I had been using Joomla! for a while and few months ago I turned to Drupal.
Joomla! is great for its theme system, however, I would say its code is in a mess.
Anyway, my point is whether it's possible to improve Drupal's theme system and make it easier for designers to create themes.
Since Drupal is more complicated because of its extendibility, it's already harder for users to use Drupal than Joomla!, so if Drupal's theme system is not easier to use than other CMS, I guess it would be a hard step for users to enter the world of Drupal.
I'm not a programmer or theme designer, but it's obvious that the quantity and the quality of the Drupal themes on the Internet is are both worse than Joomla!.
I'm not sure what theme engine Joomla! uses, but I think it's important to make it a reference on how to improve Drupal.
I'm not here to bash Drupal, in fact I'm pretty much a big Drupal fan myself, I'm just trying to help improve Drupal by expressing my opinions about Drupal.

Comments

droplet’s picture

droplet commented
Version: 7.x-dev » 8.x-dev

what is the good part in Joomla, can you give us any example

Jeffrey C.’s picture

Jeffrey C. commented

I said I'm not a programmer, but so far I see more sites and theme companies sell Joomla! and Wordpress themes, so I'm wondering if it's because Drupal's theme system is not so powerful as Joomla! or Wordpress or not so easy to create themes as the other ones. I know Drupal has clean code and strict coding standards, is that why there's less Drupal themes than others?
The good part in Joomla! I would say its core theme system, maybe it would make a good reference on Drupal's theme improvement?

Jeffrey C.’s picture

Jeffrey C. commented

I'm not saying Joomla!'s theme system is well-made, but maybe its theme API is easier to implement?

Jeffrey C.’s picture

Jeffrey C. commented
Priority: Normal » Major

Is anyone still looking into this?

michelle’s picture

michelle
she/her
Primary language English
Location Wisconsin, USA
commented
Priority: Major » Normal

Probably not... There really isn't anything actionable here besides "Hey, go look at Joomla!"

If you'd like this to gain traction, you'll need to do some legwork and come up with what you think is better and why. Saying that they have more themes doesn't tell us anything. There are many reasons for that, probably most importantly the fact that they have more of a commercial culture with selling modules/themes which provides more incentive than Drupal's focus on charging for service, not product.

Michelle

marcingy’s picture

marcingy commented
Status: Active » Postponed (maintainer needs more info)
Jeffrey C.’s picture

Jeffrey C. commented

Thank you for your reply. I'm not a programmer so I don't know much of this template thing. I've been using both Drupal and Joomla! and sometimes I just wonder why there are more templates for Joomla! than for Drupal. it's just a rough idea and I haven't done any research or anything. Please close this issue if you feel the situation is not what I think.

droplet’s picture

droplet commented
Category: feature » support

A lot of way to build a Drupal site. It also the reason for less theme.

michelle’s picture

michelle
she/her
Primary language English
Location Wisconsin, USA
commented
Title: Improve core theme engine » Look to Joomla! for ideas to improve core theme engine
Category: support » feature
Status: Postponed (maintainer needs more info) » Active

@legendm33066: Here's the thing: Drupal advances by people picking things they want to work on and going for it. While feature requests certainly aren't forbidden, you have to go into it with the understanding that the odds are against you that anything will happen unless you make it happen. A lot of people are used to commercial software where they put in a feature request and it's either accepted or denied and, if accepted, the development team implements it. Open source just doesn't work that way.

So what we have here is an idea that Joomla! might possibly have a better theme system. Then again, it might not and the quantities of Joomla! themes may simply be due to the fact that it's easier to sell things in Joomla!. What it needs is someone who knows theming to take a look at both systems and see if there is anything from Joomla! that could be used in Drupal. If you are not able to do that, then this issue will just hang out until someone comes along that is interested in doing it or until enough time passes that someone comes along and won't fixes it for cleanup.

There's no problem leaving it active for a while. I just want you to understand that you aren't being ignored and it's not necessarily a bad idea; it's just how things work here.

Michelle

AmyStephen’s picture

AmyStephen commented

That's how it works in Joomla, too. Unfortunately, there's rarely anyone who takes a good idea and does it for us, either (unless they are paid ;-) ).

I do believe Joomla's strength has always been in it's templating. It's well organized, clear process flow for renderers, good media API, etc. Most of what makes it easier in Joomla though is that extensions are so "black boxed" whereas in Drupal, the approach to site building is more integrated, hand-crafted.

As with most things, there are pro's and con's about approach. With Joomla, an extension comes with the vast majority of the structural markup in place. So, frontend devs with Joomla can focus on the overall look without having to worry about the layout of the gallery or the blog post. The downside is it's not easy to integrate the blog and the gallery to show images that match the subject. That's the ying with the yang.

I believe the next release of Drupal will very strongly address some of the challenges frontend devs have been facing due to the flexibility in the architecture. Might want to follow the HTML5 initiative to see what people are working on and find a way to get involved. http://drupal.org/community-initiatives/drupal-core/html5

michelle’s picture

michelle
she/her
Primary language English
Location Wisconsin, USA
commented

Thanks, Amy. :)

Michelle

Jeffrey C.’s picture

Jeffrey C. commented

Thank you all. Guess will have to leave this issue open for a while.

baluertl’s picture

baluertl
he/him
Primary language Hungarian
Location Budapest 🇪🇺
commented

Caring about each others' personal improvement & education. This is a big reason to love Drupal community, thanks Michelle!

bill richardson’s picture

bill richardson commented
Issue summary: View changes

Joomla core theme engine is no better / worse than Drupal 7, but Drupal 8 has adopted Twig as its new Theme engine and has had made significant progress in Html css, etc with the work of Frontend United.
The difference between free Joomla or Drupal themes is minimal , but the commercial templates offered for Joomla are significantly better.
Great themes are possible in Drupal 7 -- see ecommerce kickstart as an example, but the theme production companies like themeforest, rockettheme, Yootheme,etc are not providing Drupal equivalents.
Joomla and Wordpress have a culture of selling extensions, templates,plugins,etc which Drupal does not.

joelpittet’s picture

joelpittet
he/him
Primary language English
Location Vancouver
commented
Status: Active » Closed (won't fix)

Triaging Theme System issues as we are in RC for Drupal 8. Please reopen for 9.x if you have some actionable items or better yet open a new issue may be better at this point.

#9 is very clear, thanks @Michelle for explaining our process.