At the Open Source Lab we host many of our sites as a Drupal multisite. This means that we have several instances of Drupal using the same theme, and then we can populate each site with different content as needed (for instance, cass.oregonstate.edu and osuosl.org would be different websites with different messages, but with Drupal they can look and act the same. Pretty neat!). Since not all of our sites are used by the OSL (i.e. the Center for Applied Systems and Software), I recently needed to make our logo and organization name into variables so that the user could just upload an image and fill in a text box to customize the site theme to their organization. Luckily, Drupal makes my job pretty easy.

First, I created a file osuosl-setting.php. Since our theme is titled osuosl, there are some things I can hard-code under our company name and this seemed like one of them. The first step to magic variabilization is to alter the systems theme settings and the form that controls them. Drupal’s naming scheme is a little wonky (as you end up with things like hook_field_attach_prepare_translation_alter()), but in a roundabout way it makes sense. To digress a bit into this topic, let’s break down the osuosl_form_system_theme_settings_alter name. The first part of Drupal’s function names is the object that it is affecting. In this case, osuosl is the name of our theme, and the theme is the thing we are trying to add something to (you could also be trying to make changes to blocks, pages, hooks, and a variety of other things). Then, within the theme we are modifying the form_system. This includes any forms that are default in the Drupal theme, such as the settings form found under Appearance->Theme->Settings. Next, as seen in the previous example, we’re modifying the theme settings form. And finally, we are altering the form (as opposed to creating it, deleting it or setting variables within it). This is how we get to osuosl_form_system_theme_settings_alter. It’s not intuitive, but Drupal has excellent documentation to help you along. Now, on to some code!

<?php
function osuosl_form_system_theme_settings_alter(&$form, $form_state){
}
?>

Next, there are two variables that need to be added to the form. For each of these, we need to add them to the theme_settings array, and then make them into their own arrays to store all the necessary information about them.

<?php
    function osuosl_form_system_theme_settings_alter(&$form, $form_state){
        $form['theme_settings']['logo'] = array();
        $form['theme_settings']['site_name'] = array();
  }
?>

Now we’ll fill in some variables about the logo and name

<?php
function osuosl_form_system_theme_settings_alter(&$form, $form_state){
    $form['theme_settings']['logo'] = array(
          '#type' => 'managed_file',
          '#title' => t('logo'),
          '#required' => TRUE,
          '#default_value' => theme_get_setting('logo'),
          '#upload_validators' => array(
              'file_validate_extensions' => array('git png jpg jpeg')
              )
          );
    $form['theme_settings']['site_name'] = array(
          '#type' => 'textfield',
          '#title' => t('site_name'),
          '#default_value' => theme_get_setting('site_name')
          'required' => TRUE,
          );
}
?>

Now that osuosl-settings.php was done and my variables were ready to be put into the theme, I needed to add some defaults for them so that if the user didn’t upload a logo or org name, there would still be something there. I decided to use the OSL logo and organization name under the assumption that the theme will be used primarily by us. So in osuosl.info, I added the lines:

  settings[logo] = images/logo-full.png
  settings[site_name] = OSU Open Source Lab

Finally, I had to call my variables in the Drupal templates so that they would be rendered when the site was built!

  <a href="/"><img src="<?php print theme_get_setting('logo'); ?>" alt="<?php print (theme_get_setting('site_name'));?>" /></a>

Ta-da! Now, all the user has to do is go to Appearances->Theme->Settings to upload a new logo and fill in their organization name!