Drupal Themes, too few unattractiv?
Anthrazit - December 29, 2006 - 10:26
Hello all you Drupals! :)
I have long time been wondering about how few and unattractiv themes you can download here at drupal.org. Is there any other places where I can get some other?
I was also wondering about how hard it is to make your own theme, building out from another (like Kubrick from Andreas01), and how hard it is to do?
Happy new year to you all... :)
- Anthrazit
Many attractive themes!
Hmmm--I count 81 contributed themes available for download at http://drupal.org/project/Themes -- I wouldn't call that "few"! As for "unattractive"--well, taste differs, but I think some of the contributed themes look pretty slick.
How hard making a new theme based on an old one is depends on your background. If you know how to use HTML and CSS, and have a basic working knowledge of PHP, it'll be pretty easy, just takes a little time and work. However, if you've never designed a webpage before in your life it will certainly be more difficult. :)
It's definitely a good idea to make a copy of another theme and experiment with your copy--I found the thought of starting from scratch overwhelming, but in "borrowing" someone else's templates I was able to redesign, tweak, and modify a working theme until I had what I wanted.
=======================
Just another newbie.
XHTML Strict: it's the way to be.
=======================
Feature request: HTML Source Formatting in TinyMCE
A good place to start is to
A good place to start is to go into your "Themes" folder and copy the entire "bluemarine" folder. This is a simple three-column theme that is easily modified. Give the copied folder a different name and start by making simple modifications to the style.css file. Nearly everything in Drupal can be uniquely stylesheeted. If you're looking for a good four-column theme as a base for modifications, try installing the Channel Nine theme. Good luck!
Zen and Blue Breeze
In addition to bluemarine, I think the up and coming Zen and Blue Breeze themes are good for study and learning. And it will take some study and learning, the amount depends on experience. As for how hard it is to customize a theme, I think you'll have to give it a try and decide for yourself if it is worth the effort.
Blue Breeze is based on Zen & Garland and incorporates Zen's excellent documentation on template.php. The style sheets of each theme are organized in way I find very intuitive. Comparing and contrasting the style sheets of each theme makes for a good study in itself. I suggest you begin by reading the documentation on template.php. If this is over your head, read it again then set it aside and come back to it later. The theme will work fine without modifications to template.php but a familiarity will help you later when you may want to do more complex theming. Next, make simple changes to styles.css such as colors and sizes. The simpler things tend to most dramatically affect the look and feel of your theme and these tend to be near the top of styles.css. Use firefox with web developer toolbar to play and learn.
http://drupal.org/project/zen
http://drupal.org/project/bluebreeze
Also check out the Theme Developer's Guide
http://drupal.org/node/509
Please look at DrupalDesigns.com
Hi,
You can definitely develop any theme by selecting any theme from Drupal.org and learning through it. You can see some of our work on http://www.drupaldesigns.com
--
Roshan Shah
CEO & Chief Solutions Architect
BPO Canada Global Services Corporation, Canada
T : 604-630-4292
--
"Building Drupal Center of Excellence in Ahmedabad, India"
http://www.bpocanada.com : Skype : 'bpocanada' Yahoo IM : 'bpocanada'
...
I have a theme tutorial for 4.7 on my site (http://www.blkmtn.org/how-to-play-with-Yahoo-GRID-CSS) and am working on one for 5.0
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
I agree with the poster
What I've noticed during my time here is a little chip on the shoulder of drupal site owners. It's always about the potential and what can be done with drupal. I always hear this talk around developers but the facts are what they are and for good reason. I'm hoping nobody gets offended and they start to think about this and make improvements. I really want to use drupal but I need to find the right mix of cosmetics and functionality - it's not just one or the other.
I have a great looking Joomla site. In seeing drupals more simplistic, better laid out admin back end, I like it. It's a way smaller footprint too. From an aesthetic standpoint, Joomla smokes the doors of drupal unfortunately and with the exception of a few great looking sites, 9 out of 10 you can say "drupal" the same way you could about phpnuke sites.
I looked through all the themes here. Most of them scream boxy drupal with the exception of Ken Collins' insanely great Meta theme which will no doubt be installed all over the galaxy. I'd call the above themes "functional" but by no means hitting the sweet spot. Go to joomlart.com, templateplazza.com and joomlacrib.com and you'll see dozens of gorgeous looking templates. I went looking for paid templates for drupal and couldn't find many - godrupal.com showed me 40 or so of the same exact template with different graphics and colors. I looked at some of the professional stuff here too and I'm not so impressed. No, I'm not a Joomla lover just someone making an honest appraisal that anyone can tell without bias.
Drupal also suffers from extensive terminology (see "nodes" etc.) and even this web site is not nearly as well organized and easy to find what you want as Joomla is, where they have better support forums that are easy to search, etc. Resources easy to find and organized and rated with previews, etc. Yes, drupal is pretty well organized for this effort but it's POTENTIAL isn't the point. It's what it is now after all these years of effort. I think the effort needs to look more at the cosmetics too... and don't take my comments too harshly. :D I wouldn't be here if I didn't like a good deal of what I saw and recently installed.
