My Drupal Blog

Previously, I covered the topic of creating custom regions in Drupal 5 themes. However, Drupal 6 introduced a new process for creating custom regions in themes and it is still one of the topics people ask about most frequently.

So, here's a tutorial on how to create custom regions in your Drupal 6 themes. In this example I will use the Garland theme, and insert a new region called 'Uber content', which I'll position above everything in the main content area.

It's basically a two-step process:

• step 1 - define the custom region in your theme's .info file
• step 2 - insert some PHP in your theme's page.tpl.php file wherever you would like the new region to appear

UPDATE
The following tutorial covers the creation of custom regions in Drupal 5 themes. If you are using Drupal 6 please see the newer creating custom regions in Drupal 6 themes instead.

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All Drupal themes you download will come with a number of pre-defined regions into which you can already place blocks (normally header, left-sidebar, content, right-sidebar, footer), but it can sometimes be useful to create your own.

This can seem a little daunting at first, but it's really just a simple two-step process:

• step 1 - define the custom region in your template.php file
• step 2 - add the custom region to your page.tpl.php file

So, lets see how it works.

Step 1 - define the custom region in your template.php file

All themes should have a template.php file contained within the theme folder.

Open the template.php file in your chosen editor and locate the function titled 'function nameoftheme_regions' (where nameoftheme will be the name of the theme to which you are adding a custom region). This will probably be the first function in the file, and should look something like this:

Okay, now just add your custom region so that it looks like the pre-defined regions.