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Change that Form Element - Give a fieldset a class

I looked for this a few times and didn't find it so I decided to write a quick blog post for future themers to discover. You see Drupal is full of forms and fields. There are any number of reasons that you may want an element on a form to be identified by a unique class or ID. I ran into this today when I wanted to theme a fieldset, provided by a module, that didn't have a class on the fieldset. Now there are many ways to theme a fieldset by using the divs that contain the fieldset.

More Bigger Again - Preprocess - this time to get some Class

Last week I wrote about preprocess functions and wanted to do a little follow-up because I was having even more fun making changes, adjustments, and alterations. There is so much here for themers, there is an excess of options and they can be organized and structured very well. Again, as I often say, I do not profess to be a php-guy (I continue to get better, and using it daily now, someday I will be where I want to be with it...) so this structure and framework has been completely awesome for me. So what's next with preprocess...

Too Much?! more power from your node.tpl

The less tpl files the better. Don't get me wrong... LOVE the tpl file, can't live without the tpl file... If I need several tpl files, let's do it... but, in some cases, one tpl file can provide enough power and flexibility to handle several content types, and keep the job of a themer a little easier.. o.k., not easier, but a little cleaner for my tastes.

The magic is the preprocess functions. Here's a little about the preprocess function.

It's hook_link_alter over jQuery or CSS alone

Last year I would have tried to approach this problem with some kind of image/text replacement... This year it's a whole new ballgame. The Drupal theming layer is like an onion and I continue to pull back the outer pieces and get to better and better stuff. Maybe it is more like a Parfait (thanks Donkey from Shrek) ;)

So here's what I wanted to do. Drupal gives us a teaser output with comment links.

3 comments | 2 new comments

Great, awesome, cool... great to have, now I want more... I want an image to replace the word "comments". I'm not going to rely on css alone... I'm not going to rely on some jQuery (which I love)... I'm going to use hook_link_alter and get it done in the code.

Takeaways From Do It With Drupal

In December 2009 I attended Do It With Drupal in New Orleans http://www.doitwithdrupal.com . It was a mixed blessing as I was pleased to find that my Drupal skills are pretty awesome. Most of the sessions were below my current level of development (which while I was unhappy about it, I was also happy my skill level grown so fast so quickly). Some of the highlights for me included:

Ryan Szrama, what a pleasure it was to listen to him present. I was able to talk with him briefly over a brownie and meet his wilfe and new baby daughter. http://www.doitwithdrupal.com/speakers/ryan-szrama

Cron run ?!? I can't get it to crawl!

Cron is one of the most important aspects of having a drupal site. And it can be a pain to figure out, configure, and be sure it's running. I have tried several different processes, and here is the one I like right now...

Maybe I Don't Want that in my Form

Sometimes... most of the times... I don't want the "split summary at cursor" option on the sites I develop. There are any number of reasons I don't want it. Most of the times, it just isn't relevant and others... I just don't want the users asking a milion quesitons.


And inevetibally, there is more stuff I don't want in my forms, want differently, or want moved.


My solution has been that on all the sites I develop I have a custom module. In this modules is one of my most used hooks... form alter. I have it all set up and commended out some of the lines but leave them in for quick reference...


I'll show it to you, then explain a little more....My module name is theme_thingee, and here's how I have it set up.

This Themer's Path to a Pane

A Themer's Solution....

I have in my theme a directory called plugins.
in there I have layouts and styles
in styles I have a folder called thintop
and... in there I have 2 files (tho I have commented out the template file in favor of this fancy rendering which gives me admin links and extra stuff in my pane...
thintop.inc and THEME-NAME-thintop.tpl.php
(based on http://drupal.org/node/495654)
good info at http://drupal.org/node/427192

Module Shout Out! Semantic Views

I am very, very impressed with Semantic Views http://drupal.org/project/semanticviews

Just because you CAN overwrite views template files... doesn't mean you always want to. Or I should say there are times when all of the mark-up just isn't needed, or just a little more would be nice. When Views 2 gave us the ability to re-write the markup of the field... I was very happy... Now, thanks to bangpound and a video (http://adaptivethemes.com/semantic-views-module-for-drupal-6-video-tutorial) by the incredible Jeff Burnz... I have a new fav module of the moment.

Preprocess for some Shortcuts

I came across this little extra nugget while looking for some stuff for preprocessing. How many times have I typed out base_path and path_to_theme... With this little gem I am just a few keys faster, and lovin it.



function themename_preprocess(&$vars, $hook) {
$vars['theme_path'] = base_path() . path_to_theme() .'/';
}