Why no sharp professional themes?
I'm wondering about moving to Drupal from a Joomla site. I've got my hand on the button for Wordpress, even though it really isn't that powerful in several ways - but it does get the job done and with style for the most part. If there is one tremendous weakness that drupal has, it's that almost all the general themes I see pale in comparison to even the average Wordpress or Joomla themes. I'm not sure why this is. Even the "good" ones seem to have lackluster efforts that are half the way there but end up just dumping content instead of displaying it elegantly.
I saw the themesnap.com site but there are many problems with those themes, still only for drupal 5 and zero support for months. Much of the themes seem not to be bug free either and it's an old version. And those themes are amongst the best I've seen! Joomla has rockettheme.com, joomlart.com, templateplazza.com, wordpress has a number of them such as gabfire.com amongst others.
Now don't get me wrong - I'm not ripping drupal for being a lousy, impossible to use CMS without serious programming. That's the rumor and maybe it keeps people away. What bothers me is that I'd perhaps invest in some learning curve if I could just not have to worry about having a good template base to start with and not worry about design killing me for months. And looking around, drupal still is instantly identifiable in 90+% of the sites I see and reminds me of phpnuke 10 years later.
I'm hoping someone can point me in a good direction here. Even the "pros" themes seem, more often than not, to fall into the same boxy look. Only themes costing many thousands of dollars don't and I've spoken with some of those people. It shouldn't be that hard. Thanks for your comemnts in advance.
...
Worthy comments indeed. Its all true and the sad reality is that its always been that way.
I've taken a totally different approach and set out to turn this around (as much as I am able). As you say there are many fantastic Joomla themes, many of which are actually GPL... so my big scheme is to port as many of them to Drupal as I humanly can & to forge Genesis into somewhat of a paint-by-numbers / port-from-other-CMS theme framework - so that others might be able to do the same.
I did one as a test run - its here.
Let me know about any worthy GPL themes you know of, I have trouble finding them (time...), I'm always on the lookout for nice themes to port.
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Genesis looks great! I might
Genesis looks great! I might put some time in porting some great themes. I'm not a graphical designer, but front-end work and porting stuff is something I can, and is just as useful.
Cool, give it heaps! Just be
Cool, give it heaps! Just be aware that the RTL support is a bit sketchy at the moment, I have to fix it up for IE (sigh...) and that wont be till next week. Other than that, its a solid piece of work and good to go.
healthy atittude
Many of drupal users prefer better maintained theme over the one which looks nicer. There are many projects in Drupal site which are half-done or which are a bit buggy and abandoned.
I would recomend to port some WP themes from www.wpthemesfree.com - I hope you could find nice GPL ones (at the moment of writing the site is unreachable... hopefully just temporary)
well...
you can always adopt a project that is abandoned or neglected. I did that with Pixture, Twilight and Wabi and I sure could use some help with the issues, I am just flat out!
You are absolutelly right -
You are absolutelly right - but for example I do not have enogh skills to code new features into modules, themes etc. I was talking about general attitude.
Besides agreeing on the
Besides agreeing on the general picture with you, I want to point out that themes from Top Notch Themes look great, are for D6 as well, are very flexible and are not that expensive. But I would love it if there were more companies out there that deliver such quality for their accessible rates.
BTW, I find Joomla-sites to be very identifiable as well.
Thanks everyone for your
Thanks everyone for your great comments. I took a look at Top Notch Themes. IMHO - I think they look nice as a picture on your desk since they have some nice color blending but as a CMS theme they are dated, rough around the edges and far too barren and simplistic. And the cost for a non-exclusive template... $250+ are you KIDDING ME? The better ones look the way that Template Monster themes started out as years ago - some sharp graphic connected with a relatively simple and somewhat harsh/crude template. Take this one for example: http://www.topnotchthemes.com/theme/1003 Yikes... http://www.topnotchthemes.com/theme/1005 For $255 this one gets you slightly better than "kubrick" on Wordpress. I think even the drupal standard theme is more aesthetically pleasing than these unfortunately.
Themesnap was one of the better attempts but, for some reason, it seems nobody can finish a job properly. Dozens of complaints from people that are unanswered who are out money.
What was my experience? I inquired in several places with beautiful themes - cost was over $5K in each instance just for the basics. What impression am I getting here? That drupal was made with great power but far too many moving parts. Just to extend a reasonable number takes a herculean effort and which is why very few drupal themes are more than bare window dressing. You don't see any "web 2.0 themes" for drupal. You don't see anything that looks like revolutiontheme.com or the like. It's tough...
Good job on the rok webify template, but that one is actually not GPL (I think) and done by rhuk for free - essentially his lamest effort by far of all the other ones. :)
I don't know guys... I'm really torn. Drupal seems like something I really want to try but it seems like a developer's love for the mechanics/practicality and little care for the appearance. if it takes so much effort just to do the basics...well... I just don't know.
TopNotchThemes
Aw man, you're picking on our old ones... things have come a long way since those two and we're still ramping up big time ;) http://www.topnotchthemes.com/browse
I don't think people realize how much time and expertise goes into themes for Drupal. The recent themes you see on our site have easily 30-40 hours in them, AFTER the design is done, and that's AFTER we've put a ton of infrastructure/research into it.
