The Basics of Drupal v. Joomla, Part 3: Themes and Templates

Third post in an on-going series comparing the basics of Drupal and Joomla.

In the "old days" of web development, you had separate files for each page on your website which contained a variety of information --  the design of the site, a menu system, as well as the content of the particular page. As the web has evolved, we've begun to try to keep some of these things separate (you may have heard discussions about separating presentation and content). Since most sites are now driven by some kind of a database, the content of each page doesn't have to be kept in a separate file. Once a page is requested, the content is pulled from the database and inserted into a "template"  or "theme" which contains the look-and-feel of the website, including menus and other sidebar information. (The template itself is separated into semantic code/markup–the structure of the page, and stylesheets–to tell the browser how to visually display that information. Going much further into that is beyond the scope of these introductory posts).

There are numerous benefits to doing it this way, including:

• Your content admins don't have to deal with the theme. They aren't loading up static files which also contain the look and feel and they aren't going to potentially mess something up or decide to modify it. Therefore:
• Your theme is consistent from page to page. Sometimes static files begin to degrade -- perhaps with repeated loading and editing by non-techies some paths have been modified or don't load correctly from another directory, images are broken, etc.
• You can control theme changes and visual refreshes from a central location. For example, changing a menu in the admin panel can change the menu on every page of the website -- you don't have to load each page individually to make the modification one at a time. If at some future date you decide to do a visual refresh of the website, you can have the theme modified and applied to the site from the admin panel.

Pre-made templates and themes

Both Drupal and Joomla have sources for templates that you can browse, download and install to your site – both free and paid. (Joomla refers to them as "templates" and Drupal calls them "themes"). When we work on a new non profit web design project, we start with an RFP to get a sense of your organization and then build a custom look-and-feel for your organization which is not shared by other sites. This can be important for an organization's identity, to build trust from your supporters and site visitors and also allow a more consistent and integrated brand presence if your brochures and stationery carry the look and feel throughout. If your organization simply doesn't have the budget for a design that is specific to your organization, you may want to start with a free theme to begin building the site out and commission a theme as your budget allows.

Questions? Suggestions?

If you have any particular questions you'd like answered in regard to Drupal and/or Joomla, please leave a comment below and we'll add it to our list of things to post about over the next weeks or months.