Hello, we recently launched a theme store to provide commercial themes for Drupal at reasonable prices without selling the kind of junk you see on template monster. Our last theme has a lot of out of the box features that to my knowledge don't exist in any other themes such as tabbed blocks and accordion blocks.
The question we have now is what other features are you guys looking for in a theme? We currently support IE6 and 7 png fixes (performance boost for 7), multiple out of the box colors, drop down menus and the tabs i mentioned before but what other widgets do you find yourself wishing you had that you see routinely in other CMS themes? Ideally these would be widgets that do not required interaction with the DB or any other PHP as I would prefer to keep module functionality separate form the themes but I'm open to just about any suggestion and we already distribute a module with our latest them to provide better themeing for maintenance pages so modules aren't completely out of the question.
Also I am curious about your stance on Jquery plugins, if you would like to see them packaged with a theme or if you prefer to add that yourself if you need them.
Any info or suggestion may help no matter how obscure you think it is.
If you want to look what we have already in the last theme check out
http://demo.burningmoth.com/drupal6/theme/darkcrystal
Thanks!
Comments
Well.. you asked
How about a jQuery slideshow? That would come in handy for me.
Sure, I have thought about
Sure, I have thought about including a system for slideshows but I am not sure how the community would prefer to see them implemented. Would it be automatic from a list view of images in a specific block or would it just be a plugin included in the theme that you can use a specific CSS selector to activate wherever you want. Anyway, let me know what your opinion of that is.
Thanks!
Advanced Forum support
It's a bit of a moving target right not but not too bad as I'm winding down towards a 1.0 release. Especially if you focus on CSS and not changing the template files, you can do quite a bit to make AF blend well with your themes without a ton of update headaches.
Michelle
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See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.
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Shell Multimedia - My sporadically updated mostly Drupal blog.
I am interested in your
I am interested in your suggestion. I am not familiar with the module you mention. If you could post me a url I can download the newest version and try to work support for it in to the next theme.
Generally speaking we make sure that none of the generic formatting from drupal is touched so any module should look and work as advertised but if there is some special things going on I need to account for then by all means let me have it. I want to dispel the whole "Drupal has terrible themes" argument that tends to frighten off users that are looking for design above functionality which unfortunately is what novices tend to focus on since they may not understand or care about the more internal details that make content management what it is.
Thanks for the feedback!
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I believe the "AF" Michele mentioned is her module Advanced Forums in the downloads area.
.
http://drupal.org/project/advanced_forum
Basically what you'd do is set it up using the "naked" and/or "naked_stacked" style and see how it looks in the theme. Then build CSS into your style.css (or wherever you'd rather have it) that takes it the rest of the way and makes it look nice. Unless you wanted to get really fancy, it doesn't take much CSS. Mostly adding in some borders & backgrounds to match your color scheme.
Michelle
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See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.
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Shell Multimedia - My sporadically updated mostly Drupal blog.
Thanks Michelle, i will put
Thanks Michelle, i will put it on the list, do you foresee high demand for your AF module?
I sure do-- forums is one of
I sure do-- forums is one of the areas I see the most complaints about and where users tend to simply go with a separate or 3rd party integrated module (like smf or phpbb). Michelle's done an amazing job bringing the core forum module most of the way toward what people expect from a forum-- it would be great to see what a designer could do with the design elements.
Also, purely in a business sense, the theme company that has truly showcase quality forum theming will do very well imo.
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"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." - Lao Tzu
"God helps those who help themselves." - Ben Franklin
"Search is your best friend." - Worldfallz
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Don't be a Help Vampire - read and abide the forum guidelines.
If you find my assistance useful, please pay it forward to your fellow drupalers.
I will take your words as
I will take your words as wise advice, the forum is at the top of the list after making the font size dynamic rather then fixed. Probably wont get to any of these updates until after thanks giving. Does any one have a link to this forum module in the wild so i can compare it to the demo?
.
http://couleeregiononline.com/forum is my site that it was written for.
Michelle
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See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.
-----
Shell Multimedia - My sporadically updated mostly Drupal blog.
Ack
I just found my reply to this from yesterday sitting in an unsubmitted tab:
"Well, according to the latest available usage statistics (Oct 12) there were 2372 people reporting using it. Since that runs off update status, which is optional, the number is likely higher. And it's still in alpha. Once I have a stable 1.0 release out, I expect to get a lot more users because I frequently hear people say they'd like to use it but are worried about using an alpha module on a live site. Though I try very hard to make the alphas usuable, the fact is that the module is still in progress and there are bugs and sometimes big changes. Which is why I decided to cut off new features and work on getting a version 1 out."
