Cloning a Theme

Let's get started by making a copy of the Zen theme. We'll keep the original and work on the copy. I recommend you always employ this approach to cloning themes: by preserving the integrity of the original, you have a reference and you maintain the ability to roll back your changes in the event a serious problem arises.

Cloning a theme is a simple matter. First, make a copy of the original theme and place the copied directories in the sites/all/themes directory. Next, rename the directory with your chosen theme name. In the case of the Zen theme, we also have to re-name the sub-theme, Zen-Fixed, which has its own directory.

Let's name the new primary theme Tao and the secondary theme Tao-fixed. The result of copying and renaming the directory should look like the illustration.

The result of cloning the Zen theme and re-naming the copied directories

After re-naming the theme, it is necessary to re-name any theme-specific functions.

Open the template.php file in our Tao directory...