Installing, Extending, and Upgrading the Georgia Tech Drupal 7 Theme

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Installing the Georgia Tech Theme

You will need to download both the current Georgia Tech Drupal Theme package, and the GT Tools module.

  1. Install the GT Tools module into your sites/all/modules directory, and the Georgia Tech Drupal Theme package into your sites/all/themes directory.
  2. Log into your site with administrative privileges and enable the GT Tools module.  Please note that you do not have to enable the GT Content Types or GT Directory sub modules that come with GT Tools.
  3. Go to the Appearance administration page and enable the "Georgia Tech - Drupal 7 Theme" and make it the default theme.
  4. After enabling the new theme, follow the Settings link shown below its name to configure the theme's settings, using our GT Theme Settings Guide as a reference as needed.

Extending the Georgia Tech Theme

The recommended way of extending the Georgia Tech Theme to meet your unit's special needs is to create a sub-theme instead of modifying any of the files in the Georgia Tech Theme.  This way, when new versions of the official theme are released, you can just drop them into place and not have to figure out all the different things that you customized.

As a way to get started quickly, there is an unofficial GT Sub-theme package that you can use as a base for your own custom sub-theme.

An important hint for those new to sub-themes:  on your Appearance administration page, you set your sub-theme to be your enabled and default theme.  It will then include everything that it needs from your base theme (the official Georgia Tech Drupal Theme).  For this reason, you must leave the Georgia Tech Drupal Theme installed on your site, and it's a good idea to leave it enabled as well.

For advanced developers, there is also a Sass based version of the official Georgia Tech Drupal Theme.

Upgrading the Georgia Tech Theme

It is highly recommended that you first test any new version of the official Georgia Tech Drupal Theme against a copy of your website to make sure you fully understand the effect it will have on your pages and content.

If you have done all of your customizations in a sub-theme, then upgrading the official Georgia Tech Drupal Theme is very easy:

  1. Download the latest version of the Georgia Tech Drupal Theme
  2. Backup the existing files in your sites/all/themes/gt directory and then remove the directory.
  3. Remove the sites/all/themes/gt directory.
  4. Install the Georgia Tech Drupal Theme package into your sites/all/themes directory.
  5. Log into your site with administrative privileges and flush all of the caches.  This can be done on the Configuration -> Development -> Performance administration page, or via the 'Home' menu if you have the Admin Menu third-party module installed.
  6. Go to the Georgia Tech Drupal Theme settings page and verify that all of the available settings are correct.  Note: it has been observed that sometimes after upgrading the theme, you will find all of the settings fields blank the first time you visit the settings page.  If this happens, simply switch to the global theme settings page and the go back to the GT theme settings page, and your old settings should be restored.

Please note that a new version of the Georgia Tech Drupal Theme could cause conflicts with custom CSS and template code in a sub-theme, so you'll have to watch for these issues and update any custom CSS/template files accordingly.