Michelle
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See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.
-----
Shell Multimedia - My sporadically updated mostly Drupal blog.
Sounds good, I look forward
Sounds good, I look forward to seeing it in action. I think it is a good idea to get a release out especially with the sometimes frantic speed of core releases.
Correct behaviour in text
Correct behaviour in text scaling. Increase the font size by one click and the block with "Demo Candy For Drupal 6" in it disappears. :(
Oh, and be careful with
Oh, and be careful with colours. Some of your themes edge towards Mystery Meat Navigation. http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/mysterymeatnavigation.html
Can you tell me which
Can you tell me which browser and OS you're using, i just tried to repro that text behavior bug in every browser and version within reason and cannot get that to happen. In regards to the colors, I realize a couple of them tread the line of hard to read but I figured it would be better to give the option of even a bad color scheme then cut out what some may like, perhaps this is a flawed way of thinking?
Perhaps this refers to the
Perhaps this refers to the Zoom feature in IE7, which indeed causes some issues with Dark Crystal. Since you have used pixels for font sizes you cannot resize text in IE, so the Zoom is the only recourse, which breaks the theme.
I can say that personally I don't like navigation that blends with the background (Roadside Picnic theme), it just means I have to do something other than glancing casually just to see the links, I also thought there was a CSS error when visited links remained white, as this to my eye looked a bit odd after visiting just a few of the primary links.
I think you're doing a pretty good job, the Dark Crystal theme is quite stunning, very nice dark theme - perhaps I might want to know the Admin section is suitably themed to account for the dark background - perhaps you could consider running the Demo module and giving a login to see some of the admin screens, such as node add/edit, or perhaps screen shots?
Responsive Drupal Themes | Drupal 8 Design Initiative | Certified to Rock
I agree that the navigation
I agree that the navigation in Roadside is less then ideal but other then bug fixes I do not plan on revisiting that theme and I have cut the price as I don't believe it is up to par with the level of quality we should be shooting for, it is basically a legacy from themeforest. I will probably replicate some of its look for a future theme but the typography and navigation are generally weak.
As far as dynamic font sizes i will be more then happy to change a couple lines of CSS and will post back here when that update is made.
I have never heard of the demo module but I will look it up right now and if it allows me to safely show the admin section then that rocks and I will implement it immediately.
Google Chrome.
Google Chrome.
I figured it would be better
It'd be nice to provide a color.module approach like Garland has that allows the user to specify their own color scheme. Still, default schemes that are included shouldn't be bad like that, y'know?
Free stuff = bad?
I assume you are talking about the older theme "Roadside Picnic" which is significantly cheaper then the others.
The default color is a turquoise blue, there are 9 other optional colors for use and most are not "bad" (some truly are) and all are free. The non default optional schemes are there for use if you want and also as examples and starting points for schemes based on the color. In the latest theme I included two polished colors and two other examples, I mean, sure if you really like rainbows you may want to use the last scheme "rainbow rise" but its there as an added value and I just don't see how it being there could be a problem for you instead of at the very worst something you just have no interest in using. It is this simple, if you are a user and you want to use the default color scheme and have no interest in the others then do not install the themesettings.api and don't change it.
If your stance is you want less stuff for the same cost then I doubt there would be many to agree with you. If you are just trying to say you don't like the free extra colors then uh ..sorry?
...
Colourable themes are much harder to build and take much longer, and thus would cost a lot, lot more...
Responsive Drupal Themes | Drupal 8 Design Initiative | Certified to Rock
Personally, I don't see the
Personally, I don't see the value of colorable themes-- there's far too many drupal sites out there using colored versions of garland as it is, lol. Simply changing the color scheme doesn't give a site a unique or professional appearance. Unless maybe it's coupled with many different layout options the way joomla themes are on rockettheme.
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"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." - Lao Tzu
"God helps those who help themselves." - Ben Franklin
"Search is your best friend." - Worldfallz
_
Don't be a Help Vampire - read and abide the forum guidelines.
If you find my assistance useful, please pay it forward to your fellow drupalers.
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There is little value for those who know how to go into style.css and change the coloring scheme. The value is seen more by users who've no idea about what CSS is or how it can be manipulated as they've none to little HTML / CSS experience at all.
