### An introduction to template suggestions

Most Drupal users are aware that they can make a template file called front.tpl.php, which will style the front page of a site. Another commonly used template is node.tpl.php, which will style nodes. Generally, designers will stop there, as they wish to establishing an overall style for the site, which requires considerable skill and work. They put their effort into styling the regions and the css which will have a big impact on visitors.

In fact, these template names are not hard coded into Drupal. For every page called on a site, Drupal considers an array of possibilites, called the 'suggestions', and chooses the most relevant. For example, a designer can target just about any page with a template, such as,

    node-86.tpl.php

You might be wonderning "Where does Drupal get these template 'suggestions'?" and "How do I find out what they are?"

You can find out what they are conclusively by adding a page preprocessor to code, and printing out the part of variable array 'suggestions'. Thus,

Or use the code intensive but pretty 'Theme Developer' section of the 'Devel' module.

There is a lighter and non-code way to find the name of template suggestions. All a designer has to do is guess, and in most cases they will be right! By default, Drupal constructs template suggestions by breaking up the URL. Replace URL hyphens with slashes e.g.

      ?q=node/56

will generate these suggestions,

    node-56.tpl.php
    node.tpl.php

Coders and themers can tinker with suggestions in bits of code called 'preprocessors'. For example, introduce their own suggestions. A theme coder can rework Drupal to find,

    page-fish-tank.tpl.php

And ask selected pages to respond this template. Despite the lack of a URL called www.[site]?q=fish/tank

### Template suggestions and the Taxonomy

By default the suggestions system will not target the taxonomy. So you can't call a template by names such as these,

    node-descendant-term-16.tpl.php
    vocabulary-7-term-3.tpl.php

Useful though they may sometimes seem.

However, there are good reasons for wanting some control in these areas. The Forum module, for example, stores it's data in the taxonomy, but clearly a designer will not want the forum to be styled like the site's content nodes! So the Forum module tinkers with template suggestions allowing a designer to style Forum pages in a distinctive way.

### Template suggestions and Taxonomy Treemenu

For similar reasons to the Forum module, Taxonomy Treemenu offers template suggestions.

The usual solution is by altering the URLs of the menus. This hands control of the rendering to Taxonomy Treemenu, giving several advantages such as control over breadcrumbing. Since the URLs are altered, Drupal automatically reconstructs the menu suggestions. Prefixing URLs with the menu name will provide template possibilites such as,

    page-ttm
    page-ttm-menu
    page-ttm-menu-weathersounds.tpl.php
    page-ttm-menu-weathersounds-node.tpl.php
    page-ttm-menu-weathersounds-term.tpl.php

This method is stock Drupal code and needs no extra overhead in terms of computer memory or CPU power.

(The module offers offers two solutions.)