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Introducing Sub-theming Video Tutorials

by Jessica L Hayes
May 23, 2017

Have you been working on your site and thinking to yourself, "I wish I could tweak this one little thing; it would look so much better!" Or, "I'm a wizard at CSS and if I could just figure out how SiteFarm's structure works, I could really take our site to the next level!" While it's always been possible, up until now you may have felt like it's too hard a process to understand or not know how to break into the world of custom theming. We have you covered.

Our teammate, Anthony Horn, is one of our lead front-end designers and he has put together a video series introducing you to the steps involved in creating a custom subtheme for your site(s). His four videos provide steps for:

acquiring the code from Site Factory where your site's code base exists,
setting up your computer for local development,
installing our Starter Kit to give you a hand-up in the creation process, and finally, once your custom styles have been created and tested locally,
how to upload your new subtheme to your site again.

While the videos make the process simple to understand and create a wonderful introduction to dipping your toe in the sub-theming pool, it's important to understand that sub-theming still requires users to already know or be willing to learn how to use the necessary applications (Git, Bitbucket, terminal commands) and how to write Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and/or JavaScript. And, too, taking on the Site Builder role in Site Factory to sub-theme your site means you understand you're undertaking custom work that isn't supported by the SiteFarm team.

If you're curious and want to explore, it's an exciting way to use our default suite as a jumping-off point to learn some of the underpinnings of Drupal and how you can truly make it your own. The very nature of the process, namely making a copy to your local computer, means you can experiment safely without negatively impacting your live site, giving you a worry-free environment for trying new things.