Converting and porting Drupal 5.x themes to Drupal 6.x

Most well designed (conceptual design) Drupal 5.x templates can be ported to Drupal 6 with few modifications. There are a number of changes in the way that the Drupal theming engine/setup functions in Drupal 6 in departure to the current theming engines in Drupal 5.x.

mythemename.info
Every theme package now has an information file that is necessary to identify the theme and make it possible for the Drupal core to list the relevant theme as an option in the theme selection part of the administration menu.

To make an existing Drupal 5.x theme usable in Drupal 6, we must add this file in the theme directory and edit it to fit the parameters and description of the theme at hand. Here are sample contents of the theme.info file.

; $Id: cmsproducer.info,v 1.0 2007/08/20 15:50:57Â Exp $
name = cmsproducer
description = CSS and. XHTML Strict/Modular layout theme
version = VERSION
core = 6.x
engine = phptemplate
; Information added by iDonny Productions 2007-08-20
version = "6.x-dev"
core = "6.x"
project = "drupal"
datestamp = "1186963423"

By placing the theme.info file in your theme folder, you will enable your theme to be listed in the theme selection section. Once the theme is available for selection, you should make this the active theme and test it to make sure that all the theming functions created in your template file, and all the regions are being properly addressed.