I'd say that the Garland
I'd say that the Garland theme in Drupal 5.0 (check it out if you haven't already) is a significant improvement over Blue Marine for a general utility theme. You should also check one of the previous posts on zen and blue breeze.
As far as professional stuff goes, all of the people I know doing theming are working for clients to create very specific things to meet their needs. See: twit.tv, mtv.co.uk, musicbox.sonybmg.com, daughtryofficial.com, theonion.com, and airamerica.com. They aren't running themeshop businesses where they crank out stuff and charge a fee for it. There may be room for that kind of work in the community but I just haven't seen it. And yeah you are right, that godrupal site is less than impressive.
The important thing about the Drupal theme system is that if you learn it then it is incredibly easy to:
1) Create your own custom design and let your graphic designer go wild - there are plenty of drupal sites that look nothing like drupal.
2) Go grab wordpress theme (or similar) or go check out the open source web design site and convert one of those themes.
===
BuyBlue.org | The Blue Fund
Well.. :)
Other who have something they wanna add to this? Who do you agree with?
I agree that most Drupal themes aren't that great,
but the point is, the Drupal templating system has great flexibility. You have complete control over what html you want to output in your theme templates. Anyone can fairly easily create their own theme if they know some html and css. With 4.7, it was rather hard overriding drupal.css, but things have got easier in 5.0. Also, now when you develop a theme, you don't have to worry how it will look with administration screens, because you can choose a different theme for admin. If you want to develop your own theme, I'd suggest starting with bluemarine and gradually altering it.
However, if you don't want to create your own theme, but are wanting to choose an existing one ... then, yeah, there aren't many great ones around. I guess a lot of people get used to the "drupal look and way", and are happy not to stray too far away from it.
Talking of the "drupal way", am I the only person who finds book navigation (using the book module, with its choice of "up") to be moderately un-intuitive?
Not intuitive, correct.
At the very least, the word "up" needs to be changed to something else. I am still thinking about what that something else should be. I am not sure just an icon will do... Maybe it has to do with the position too, dead center in between previous and next... not sure at all. What do you think ?
Caroline
bit unfair to say
bit unfair to say unattractive...
people put their time and effort in creating themes
im still on the noob stage trying to figure out how to make one :|
so hard lol
=-=
this thread is over a year old :\
_____________________________________________________________________
My posts & comments are usually dripping with sarcasm.
If you ask nicely I'll give you a towel : )
I agree though that the
I agree though that the submitted drupal themes arent that great looking.
Theres not a theme available where all default drupal looks are "skinned" (so the looks of the blog, user profile, search result page, menu, buttons etc). And thats a pity for new users who dont know about what drupal id codes you need to put in your css...
even though the thread is
even though the thread is over a year old I'm going to add my grain of salt to it :
from a new user to drupal (started about 6 months ago but didn't start 'digging' until a few months ago),
I'm building 2 sites (one with d5 & one with d6) & of course went looking & trying out the themes.
I don't know much about php & don't know enough to build my own theme, so I looked at themes that I would be able to modify to give my sites their own looks.
Most of the themes are excellent in that they can be easily modified just using the css & most have valuable markup comments in the css, which enable the 'modifier' to see what each thing does & can do & if you go wrong & can't work something out, often you can ask the theme develloper or someone in the drupal community & you nearly always get an answer.
Now the thing is whether one is looking for an 'out of the box' solution or something to add your own 'touch' to.
For the 'out of the box' solution Garland is wonderful & has the + of built in customizable colours.
I've found many themes that look great just as they are, but as I'm looking at making my own 'look' I haven't explored them too much.
When I started, I asked for a simple theme that would be easy for a newb to modify, I was pointed to several & ended up using bluebreeze.
As I said, I don't know much about php & am reticent in hacking the template files, so it's just css changes.
On d6 I found & liked bluecurve (because it's fluid & having a 21" monitor I prefer fluidity in a template).
Now sometimes I'll come across glitches in the theme, like problems with certain elements in certain browsers & as I still don't know enough to be able to fix them, I'll use a workaround (in bluecurve the secondary links (in the header) show up weird in IE - solution - no secondary links on my site.
Here are the 2 sites :
1 (using bluebreeze - d5) : http://www.canis-major-society.com/cm/ (a working (production) site but still being built)
2 (using bluecurve - d6) : http://www.poison-gas.com (this is the development site - my own little sandbox with loads of mud in)
(btw - have been reticent about showing these as I am still living in the fog of learning web design)
I couldn't have done any of this work without the excellent work of the theme makers.
Without the markups, the easy explanations, I'd have lost heart)
That's why drupal themes are not 'unattractive' & I get quite tired hearing this, especially when one realizes how much work the themers do & evenmoreso - they are giving us their hard work to freely use & modify if we wish to.
(note : I posted this a while back but just edited as I had to change a link that was pointing now to a 404 page, I didn't realise that this edit would bumb the thread back to the top)