Sustainable Markup: How to be a themer in Drupal.

Have you ever “themed” your site in entirety, paying close attention to the layout of every page in your design, then you installed a new module and the theme seriously broke? Or how about this, did you remove a module and now a bunch of your pages look a little funky? Do you theme for the page or the parts? What if someone rearranges the parts of the page, did your theme stay intact? Don’t forget you are working with a CMS, people have access to buttons that change things!

Sustainable theming is rooted in semantic and reusable markup, markup that you can rely on. It’s an approach to front end development where you write comprehensive CSS, rather than writing your own HTML for every design. Drupal is a system, not a static website which is why it’s an advantage to leverage the markup that you see already in the system.

In this session we will cover the concepts and introductory techniques involved in being a more sustainable themer. While we will primarily focus on how the use of Zen as a base theme starts you off on the right foot, however we will not limit the conversation to just Zen. It’s important to remember that sustainable theming is not limited to one theme, technique or version of HTML.