Introduction to Basic

BASIC was originally developed for internal use to develop themes at Raincity Studios (Vancouver)
After using the ZEN theme for years, we realised that it was getting too complicated, had too much
files and overrides, so we decided to develop a strip down version of it and BASIC
was created.

ZEN became a fairly big piece of code and we felt like for each project we didn't need most of
it. So we took what we use all the time in ZEN, and removed all the things we felt were unnecessary.

The layout was also modified to make it easier to modify. Most of the CSS was brought down to a 
strict minimum, and the templates were also recoded to make them as clear as possible.

BASIC is not intended for beginners, and if you're not sure, try ZEN first, and maybe later
try basic.
BASIC is now used for professional projects by multiple drupal agencies around the world.

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Installation

- Download Basic from http://drupal.org/project/basic
- Unpack the downloaded file and place the Basic folder in your Drupal installation under 
  one of the following locations:

    * sites/all/themes
    * sites/default/themes
    * sites/example.com/themes 

- Log in as an administrator on your Drupal site and go to 
  Administer > Site building > Themes (admin/build/themes) and make Basic the default theme.

- if you want to change the name of the theme from 'basic' to another name like 'mytheme',
follow these steps (to do BEFORE enabling the theme) :

	- rename the theme folder to 'mytheme'
	- rename basic.info to mytheme.info
	- Edit basic.info and change the name, description, projet (can be deleted)
	- In basic.info replace [basic_block_editing] and [basic_rebuild_registry]
	  by [mytheme_block_editing] and [mytheme_rebuild_registry]
	- In template.php change each iteration of 'basic' to 'mytheme'
	- In theme-settings.php change each iteration of 'basic' to 'mytheme'

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What are the files for ?
------------------------

- basic.info => provide informations about the theme, like regions, css, settings, js ...
- block-system-main.tpl.php => template to edit the content
- block.tpl.php => template to edit the blocks
- comment.tpl.php => template to edit the comments
- node.tpl.php => template to edit the nodes (in content)
- page.tpl.php => template to edit the page
- template.php => used to modify drupal's default behavior before outputting HTML through 
  the theme
- theme-settings => used to create additional settings in the theme settings page

In /CSS
-------

- default.css => define default classes, browser resets and admin styles
- ie6 => used to debug IE6
- ie7 => used to debug IE7
- layout.css => define the layout of the theme
- print.css => define the way the theme look like when printed
- style.css => contains some default font styles. that's where you can add custom css
- tabs.css => styles for the admin tabs (from ZEN)

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Changing the Layout

The layout used in Basic is fairly similar to the Holy Grail method. It has been tested on 
all major browser including IE (5>8), Opera, Firefox, Safari, Chrome ...
The purpose of this method is to have a minimal markup for an ideal display. 
For accessibility and search engine optimization, the best order to display a page is ]
the following :

	1. header
	2. content
	3. sidebars
	4. footer

This is how the page template is buit in basic, and it works in fluid and fixed layout.
Refers to the notes in layout.css to see how to modify the layout.

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UPDATING BASIC

Once you start using basic, you will massively change it until a point where it has nothing
to do with basic anymore. Unlike ZEN, basic is not intended to be use as a base theme for a 
sub-theme (even though it is possible to do so). Because of this, it is not necessary to
update your theme when a new version of BASIC comes out. Always see Basic as a STARTER, and 
as soon as you start using it, it is not BASIC anymore, but your own theme.

If you didn't rename your theme, but you don't want to be notified when basic has a new version
by the update module, simply delete "project = "basic" in basic.info

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Thanks for using BASIC, and remember to use the issue queue in drupal.org for any question
or bug report:

http://drupal.org/project/issues/basic

Current maintainers:
* Hubert Florin (couzinhub) -http://drupal.org/user/133581
* Steve Krueger (SteveK) -http://drupal.org/user/111656