Based on Emma's insanely popular conference presentation, Functional Fips, this workshop combines tutorials, videos and discussion to help designers master the basics of PHP. Every class begins with a checkpoint and ends with an assignment to make sure you know that I know that you know how this stuff all works. Practical lessons will allow you to immediately apply what you learn to your own projects and sample code will be provided so that you never get left behind.

Topics

In this course participants will use the Drupal administrative interface and a simple text editor to:

• Identify variables available for use in common PHPtemplate files.
• Alter templates to show/hide information based on available variables.
• Alter templates to change the layout based on available variables
• Create preprocess functions which add new variables to the template files.
• Find and adapt PHP snippets from the Drupal Theme Handbook for use in their own themes.
• Identify and use appropriate functions from Drupal and PHP to alter the output of date fields.

By the end of this online course participants will be using PHP and Drupal-specific functions to perform a variety of customization tasks. Lessons will be focused on teaching you the necessary tools to complete specific tasks and then show you how to generalize and extend the principles for use in other theming tasks.

Who should attend

If you've already created a basic theme in Drupal and want to master the template.php file and other (more advanced) techniques, this course is for you. If you've never created a Drupal theme you may want to get a copy of Front End Drupal first. This class may be taken simultaneously with Design to Theme in Five for a really intensive immersion into the world of theming Drupal.

Praise for this class

"I'm loving the class so far, thank you for providing it at such a great price." Anja S.

Class format

PHP for Designers will be taught online. Participants will get access to a private course Web site. Every week new assignments will be released and students will be able to work through the material at their own pace. A discussion forum will be available to ask questions and post success stories. Class size is limited. You will get individualized feedback when you ask questions. You do not need to have a fancy computer to participate in this class, although a fast Internet connection will give you easier access to additional materials.