It *is* tough to do this kind of stuff, and we made the decision to keep our themes priced the way they are so we can afford to include these kinds of features/flexibility that people are after, a unique graphical look and feel rather than generic designs, and also provide excellent customer support.
Other CMSes don't have the flexibility that Drupal does, and when you're designing/theming for variations of options like comment styles, date formatting, multilingual sites, variations in logo/sitename/slogan/mission, collapsible columns and regions, forums, profiles, etc etc... that's a LOT of attention to detail and time. We're not targeting people with a $500 budget for their entire site. Obviously in these cases, you're going to have to go with a free theme, or something simpler and less expensive.
Drupal just ain't Wordpress, and if we were selling themes that mandated one specific subset of settings... well... I don't think it would go over so well :)
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{ Drupal Themes by TopNotchThemes }
Gorgeous, 100% original themes for Drupal 5 & 6, plus Ubercart themes
Hey steph - thanks for your
Hey steph - thanks for your nice reply and explanation!!! I had a feeling that I was right - that there is significant effort needed to be made to accomplish a theme in drupal. I've worked with a SN script and saw templates being sold for $350 and I was inquiring as to why. After working with the designer I realized that, while the script was quite powerful, every excruciating detail had to be defined for every section. It took a LONG time just to get up the basics - good from a "customize each section" standpoint and horribly bad in the repetition and excruciatingly detailed work.
I definitely like the more recent themes you've done, especially the Yoga one. That has a lot of thought in it and think its very good for just those limited areas that it can be applied. The problem I'm having is that I don't get the true news/journal/reporter look and feel at all. Almost all the drupal themes I've seen are very barren and "blocky" and you can see the structure.
I'm sure you do great work for your custom clients but I just needed a theme to "get me most of the way there" and there aren't many that can do that. As I mentioned, the only two that worked for me where the "magazine type" that I was at that themesnap site. I'd surely give you a call and see if we could work together if I end up choosing drupal. It seems like a very detailed lego set. I'm just worried that it will take too much time for me to assemble so many pieces and I need something reasonably quickly that I can work out bugs on my own should they arrive.
Again, many thanks, glad to see that you've got some nice new templates and that it seems more are on their way. Thank you for listening as well and taking my, hopefully not too harsh comments in stride. :)
Not a problem, no offense
Not a problem, no offense taken, and thank you for the kind words :) We're forging new ground here so I know it can be controversial. Getting away from that blocky look is infinitely easier when you're doing a custom theme.
I think you understand the situation well. We've also been getting feedback on wanting more news/magazine style themes, so some of those are going at the top of our list.
I've always said Drupal is my lego set too! :)
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{ Drupal Themes by TopNotchThemes }
Gorgeous, 100% original themes for Drupal 5 & 6, plus Ubercart themes
Custom vs general purpose themes
Sure, there is a huge effort required to create a good general purpose theme that can cope with all kinds of site designs and have all sorts of random modules thrown at it - Drupals flexibility (which is a good thing of itself) makes things trickier.
eg Wordpress themes are working to a much more defined and limited set of requirements.
But creating a custom theme for a specific site with known functionality is much easier than a general purpose one, which is probably why that is a more common approach with Drupal.
--
Anton
...
rok webify template is GPL. This is a very important aspect of Drupal.
This theme, as stated, was ported as a test of a theme framework, and for no other reason than as an example of how that framework can be used to port a design quickly and easily.
What WAS really lame about this design was the TALBE layout that came with it, as do almost all these "lovely" themes (Template Monster are the worst coded themes I have ever seen).
I just spent a day downloading a whole legion of "nice" Joomla themes, what is going on in Joomla, almost every single one uses tables for layout - what is this, 1999?
I think one of things with
I think one of things with Drupal is that it is very much a professional CMS. The feeling I get is that unlike Joomla, Mambo, or Wordpress--companies that seem to be targeted towards amateurs (as in for personal blogs) or very small businesses (who can't afford to put much money towards their budget), Drupal tends to be used by a professional, medium-to-large business audience. If you look at Dries' sites, http://buytaert.net/tag/drupal-sites, you can see many of nice looking sites that break the blocky mold. That isn't to say that the little guy never uses Drupal, far from it, but it would explain why there is a dearth of amazing looking, free themes. Why would someone commit time to making a professional, sharp theme for free when they can get paid for their labor?
Jake
Ikarus themes...
Hi druids...
Drupal wins 2008 Best PHP Open Source CMS from Packt Publishing!!Congrats!!
by the way, maybe this is one of sharp professional themes that's you're looking for?
http://ikarus.situsgue.co.cc
it's free with condition "do not remove original links in footer"...
if want to remove it all, you should donate to the creators :)
i have got permission from the creator for share this themes in drupal version for drupal community with condition above :)
as soon as possible, i would give link to download drupal ikarus themes ;) ...
be patiently if you don't mind :)
Regards...
