Web Development
Drupal Tutorial - Decide your website's layout and theme
A template handles the appearance and the style of your website and its choice is an important step that you should take when creating it. A key factor in your decision should be the responsiveness of the selected template in many screen sizes, because the more internet traffic now is from mobile devices (smartphones and tablets). It also would be good to has continuous support from the developer in order any errors to be corrected quickly.
Select a layout and a theme
Firstly you will have to decide the layout of your website. For the purposes of this tutorial we will create the Homepage, About us, Blog and Contact pages.
The next step is to find a beautiful, convenient and matching theme that is consistent with the purpose of your website creation, your personal style and your target audience. On the internet there are thousands choices for free or even paid. Make sute that you will download your theme from a reliable source like the official Drupal repository. For this example we selected and recommend the Bootstrap theme, which is on from the most well know themes with features like responsive layout and mobile friendly design.
Install the selected theme
To install the theme you have selected, you will have to login to the Drupal administration panel and then click the Appearance > Install new Theme link. From there you can upload the theme file by clicking the Install button.
After some seconds for the installation you will be able to enable your new theme, by clicking the Enable newly added themes link. This option will transfer you in the page where you can see all the installed themes on your website. Find your new theme named Bootstrap and click the Enable and set as default button. Finally you can reload your website and see your new theme.
Where to pay attention
Keep only the theme you use on your website. If you have any template from the pre-installed ones or one that you added later and you do not use them anymore, it would be good to remove it from your installation.
Usually templates that are not in use become obsolete and we avoid to update them even if the application prompts for it. It makes sense to think that there is no need to update them because they are not used. At this point is where security issues are generated since the code of the theme may not be used on your website, but is uploaded on the Internet and is accessible under certain conditions.
The existence of outdated code is an attraction for hackers, and may in some unspecified manner enable them to use this code and possibly exploit other security holes of the application.
Uninstalling unused themes from your website the signs of possible vulnerabilities are significantly reduced. Additionally the total space that occupied by your website is reduced and that benefits file uploads, backup creation and the traffic by handling smaller size files.