Using Drupal with existing template

[dailypress]

I started a new website (5 pages) and before opening it to publice I would like to translate the pages to Drupal.

What are the procedures of transferring HTML pages to Drupal using templates!

Any recommendations on what to read?

I am new to Drupal and in general CMS!

thanks,
D.P.

[dreamcatcher]

Your best bet might be the Drupal documentation and community forum. I`m sure you`ll find all your answers there.

dc

[jjmax]

The best advice I can give is to setup Drupal on your local PC, maybe using XAMPP or other similar server software. You can have a look at the templates that come with Drupal to see how they do things, you can also download other contributed templates.
Here's the link to the Drupal 6 theming documentation - [drupal.org...]
Drupal has a steep learning curve but it's worth the effort.

[mack]

I agree with jjmax, setting up Drupal on your local machine is a very good way to test and work out how you will deploy Drupal on your server.

In order to install Drupal on Windows you will need to install Apache, Mysql and Php. You can do this with one simple install using Xampp. Xampp is free software from the the Apache Software foundation. Once you install Xampp, you can then install drupal on your home server.

The drupal themes/templates aren't all that easy to work with. You will need to really study the default templates in order to fully understand how they work. The best advice I can offer is look into the simplest template you can find for drupal, that way you wont have quite so much complicated code to sort through.

Hope this gives you some ideas.

Mack.

[ergophobe]

I love drupal. Really. But the templates are just full of cruft because they try to provide every possible class for every possible situation. They draw CSS from many places (sometimes if you let it have its way, you can end up having 6-8 CSS files included from all over the place).

That said, if you aren't fussy about having lean, clean HTML, it isn't bad to modify a drupal theme.

A good way to start is to use the Zen theme, follow the install instructions and you'll end up with, within your drupal directory (i.e. web root in most cases):

/sites/all/themes/zen
/sites/all/themes/your-theme

Within the "your-theme" dir (which is obviously named something more appropriate), you'll have a bunch of files, but most notably

layout.css (essentially sets the wireframe layout)
your-theme.css (typography, overrides for other styles)
page.tpl.php (the framework HTML)

Modifying those files to import the HTML and CSS from your current pages will get you pretty close to where you want to be. Because your-theme.css is loaded last, anything you put in there should override defaults elsewhere, though on rare occasions you'll need to put in a !important.

Hope that helps.

[jjmax]

Theres an option within Drupal to aggregate the css files your site uses.
Under Administer - Performance. Enable "Aggregate and Compress CSS files". Don't do this until your site is finished development though!

[ergophobe]

>>Don't do this until your site is finished development though

Indeed! The aggregator helps with the performance issue (same page lets you aggregate Javascript files too), but it caches the generated CSS file, so then your changes won't update as make them. Definitely wait until it's where you want it before you enable that setting.

Also, the Performance panel in the admin area has a "clear cached data" button at the way bottom. That button is your friend while tweaking and debugging drupal.