| Themes are something you'll run across a lot in the PHP-Nuke world. A theme is basically just the "look and feel" for your site. Maybe you prefer a site with a white background, subtle graphics, and black text: That's your theme. Others prefer a site with fancy, metallic-looking graphics, a dark background, and very small textthat's their theme. PHP-Nuke actually comes with a bunch of themes that you can choose from, and there are, at last count, 1.32 jillion additional themes available for purchase (or for free) out on the Internet. Seriously, some people spend their entire lives making themes so that you don't have to. I'll be covering themes in more detail in Topic 52, "Understanding Themes," but for right now, you need to understand a few basics: Every graphic, color, font selection, and other visual element is dependent on the theme. Change the theme, and any visual element of your site will change with it. Some themes don't allow a place for a banner ad at the top of the page. Others might not include a right column of blocks. That's okay; it's just a decision the theme's author made. So the theme can, to a degree, control the content possibilities of your site. Simple themeslike those included with PHP-Nukemay include just some basic graphics and colors. Others may use complicated Macromedia Flash animations, fancy sliding menus, or other cool elements. These themes may take a bit more work to install on your Web site. You can probably make your own theme by customizing one of the simpler themes that comes with PHP-Nuke: tweaking colors, changing fonts, replacing graphics with your own, and so forth.
Themes provide your site's visitors with a visual experience, and this should match your site's content and mission. For example, a site about cars might use graphics that look like diamond-plate metal and might use icons of tools throughout the site. A site on gardening might use graphics or curly vines as the border between articles and might use dark green text or a light green background to help reinforce the gardening theme. From the Fridge I spent about two weeks coming up with a theme for my www.ScriptingAnswers.com site. It was really complex, with lots of cool swooshing graphics, amazingly complex icons, and lots of blink stuff to attract attention to various portions of the page. My users hated it. Whoops. I backed off and came up with a simpler, cleaner design that was less likely to make people's eyes bleed. That went over much better. The moral of my story? Make sure you attract users who will appreciate your artistic endeavors, instead of ungrateful wretches who just want a site that's "easy to use" and "doesn't make my eyes bleed." (No, I'm just kidding.) |
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