Drupal 7 replaces the Drupal 6 Closure region with Page bottom and adds a matching Page top region for symmetry. You can change your Drupal 6 themes now to be ready for the change.

For this discussion, we will name our theme Aardvark after the wondrous and flexible Aardvark best known for a having a weird name.

Before launching into this change, make sure you add the code changes mentioned in Notes on converting a Drupal 6 theme in preparation for Drupal 7.

.info file

Your theme .info file might contain the following region definition or it might just inherit the Drupal default regions.

When you add any region entry to your .info file, you have to define all the regions. Your definitions are not added to the default regions, they replace the default list. Define all your current regions then replace Closure with Page top and Page bottom. You should have a set of region definitions containing the two following additional definitions.

page.tpl.php

Your theme contains a page.tpl.php file to print out the page and place the regions within the page. You added a $d7 variable and a conditional statement in Notes on converting a Drupal 6 theme in preparation for Drupal 7. This page uses the conditional statement.

Place the following code in the conditional statment. The Drupal 6 theme will add Closure to Page bottom then proceed the same way as Drupal 7. You can add other modifications to either the D7 part or the D6 part.

if($d7)
	{
	}
else
	{
	$page_bottom = $page_bottom . $closure;
	}

Page top

Find the following line in page.tpl.php.

Add a line straight after the body line so you now have the following code.

Page bottom

Find the following line in page.tpl.php.

Replace $closure with $page_bottom to create the following code.

Footer or Closure/Page bottom?

The Footer region is the right region to output information at the bottom of your page. Closure is used to output non display data including Google analytics HTML. Closure contains everything you want to send out after the page content is displayed. You should not need theme settings for Closure or Page bottom.

Some browsers do not display anything until they hit the end of the HTML. For those browsers, you really need to use some Javascript to include additional material after the body load completes.

Theme the new regions

Add whatever theme you require for the new regions. If you do not theme Closure, do not theme Page bottom or Page top.