Drupal® For Dummies®, 2nd Edition

Chapter 7

Changing Themes

In This Chapter

• Changing themes
• Configuring themes

In Drupal, the look and layout of the site is dependent on a set of files collectively called a theme. A Drupal theme is a bit like a skin or a Windows desktop theme. In Drupal, a theme controls the appearance of the fonts, how many columns are displayed, background colors, and the appearance of logos, buttons, and menu items.

When you first install Drupal, its default theme is called Bartik. While it's a perfectly nice theme, you aren't obligated to continue using it, nor should you be. After all, who wants a website that's identical to everything else on the Internet? Not only is it good to know how to change themes, but it's also fun to see your site change appearance with just the click of a button. In this chapter, you see how to change from the default theme to another preinstalled theme. We show you where you can preview and download even more themes (for even more suggestions, see Chapter 17). You find out how to swap quickly between themes while you're developing your site. Finally, you discover how to configure your theme.

Changing Themes

Getting and changing Drupal themes is one of the simplest administration tasks in Drupal. To change the look of your site, you can choose to enable preinstalled themes by changing a simple administrative setting.

Enabling a theme

Before you can use a theme, you must enable it — that is, set it so you can turn it on easily whenever you want to use it.

In ...