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Great initiative. Just to have a simple shell with some sample content would be great to have. I guess first candidate from contrib is Views. I wonder if different use-cases (blog, brochure, social site) are necessary/feasible. Anyway! Great potential for a seriously usefull toolkit indeed.
Comments
Comment #1
eigentor CreditAttribution: eigentor commentedPersonally I am also on the camp that Core Drupal has a certain character, if you sample all content types that are in there, Jarek did a good job on this http://demo.kiwi-themes.com/drupal-dev/ (click "Pages")
But for people coming to Drupal the first time, a distinct use case may be more catchy and palpable. The notion in our brainstorming session was very strong that one of the main problems of Drupal is his lack of limitation: you cannot say what it is. So the step to define a use case was strongly supported.
Let's see what we come up with...
Comment #2
yoroy CreditAttribution: yoroy commentedYah, I was just looking for a way to subscribe to this project :)
And, it helps to limit the scope a bit, gets you to actual results faster.
Agreed that *a* use case would be useful to have.
Comment #3
Jovean CreditAttribution: Jovean commentedSubscribing. (I'm the guy with the American accent at DDC who had started making a module that sounded like Skinr.)
I think we can just choose one of the most common use-cases (blog, brochureware, etc), and jump in. Or do I misunderstand your use of "use-case"?
Comment #4
yoroy CreditAttribution: yoroy commentedYep, either blog or brochure sounds good. Both *could* be done with core only BTW :)
Comment #5
sign CreditAttribution: sign commented+1 for core-only (subscribing)
there would be too many scenarios if we include views and other modules. and as yoroy mentioned, a lot can be done with just core.
Would part of this package be a base theme too? With the common functionality that everyone will want to use (should we use zen, etc...) and build theirs themes upon that to make it even easier?
Comment #6
eigentor CreditAttribution: eigentor commented-1 for zen.
What I would find most useful is use just stark styling and add an empty theme.
This theme would already have an info file and a name (say "Starter?") as well as an images directory an empty style.css so the designers would not need to worry about this and could start hacking away at style.css.
Maybe we should also put a dummy screenshot in, so they can see when they switch on their basic theme.
I think if you put in no base theme, a theme is based on stark, right? If stark has anything that helps us beyond just core, let's make the empty theme a subtheme of stark.
Comment #7
betarobot CreditAttribution: betarobot commented-1 for zen as well. It became (well, powerful but) overcomplicated. If I'd look at zen first as starter point I'd never been doing drupal designs :)
+1 for stark subtheme. It may be empty, or with a very few populated classes, just to give the idea on best CSS practices in drupal terms.
Comment #8
kloewer CreditAttribution: kloewer commented+10 for many contrib modules! As i narrated on the last DUG Hannover meeting, installing all those different basic modules needed to make a working site is one thing that is most confusing to all newcomers...
Cheers
Chris
Comment #9
yoroy CreditAttribution: yoroy commentedWhat needs to be decided is what the target audience for this profile is:
A. Designers with minimal Drupal experience that need a gentle introduction to designing/theming Drupal. A learning experience not necessarily working towards a usable result but a sketchpad for trying things out.
OR
B. Designers that want to build a Blog/Brochure site themselves. That would probably need Views at the very least etc.
Choosing this audience would mean building a bigger site-building toolkit for people who are already beyond the absolute beginner phase.
So, either this is targetted at designers that are total Drupal newbies or at
Drupal designers that want to learn theming/building.
There's overlap of course, but I do think this is a choice that should be made. Focus, focus, focus :-)
Comment #10
eigentor CreditAttribution: eigentor commentedHm I would say rather Audience A.
The designer builds a theme. All we want him to get past is the notion that drupal is difficult to theme. So I guess (hope) they will start out with a simple site instead of something overly ambitious.
Thinking of Views: Will they be confused when the views are just there and they do not have to touch it? Maybe yes once they start to wonder what all these strange classes are. So if we can build something that makes sense without Views it would be much better.
We think of designers that do not build sites themselves, and sure do not know how to do this in drupal. Comparing to myself: I started with Wordpress, chose Blix theme, and as I was scared of all the template variables and PHP, I just tweaked the colors a bit by changing the CSS and was perfectly happy.
So the profile should present a finished site (well, with some sample content, say a basic brochure site: products, about us, contact and three more pages) that can be styled right away.
What we should do is build from this and make it a usable install profile in the course of the process. Because in the end it should be only one profile: it should be usable for non-designers as well as for designers. Only difference is the designers profile lacks the beautiful theme that the end-user gets.
