Okay, so I decided I agreed with Vermyndax that my last custom theme had puke colors. I wanted a dark theme for the site, but dark themes can be so hard to read that I didn't want to do that to my readers, so I went with a slightly blue/gray text area and a dark background. The text area isn't white so there wouldn't be a stark contrast between it and the black border to hurt your eyes. I think it's a good compromise. I still have some tweaking work to do, but I have to say I like it!

This theme was created entirely with Gimp and PHPEclipse on my Linux laptop.

And yes, I know the right nav panel doesn't work quite right in IE6 (3.7% of my visitors use this.) Get a real browser. Upgrade to IE7 at least if you can't figure out how to install Firefox.

I've just done several tweaks to my drupal install. I've installed and activated the Gravatar module, so if you have a Gravatar (and if you don't you should) it will display by your comments.

I also added the comment_info module so that your name and email will be remembered from visit to visit.

A bit of touch up to the CSS and theme styles to make everything float and break where I'd intended smoothed out the last little bit. I hope these changes will help improve your visit experience.

I just finished a new custom Drupal theme for my wife's website. Check it out! Completely designed from scratch using Gimp and Eclipse.

I spent a few hours tonight reworking the Drupal theme I run on my photography website. It's definitely a bit out of the ordinary for what a Drupal blog typically looks like. It uses the Javascript Galleria photo gallery to display the photos.

I have a web host for one of my sites that overrides all URL's that begin with /admin or /user. Why both, I don't know, but they redirect both of those to their own administration console login.

That kind of throws a monkey wrench in setting up Drupal, which when using Clean URL's requires both of those and will conflict with the host redirect.

So, I found a little known trick of URL rewriting in Drupal 6 to cause both of those URL's to change for the entire site. Add the following lines to the bottom of your settings.php file:

function custom_url_rewrite_outbound(&$path, &$options, $original_path) {
  // Change all 'admin' to 'adm'.
  if (preg_match('|^admin(/.*)|', $path, $matches)) {
    $path = 'adm'. $matches[1];
  }
  // Change all 'user' to 'usr'.
  if (preg_match('|^user(/.*)|', $path, $matches)) {
    $path = 'usr'. $matches[1];
  }
  if ($path == 'admin') {
    $path = 'adm';
  }
  if ($path == 'user') {
      $path = 'usr';
   }
} 

function custom_url_rewrite_inbound(&$result, $path, $path_language) {
  if ($path == 'adm') {
    $result = 'admin';
  }
  if ($path == 'usr') {
    $result = 'user';
  }
  if (preg_match('|^adm(/.*)|', $path, $matches)) {
    $result = 'admin'. $matches[1];
  }
  if (preg_match('|^usr(/.*)|', $path, $matches)) {
    $result = 'user'. $matches[1];
  }
}

After that quick fix, your Drupal site will now use /adm and /usr for the appropriate subdirectories.

I've just implemented my first 100% custom Drupal theme. I'm still in the process of tweaking it, and have some blocks to still add, but for the most part this is the new look.

I just realized today that the Image module I use in Drupal was not showing any images unless you were logged in as the administrator. Since I'm always logged in, I didn't know the problem existed.

Two checkboxes later and now everyone gets to see the picture goodness in posts.

Well, I've talked about it for a while, but I just took the plunge.

I just migrated my OSS Ramblings blog to the new domain and moved all the old posts into the new Drupal engine. I really like Drupal, and I'm thrilled that I was able to save all my old posts from my Nucleus CMS site.

I'm sure there'll be a few issues with the old import, but at least the text is here. Any that had images uploaded along with the post probably will be lacking the images.