Drupal Rocks!!
themes
Completely agree, 99% of drupal themes look like utter garbage.
Some comments on this thread that are so true and I couldn't agree more with:
I've been using Drupal for over a year and have developed several sites, and I still consider this a MASSIVE weakness of Drupal. Its a real shame tbh.
Yawn...
What ever dude, how about doing something about instead of just knocking it... oh, you don't know how? Well then...
Professional Drupal Design and Theme Services
Styling Content
I completely agree, sometimes it's worth investing time and effort in order to accomplish your goals. I do however have a question for everybody.
I am a web designer. I create custom looking websites, using XHTML, CSS, JavaScript and so forth. I mainly specialize in cross-browser compatibility, soi you get the idea. Anyhow, using Drupal, can I implement my custom design if I knew how?
If the answer is yes (which im unsure if it is, since im new to Drupal), then why are people voicing their opinion that Drupal themes look blocky and similar to what websites looked 10 years ago. As a web designer I would like to think that a CMS should be able to facilitate any design I imagine.
Kind Regards
Angelos,
Web Designer/Developer
The Drupal theme layer is
The Drupal theme layer is incredibly powerful. I can only call it theme-nirvana, especially Drupal 6, and 7 is stacking up to be even more awesome.
It takes time to come to grips with it all. There are many facets to Drupal theming and you would do well to consider buying a book, such as http://drupal.org/node/442298.
So the answer is yes, you can do it.
Why are people moaning? Who knows. To say all themes in contrib are blocky and look ten years out of date is just absurd. Sure theres not the breadth of themes available for Joomla or WP, but Drupal can eat both of those CMS's for breakfast - meaning Drupal is far, far, far more extensible and therefore generic contrib themes must accommodate the myriad of modules, configurations and so on that Drupal might throw at it.
Look, if you compare my contrib themes with my everyday work for clients they are worlds apart, simply because I can build a one off beautiful theme for a client that works for their site, that solves a specific design problem. Its much harder to build a generic theme with no clear design problem thats going to suit 5000 sites.
Garland, Pixture Reloaded, Marinelli and the Acquia themes mostly achieve that, but do so simply by looking nice. Thats not design in my book, thats window dressing, and thats all we can really do in contrib, else provide basic easy to modify themes that one can make their own.
These people that moan really piss me off to be frank. Pixture Reloaded took me around 40 hours to build (probably more actually), and Genesis, well, lets just say I loose count when its hundreds of hours... when was the last time any of these moaners spent 40, 50, 60+ hours building something and then gave it away for free?
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Ready made is never a solution
Building a generic design to fit a number of website's is clearly a very hard task. Mainly because websites/companies are specific, and you cannot count on a design to fill your client's needs. One change in picture, or logo, can make the design look all wrong. Plus I think it takes the fun away.
I have recently invested in a book, the book I bought is called Drupal Themes 6 by Ric Shreves. I hope to understand the makings of how Drupal theming works. Obviously I do not wish to download ready made themes, as im a web designer, and I like doing what I do. I somehow managed to stay clear from Dreamweaver and most WYSIWIG editors, I prefer good old fashioned text editors.
I guess you have to understand that this field were in is a knowledge based area, something which you cannot do overnight. It takes hours and much effort to get to where you want to go. I have gone very far, but I hope to get further using Drupal. People who download ready-make themes, expecting them to be flying and dancing, might be in for a shock, since this is never the case with ready made.
PS: I will probably buy the book you suggested after I read my book. I got another accompanied book called Drupal 6, again by the same publisher..
Kind Regards
Angelos,
Web Designer/Developer
Custom theme is the answer
Hi
Drupal has got good theming features and it supports various theme engines like PHPTemplate, XTemplate
and Smarty.
You can get any design converted into a Drupal theme, so if you do not find any readymade solution, you have a better option to get it developed as per your requirements and choice. One more big advantage will be that it will be unique for your site which is not possible in case of readymade themes.
Regards,
Viresh
Pricing
I understand your argument - but you are also basically implying that someone has to pay for your 40-60 hours of work with the first theme you sell. It seems to be the Western way - price it high and recoup costs... eventually. The Korean way which resulted in near 100% cell phone domination was to price 'em low so everyone - EVERYONE could afford them... With the absolute dearth of decent Drupal themes if someone invented some good ones and sold them for $50 or less, I bet they would get a lot of people taking them up! You'd recover a costs for your time a whole lot quicker - and people might be more inclined to give Drupal a go as well bringing in even more users.
But some of the ones going for $300... Why, there are free ones better than some of them so there is no way I'd pay for somethinig that looks like a website I built back in 1998....
it costs quite a lot to build
it costs quite a lot to build a decent commercial theme, at the price point you propose we would have to sell a theme 50 to 60 times to break even, thats risky and would take a long time.
Maybe when drupal is a lot bigger this price point will be better supported, but until then we'll stick to servicing clients who want to pay a bit more for a very well coded theme with customizations. Think that most of our clients are actually other developers and businesses who dont want to extend to fully custom theme. For these clients 200 to 300 is a steal.
Professional Drupal Design and Theme Services