Hi
I'm new to the Drupal Community, i just finished the Lynda course on using Drupal 7 by Tom Geller. I'm basically helping a friend set up an online storefront for his shop and rather than use Joomla! like i did for the last two brochureware websites i set up, i decided i'd use drupal because administration for Drupal is just so much more awesome! Personally, i hated the way Joomla! handled stuff, with paid modules for almost everything, alot of googling through a lot of ugly interfaces, and then you had to figure out why some stuff wouldn't work and why some would, and, well, let's just say i found it a horrible experience. I'm not a web developer or designer, i'm just a geek. We don't mind paying for one either, but I have a hundred dollar budget including domain and hosting..
Anyways, my last friend needed a shopping cart system, which i've never used before.. I managed to explain to him what a CMS was and why I was in love with Drupal after finishing the Drupal 7 course and he agreed to it. I have a problem, I need a theme. I know it would be better to develop a custom theme, but i am nowhere near educated enough to do that, and i don't know if i have the time either, i'm an Economics major.. the point being, could you help me find a good theme? I've checked out AT Commerce and Acquia Prosper but they are extremely ugly when compared to themes like Tribeca for Magento, and i do not want to switch away from Drupal.
Please, please, please help me out. I might start the Drupal 6 theming course on Lynda, but i'd have to learn PHP before.
Thanks in advance!
Comments
Tribeca looks quite simple to
Tribeca looks quite simple to build. But you might check out the paid themes from the makers of the themes you mention, Adaptive Themes and Top Notch Themes (and a few other makes of paid Drupal themes). It is hard to advise: this week I showed two clients a particular menu. One absolutely loved it and wanted it on his site, the other said it was too ugly to use. De gustibus non disputandum, as they say in Latin. Anyway, good use of images can really lift a theme.
You do not need much php for basic theming, in fact with some base themes you can get a very long with no php at all, provided you have a little css.
The bigger question for you is surely whether to use Ubercart or Drupal Commerce for your e-commerce solution.
Digit Professionals specialising in Drupal, WordPress & CiviCRM support for publishers in non-profit and related sectors
The "prettier" one
Lol, simple for you, i have no experience at all when to comes to building themes.. but i decided to bite the bullet and change that. I'm learning php to help build modules, if needed.. just as well, i needed to get around to it eventually.. thanks for the advice, i checked out Top Notch Themes and the like and decided to check out Fusion as a base. I hope it works out well.
I was thinking about Ubercart because i'm basically indifferent between the two at this point. I have no idea how either one operates, and i've never seen them either. I decided to use it because i read somewhere that Drupal Commerce had a few more bugs.. vague and subjective, i'm sure, but it helped me decide. Although i'm open for suggestions.. which do you think would be prettier?
I do not know that either
I do not know that either Drupal Commerce or Ubercart would be prettier. It should make no difference. Ubercart will be easier to set up. Whether it will have good ongling future development is disputed. Drupal Commerce is more complex partly owing to the fact that it seperates product from product display (confusing...). But maybe more powerful in terms of flexibilty to achieve customisation.
Personally I am nervous of Fusion themes because in the past they depended on skinr module, which caused problems for the D6>D7 upgrade path, problems which I encoutered on one site I run. Now they use their own alternative to skinr, accelerator. I am still not keen on the principle of putting css in the database as this a potential source of bugs in my experience, and can add to the difficulties at upgrade time. However, Fusion themes do undoubtedly benefit from great features and appearance, and being somewhat code-heavy and complex is the trade-off that many think a reasonable price to pay for the advantages they offer.
Digit Professionals specialising in Drupal, WordPress & CiviCRM support for publishers in non-profit and related sectors
Drupal Commerce
Thanks alot, i checked both out and decided that the flexibility and control given by Drupal Commerce could not compare with Ubercart. Although i'm sure i still have alot of learn about it. Then again there are so many resources available (formal and informal), i don't think that would be much of a problem.
As for theming, i decided to bite the bullet and subtheme. Unlike Joomla, Drupal's flexibilty extends to themes too, and because I always wanted to build a mobile-friendly website, i'm using Omega.