Book Review: Drupal 5 Themes

The first thing new Drupal developers ask me is, "How do I make my new Drupal site look different from the rest?" Drupal 5 Themes by Ric Shreves is the first book dedicated entirely to theming Drupal. This topic certainly deserves its own book and I'm glad we now have it. (On the down side Drupal 6 is already released and Drupal 7 is in the works.)

Somehow I’ve been able to avoid advanced theming by using sub-contractors or taking themes from the Drupal Theme Garden. But I realize that designers and programmers cannot go it alone. In order to build the most interactive sites, we need to reach across the gap and learn a bit about each other’s craft. Enter Drupal 5 Themes.

The book is written for designers who need to learn some base level Drupal theming. It covers Drupal’s use of the abstraction layer in a way that is easy to understand. And while the pace and brevity are appropriate for the non-programmer, be prepared to look at some code: Chapter 8 does a good job of exposing novices to the template.php file and the form_alter api, allowing them to take advantage of some of Drupal’s more advanced modification options.

As a programmer, my favorite section was Chapter 4 - A guide to Themeable Functions (p.87)—it makes an excellent quick reference guide by listing theme functions and their definitions, organized by module. I find these sorts of things super useful, relieving the poor souls who answer my endless questions in the Drupal-support IRC channel about "What is the right theme function to use?"

But this list, as well as the book in general, is limited as it only addresses theme functions in the Drupal core. Most sites I’ve developed have 20+ modules loaded, in addition to the Drupal core. It would be great to have additional references for popular modules and their theme functions. For instance, the Content Construction Kit and Views modules are becoming the preferred way of building forms, detail pages, and lists, therefore deserve addressing.

I recommend this book to designers who need to learn some Drupal, as well as to new Drupal programmers who are looking to get a handle on Drupal's abstracted theme layer. But the established Drupal programmer, like myself, will find it a little too brief and lacking in real world use cases, considering Drupal’s modular capabilities.