But as this is always a work in progress, the kinda "dummy" profile for the designers that does not have to be fully functional with all bells and whistles gets done first, and can be built upon to be more and more usable. Maybe even one of the newly-enthused designers contributes a theme that we can use for our kick-ass brochure-blog-whatever profile.
Comment #11
kloewer CreditAttribution: kloewer commentedMy opinion is and always was: If someone uses a software (CMS) and is happy with it they will automaticaly get attatched to it, become curious, play around and sooner or later want more, and more, and more...
More functions, more features, more (customized) design.
And thats the way we should roll: Catch some designers out there with an easy to set-up CMS, and then lure them deeper and deeper into the drupal community, so one day they wake up and say: "What the Heck, if been contributing to the community for years and suddenly can think API and didn't even noticed it!"
So YES! Of course Views, of course CCK (okay, its in D7 core) of course Images, Googtube Input format Filter, Backup & Migrate, Features...
I dont think designers will be satisfied with just an installation with basic modules. I think they want to have some sample content they can edit or delete rather than creating everything from scratch. We should keep in mind that some of the designers might have never created a website before, and don't know what content should be on a webpage:
"A contact form? Haven't thought about that! Okay, so whats with an Guestbook? Oh, thats 90's?"
Comment #12
heather CreditAttribution: heather commentedA basic theme based on Stark with just CSS is a good idea. However, designers will want more control over markup. People need more roads into the the tutorials as well.
If you're considering a second theme to add, it would be ideal to have one that includes template.php, html.tpl.php, page.tpl.php, node.tpl.php, block.tpl.php, possibly also the comment, comment wrapper - and if you include Views, then include a pre-set view, and a views template, with a reference to the Views theming tutorials.
Then, include tutorials about overriding other core templates such as site maintenance template, user templates and getting them copied into their theme. Good module development practice means many modules are also outputting template files, so a designer can get more control over markup with altering the HTML in these files.
My unsolicited opinion ;)
Comment #13
Percept CreditAttribution: Percept commentedI agree with Heather ...
We need to make sure the most common tpl-files are included in the theme even if they don't override any default output.
Comment #14
Jolidog CreditAttribution: Jolidog commentedThese common tpl-files could have a comment on top stating:
- they are overriding some core tpl-file (with the directory where it came from)
- That there are many other tpl-files available to override
- A link to the documentation page on d.o, explaining this process of overriding.
Perhaps including a a template.php file with the same principle would be a good ideia.
Override one or two core theme functions, leavinng them the same, and explain what's happening and where to find more information.
Comment #15
heather CreditAttribution: heather commented@Jolidog - good idea, like a "learning theme".
Have you seen Zenophile? It generates a Zen sub-theme, then the template.php which provides commented-out functions, which you can use to inject variables into your theme. Like this (and node, comment, block, etc etc).
Comment #16
Jolidog CreditAttribution: Jolidog commentedYes, something like that would be good. As for the *.tpl.php, here is an example for the block template:
Obviously the language should be better :P
Also notice que html comment, this could be used to direct people to the right file, when they look at the source of the page.
As for the theme functions, I tried to find one but I guess D7 changed most, if not all, of these functions to use tpl files! Very nice inded!
Comment #17
betarobot CreditAttribution: betarobot commentedGreat idea re having some tips in tpl.php files. But still, default drupal style like:
will really teach new designer (not coder who knows drupal) nothing.
Also some text like
@see template_preprocess()
should go with the linkComment #18
barraponto CreditAttribution: barraponto commentedworry not with the theme level, let's look at it from a use case point of view.
can you see clearly what open atrium or drupal commons stand for? i guess they are very interesting distributions for designers to work on. there are lesser known drupal distros that could be themed as well, like tattlr.
once we settle on a distro (for use cases) the designers can have the time of their life theming them, improving on them. if they want to put their dirty little hands on the theme level, I guess zen is an easy starter theme. but any starter theme would do.
Comment #19
yoroy CreditAttribution: yoroy commentedI think we want to help Designers learn how theming works, not help distributions get better looks?
*edit: I mean to say: let designers get to a point where they can apply their own ideas to Drupal. Not 'skin' a pre-fabricated distribution/use-case.
Comment #20
barraponto CreditAttribution: barraponto commentedoh, i thought the idea was getting designers excited to start designing for drupal.
after all, even if you are designing for wordpress, you get down to use cases (education themes, movie critics themes, etc).
Comment #21
pfrenssenNice to see this getting off the ground. I was also at the DDC session with my colleague. While driving back we discussed what would be the most designer friendly way this could be set up. We came up with the following, which seems to be pretty much inline with the rest of the comments: