Drupal Themes - SolarSentinel - April 2010
SolarSentinel Drupal Theme
SolarSentinel is ready to impress, with its staggering assortment of new, powerful and functional modules; its array of varying block hilites; a sophisticated and SEO friendly layout and incredible flexibility make the template an ideal choice for any situation.
Content is king with this template with a plethora of avenues available to showcase your content in a visually stunning and effective manner.
Features and Screenshots
- dRokNewsFlash Module
- dRokLatestNews Module
- dRokStories Module
- Source Ordered Layout
- Multi-column Menu
- RokMoomenu, Suckerfish, Splitmenu menus
- 10 Preset Styles
- 9 Block Variations
- W3C XHTML 1.0 Transitional. W3C CSS Valid
Modules, Modules and even more Modules!
The SolarSentinel theme release is accompanied by an army of modules. There are 4 new modules, dRokMicroNews, dRokHeadlines, dRokLatestNews and dRokNewsFlash which are all visible on the frontpage which provide a high degree of content control and visual majesty. There have never been so many ways to diversify your site.
Source Ordered Layout
SolarSentinel continues the latest trend of SEO optimised themes. The layout of the theme has been constructed differently to the norm. A typical Drupal theme, in regards to the mainbody source, will load the left column first, then the right column and finally the main column (where your main articles are loaded). SolarSentinel takes a different approach and loads the main column code before the left and right columns. Therefore, this template loads in this order: Header, Menu, Showcase, Main Column, Left Column, Right Column, Bottom, Footer. This is perfect for SEO purposes as the search crawlers will find your main content before your subsidiary content in your side columns. This is a major step forward and will improve your search engine results for your pages.
Installation
To Install Using the RocketLauncher
Download the SolarSentinel RocketLauncher (rt_solarsentinel_d6-rocketlauncher.zip) This is the RocketLauncher pack for SolarSentinel which is a complete Drupal install which has the theme pre-installed and configured. Similarly, the demo content is injected and the modules are also pre-installed.- Extract d_solarsentinel_d6-rocketlauncher.zip
- Copy the contents to the location you want to install Drupal
- Navigate to that location in your browser and run the Drupal installer
- Drupal, the theme, demo content and modules will all be installed and enabled
Install Theme and Modules Only
Download the SolarSentinel Theme (rt_solarsentinel_d6.tgz) This file is the theme-only package you will use to install just the theme into Drupal.- Extract d_solarsentinel_d6.tgz
- Load your FTP client, such as FileZilla
- Upload the d_solarsentinel_d6 folder to the /sites/all/themes/ folder in your Drupal install
- Login into the Drupal administrator
- Go to Administer | Themes
- Check Enable and Default to the right of SolarSentinel
- Click Save Configuration
- Extract d_solarsentinel_d6-modules.zip
- Extract the individual modules
- Load your FTP client, such as FileZilla
- Upload the various SolarSentinel modules folders to the /sites/all/modules/ folder
- Login into the Drupal administrator
- Go to Administer | Modules
- Enable the Custom Modules (Other) for SolarSentinel
- Click Save Configuration
Other Downloads
There are other files that you may wish to download that accompany the release, but are not required for the theme to work.
- SolarSentinel Source PNG(s) d-solarsentinel-sources.zip – This contains all the Adobe Fireworks PNG source files for the theme, and if applicable, the logo font.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Login into the Drupal administrator
- Go to Administer → Themes → SolarSentinel → Configure
- Change Settings
- Save Changes
Changelog
SolarSentinel ThemeThis is a non-exhaustive changelog for the SolarSentinel theme, inclusive of any alpha, beta, release candidate and final versions.
