Nothing new to report.  First time back since Dec 5th it seems…  Glad I’ve started this blog because I had four updates to run, including core, and it only took about 30 minutes to do the backups the updates and the reconfigs.  Nice.  Getting faster – encouraging.

I remember not being able to get TinyMCE to work perfectly, or to get the Image module to stop displaying an error.  So my questions are: do I need these really?  And if I can’t answer that question, perhaps it’s time to start listening to conventional Drupal Newbie wisdom and only add modules one at a time as I come across a distinct need for them, and once I’ve attained a certain level of comfort with Drupal itself.

Whatever.  Let’s break stuff!

I’ve often heard it said that some people do their best work when they are away from the problem at hand.  Though my “best” is someone else’s “duh,” it was still nice to come back to Drupal today and finally implement a module-based tpl.php file.

For my own memory (and to give some of you a chance to say “duh” one more time… cuz really, it is a fun thing to say, and the last time you could say with feeling was on some playground at recess when the playground monitor was busy dealing with the real baddy, and you wanted to feel good about your 4 foot self, right?):

1. tpl.php files allow you to theme output in an increasingly specific manner through the use of dashes and naming conventions.
2. block.tpl.php will theme all content outputted in blocks.
3. block-<module>.-tpl.php will theme all blocks outputted by the module you mention
4. block-<module>-<delta>.tpl.php will output a specific instance of something generated by a module inside a block.

In order to use a more specific tpl.php file, the more basic one has to exist in your theme’s template folder first @Important! (yes, brushing up on my CSS – haven’t used it since 2001)

You may have block-menu.tpl.php in your theme’s folder, but unless you also have block.tpl.php, drupal won’t read your more specifc one (unless I’ve just happened upon a bug – this is the only way my drupal installation “sees” my more specfic file, but it always registers the other one, cleared cashes and all).