Drupal for Designers

Foreword

Todd Ross Nienkerk

Partner and co-founder, Four KitchensAustin, Texas

Giving a web designer Drupal is like handing a child an empty paper towel roll and telling them to go play. Some kids look at the tube, turn it over in their hands, and look at you with confusion—or annoyance—as if to ask: “What am I supposed to do with this?” But the creative kids see much more than an old piece of gluey cardboard. With a little imagination, they know that by simply peeking through it, the tube is transformed into a telescope. Suddenly, the playground is now a bustling harbor, and perched atop the slide, they are captaining the most feared pirate ship at William Howard Taft Elementary. Stick a handle through the middle, and it’s a rolling pin. Add a cone to one end and some fins to the other, and it’s a rocket.

Then there’s the kid who uses it to roll up a hundred-foot-long sheet of perforated paper towels and sells it back to you at a premium because it’s “artisan-crafted.” That kid is a born marketer. We’re not going to talk about him. Walk away.

Like the empty paper towel roll, Drupal can both confuse and delight. With more than 15,000 modules, it can be extended to do virtually anything—assuming you have the patience to figure out how. This is what makes the role of a Drupal designer so rare and unique—so much so, in fact, that we don’t call them “designers.” We call them “themers.” Some CMS communities—WordPress, Joomla, or Expression Engine, for example—often separate designers from ...