Changing Color of Garland Theme

Garland is the name of a Theme made for Drupal 5. It has a nifty feature: an easy color selector that lets you change your color scheme right within the Theme configuration form, no programming required.

If you're using the Garland Theme, or a Theme based on Garland, here's how you can change your colors:

Change download method to 'public'

First, a quirk in the process: You may have your site set to handle file downloads via a private, not public, method. That's a technical detail that would seem to have nothing to do with changing the Theme's color scheme, but it happens that the Garland scheme can only save new color information if the download method is set to 'public'.

To get around this oddity, you need to change the download method to public, then make the color changes, then (unless there's reason not to do so) change the download method back to 'private'.

Go to:

Navigation » Administer » Site configuration » File system

Under 'Download method', choose 'Public', and click 'Save configuration'.

Change color scheme

Go to:

Navigation » Administer » Site building » Themes

Check under the 'Default' column, and make sure Garland or a Garland-based Theme is chosen. Click 'configure'.

You should see a colorful wheel. You can choose a ready-made color set, or click an individual color element below that, and then pick its color on the wheel. Play with it a bit; you'll see how it works.

Make other changes to your Theme if you like (see Configuring Your Theme) and click 'Preview' or 'Submit' at the bottom.

Change download method back to 'private'

All done? Let's change the download method back to 'private', which is more secure.

Navigation » Administer » Site configuration » File system

Under 'Download method', choose 'Private', and click 'Save configuration'.

There you go. Those new colors – they're so you!