing open source content
management system and framework: it is empowering thousands of individuals
and organizations with tools to quickly build and update web sites of virtually
all kinds. As web designers and developers adopt Drupal, they quickly find
themselves wanting to customize the visuals and interactivity of the sites
Drupal creates. Drupal offers powerful front-end customization capabilities,
but practical information about using them has been scarce - until now.
Front End Drupal fills this sizable marketplace gap by focusing on visual and
interactive design, rather than module development. Two leading Drupal
developers systematically cover Drupal customization with behaviors, themes,
and templates. Readers will master each layout element needed to style Drupal
sites, and learn how to take full advantage of Drupal's powerful templating
system. The book also contains several start-to-finish case studies for creating
and customizing a wide range of Drupal sites, from scratch.
Front End Drupal will contain a foreword by the founder and community lead
of the Drupal project, Dries Buytaert.
About the author
Emma Jane Hogbin has been working as a Web developer since 1996, helping individuals and organizations to realize both their own potential and the potential of their online presence. She creates systems that enable her clients to succeed-by using her infectious enthusiasm and ability to explain concepts without using technical jargon that puts even the greatest technophobes at ease. Passionate about helping people to acquire knowledge, Emma volunteers with the Drupal and Ubuntu documentation teams. She is well known in the Drupal community not only for her technical knowledge, but also for her engaging and humorous means of bringing Drupal to a wider audience-such as the Drupal socks and their GPLed pattern. Through her consulting company HICK Tech, and at conferences around the world, Emma has inspired people to overcome fear, uncertainty, and doubt and to tackle problems head-on. She is known as “emmajane” on drupal.org and chronicles her adventures at http://www.emmajane.net.
Konstantin Käfer started his adventures into Web development in 1999. In high school, he led the Web development and school Web site class for several years. While still in high school, he also participated in Google's Summer of Code 2006, doing usability enhancements for the Drupal project. In the Drupal community, he is widely known for his JavaScript skills. Konstantin has been a speaker at several DrupalCons and other Open Source conferences. He is currently studying IT Systems at the Hasso Plattner Institute Engineering in Potsdam, Germany. He also works as a consultant for NowPublic, a large citizen journalism Web site based on Drupal. He can be found blogging on http://kkaefer.com about design, Web development, and Drupal.
Summary
“For Drupal to succeed, we need books like this.”
-Dries Buytaert, Drupal founder and project lead
“Drupal faces a common problem on the Web-the relative lack of new, high quality themes. Front End Drupal tackles this problem directly and is designed to help both experienced designers and rank novices get an understanding of how Drupal theming works. In fact, I'll be the first to admit I learned a lot from this book.”
- Dries Buytaert, Drupal founder and project lead
The Practical, Complete Guide to Customizing Drupal Sites with Behaviors, Themes, and Templates
Drupal is now the world's #1 open source content management system: Thousands of individuals and organizations are using it to build and update Web sites of virtually every kind. As Web designers and developers adopt Drupal, they need ways to quickly customize the visuals and interactivity of their sites. Drupal offers powerful tools for doing so, but little guidance on using them effectively. Front End Drupal is the solution. In this book, two expert Drupal developers cover everything you need to know to create great visual designs and state-of-the-art interactivity with Drupal's behaviors, themes, and templates.
Front End Drupal is 100% focused on issues of site design, behavior, usability, and management. The authors show how to style Drupal sites, make the most of Drupal's powerful templating system, build sophisticated community sites, streamline site management, and build more portable, flexible themes. You'll also gain hands-on experience through several case studies that walk you through the customization of everything from page templates to Web site forums.
- Prepare and organize content so it's easier to integrate into Drupal Web sites
- Structure Drupal page templates that are easy to work with
- Configure Drupal with the modules and browser tools you need to customize your site
- Utilize Drupal's Starter Themes and themes converted from WordPress, Joomla!™, and Drupal 5.x
- Maximize the power and usability of Drupal's content editing forms
- Build usable community sites with user profiles, comments, and user-generated content
- Use JavaScript™ to make your themes interactive and to enhance usability
- Create powerful animations and AJAX callbacks with jQuery, Drupal's JavaScript library
About the Web Site
The accompanying site, frontenddrupal.com, contains all sample code and themes presented in this book.
