Other Fun Things

Tips, tricks, and techniques.

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 probably have (and should have) your site set to handle file downloads via a private, not public, method. 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 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

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!

Free Aliases!

Below are useful built-in aliases, ready to take you to important pages. Just type the alias into your browser's address bar, after <your site domain>.

Drupal aliases

The following aliases come courtesy of Drupal:

 

The user login page. The first page you need as an administrator!

/user

List of registered users, with links to each individual user page.

/profile

Another way to get to individual user pages, by user number. The chief "ID 1" administrator's page is at /user/1; later users have later numbers.

/user/1, /user/2, /user/3, etc. 

The main Administer page, containing links to all the forms you need to manage your site.

/admin

Your site's Contact form, if the site is set up to use one.

/contact

Your site's main Forums page, if the site is set up for forums.

/forum

Your site's main Polls page, if the site is set up to use polls.

/poll

All blogs on the site.

/blog

The site's default front page, if another specific front page has not been set. (It's "/node" because the front page, by default, is a list of all front-page-promoted nodes.)

/node

Individual nodes, using the numbers automatically given them upon creation.

/node/1, /node/2, /node/3, etc.

Page listing all nodes tagged with the Term bearing the number. See Terms, Vocabularies, and Categories: "Tagging" Your Content.

/taxonomy/term/1, /taxonomy/term/2, etc.

List of posts, in order of posting.

/tracker