Hrm. I'd disagree. I'm
Hrm. I'd disagree. I'm intimately familiar with CSS, yet I find the color picker in Garland streamlines any playing around I'm doing. Does #F0A64E go better with #A1669B or #9A7088? If you can see those colours in your head, great. I prefer to pick from a color wheel. ;)
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Never looked it at that way as I have other tools to do that with and garland is one of the first things I get away from after drupal installation.
Edited the comment to reflect little value rather than no value.
I think the sheer popularity
I think the sheer popularity shows the value - many users just want a website for what-ever reason, the look is less important and just needs to be presentable.
The color module has some pretty serious limitations (color.module 08 goes a long way to addressing these) and building highly configurable colourable themes is (very) time consuming and I think the issue queue for such a theme would put many off (me included).
Building such a theme commercially would be risky IMO, since in the Drupal world there seems to be a bizarre reluctance for the masses to part with their money for nice themes, unlike the Joomla community where its an accepted norm to pay 50 or 60 dollars for a theme, in Drupal-land you get hate mail for asking this much (seriously).
Responsive Drupal Themes | Drupal 8 Design Initiative | Certified to Rock
Hehehe, this is funny
Hehehe, this is funny because some of the first e-mails i received were along the lines of "Where do you get off charging for free software!?" but I have just come to terms with the fact that Drupal is a massive community full of all kinds of people. Mostly people provided support and encouragement regardless if they like the themes anyways. I ask questions so I can get a better understanding of what the Drupal community would be willing to part with $50 bucks for as this is the minimum I can charge for a theme and still not expect to starve for doing so.
At any rate figured i would chime in here and say I would rather this thread didn't become a crap storm and I think my reply above was a little defensive and may have set the tone wrong, my apologies. For now I intend on continuing making themes trying to make each new one better then the last. Right now I am trying to get the store theme looking better and I am also building a white space theme.
Anyway, thanks for all the comments. I will continue to post new theme links and ask for further input as I think feedback is key to making a commercial theme market for Drupal possible.
Happy Holidays all!
Premium theme wish-list: Two
Premium theme wish-list:
All this is possible now,
All this is possible now, especially when color 08 module is stable for release - so what would you pay for such a theme?
I would add sexy cool JavaScript lovliness :)
Responsive Drupal Themes | Drupal 8 Design Initiative | Certified to Rock
All of these things are of
All of these things are of course possible. The problem comes in with how much work I can put into a theme and still just charge $50 bucks which is still more money then most people in Drupal want to spend which I still don't understand exactly.
Can you explain the comment label feature a little more in depth, I am not sure I am following you on that one.
Thanks!
Sorry to give the impression
Sorry to give the impression that I was making a personal proposal for a theme. In general, those are the things I would look for in a commercial theme. At some point, I may buy one, but I'm not at that point yet. If or when I do, I would be willing to pay much more than $50 if it was a perfect fit, and I think others would as well, at least those with more than a personal project in mind. As for comments, I mean being able to change the lable "Add comment" to "Add response" or anything else (Acquia Marina does this.) Thanks.
Good Idea
How about a dropdown in the theme settings, two options for the label "Post Comment" and "Rant Like A Crazy Person". The latter option would only allow the use of vowels if they are in the wrong place and all occurrences of "you" will be replaced with "U" and any "s" char will be changed to "Z".
Though maybe some themes do
Though maybe some themes do it, it's really not a theming function per say. You can change text easily with the http://drupal.org/project/stringoverrides module.
===
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." - Lao Tzu
"God helps those who help themselves." - Ben Franklin
"Search is your best friend." - Worldfallz
_
Don't be a Help Vampire - read and abide the forum guidelines.
If you find my assistance useful, please pay it forward to your fellow drupalers.
Good module
looks like a good module for the toolbox for sure, thanks for the post about that one. Drupal can sometimes be confusing as to where to implement functionality, the theme or the module. Considering how dev heavy the community seems to be I personally try to limit themes to things that effect aesthetics. This module is a good example of extending what appears to be theme functionality without having to change or rely on a themes technology. I feel the same way about regions really, personally I would prefer that areas be defined by content rather then themes but it would seem many people just want to be able to do all this through blocks and not bother with panels which admittedly can be a pain in the ass. Unfortunately this leads to me building themes with 40+ regions.
Thanks, yeah I came across
Thanks, yeah I came across the string overrides module just the other day. Also agree that vanilla themes make more sense for a developer. I just need to get the chops to be able to add regions and so forth on my own.