Drupal : Themed Taxonomy

As discussed in my last post we've been looking at CMS's at work. In particular we did some tests with Drupal and TextPattern. We seem to have settled on Drupal. Mostly because of an existing (and stable) LDAP module. For our tests we looked at an existing project that was built as a static site with editors using Contribute. In the next iteration of this site we need to look at adding search functionality as well as making the structure more flexible without loosing the strengths of the current site. Those strengths offer some very real challenges to any CMS. Specifically the site uses over 20 distinct templates because each themed area has it's own look. In researching Drupal I eventually came across the Taxonomy Theme module which may offer the best way to handle this. I've installed it twice now ; once on our development server and once on my laptop. Both times I initially assumed that enabling the Taxonomy module would make it magically appear (it doesn't). Both times I thought that installing and enabling the module would make it appear (it doesn't). In fact like most Drupal modules you need to find the modules settings page (Administer > By Module > Taxonomy Theme > Taxonomy Theme) after enabling it. Enabling the module in the Global settings allows you to then select a different theme for each Taxonomy term (available from the Taxonomy tab in the Taxonomy Theme area). Obviously you'll need to define a taxonomy and create a list of terms first.

The thing that surprises me is that enabling any module in Drupal requires a very similar process and yet despite this we still intend to move forward with Drupal. We move forward in the full knowledge that we as developers have much to learn so that our users will have little to learn.