Note - you should only create custom themes in a test environment, leave your production website alone until you've got everything working!
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Download the newest version: http://drupal.org/project/zen
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Extract the files into a directory (e.g. tar -xzvf zen-6.x-1.1.tar.gz or winzip and extract)
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Upload the files using FTP (or better yet, SFTP) into the /drupal-root/sites/all/themes
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Upload the STARTERKIT directory that's inside your zen-6.x-1.1 folder from your pc into the /drupal-root/sites/all/themes
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Rename both the pc version and online STARTERKIT directory to your_subtheme_name (lowercase and underscores only)
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Inside both the pc version and the online STARTERKIT directory, rename the STARTERKIT.info.txt to your_subtheme_name.info
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On your pc, open the your_subtheme_name.info file and find and replace every "STARTERKIT" with "your_subtheme_name"
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inside your_subtheme_name.info find the following lines:
; The name and description of the theme used on the admin/build/themes page. name = Zen Sub-theme Starter Kit
Replace the "zen Sub-theme Starter Kit" with your_subtheme_name
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& 10. Do step 7 for the "template.php" and "theme-settings.php" files.
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Upload all 3 modified files (overwrite) to your /drupal-root/sites/all/themes/your_subtheme_name directory
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Using your FTP download the following files from:
/drupal-root/sites/all/themes/zen-6.x-1.1/zen/zen
html-elements.css, layout-fixed.css, layout-liquid.css, print.css, zen.css
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Upload all of the above files into your directory: /drupal-root/sites/all/themes/your_subtheme_name
12a. If you want a fixed (ie 1024px) css layout then rename layout-fixed.css to layout.css 12b. If you want a resizable css layout then rename layout-liquid.css to layout.css
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As the Drupal administrator login to your site and enable your new sub theme: Administer -> Site building -> Themes
http://yourdomain.com/admin/build/themes/select (you'll probably want to set it as default)
Apparently Drupal 6 is smart enough that when you click save:
For easier theme development, the theme registry is being rebuilt on every page request. It is extremely important to turn off this feature on production websites.
You may have to:
run cron manually (or you should be) so that the new options appear on the Drupal Menus.
Reload after you save the new theme as enabled & default