Please note: The following was originally posted at http://groups.drupal.org/node/20016 in relation to starting a theme design competition to get some new "Quality" themes at Drupal.
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Hey all,
In my opinion competitions tend to create more alienation than quality. If you really want to get professional themes for Drupal then here is what I would do.
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Organize (tag) themes. Free tagging could work well. As was mentioned earlier, themes are design solutions that solve a problem. The problem the theme solves would be related by the theme's tags. Right now all themes are lumped into one big fat ugly stack. This huge stack is both hard to look and reflects a sense of laziness to boot.
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Allow people to vote on themes. With voting, the really good ones float to the top. The lack of interactivity drives many great designers away from Drupal because getting their "Perfect" theme lumped into all those others in such a willy-nilly way is not too attractive a proposition for really great designers.
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Enable people to "propose" a theme to the community as an attempt to get sponsorship. They can upload an image(s) as rendered from PSD files. People can then add to a bounty pot and once the developer is satisfied development can begin... On delivery money is given to said developer. These too would be tagged and voted on.
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Have featured themes. A section showcasing the HOTTEST themes would truly rock!!!
So in conclusion. The theme organizational system at Drupal.org is bad enough to drive many o good designer to despair! Why can't we tag themes? Why cant we vote on themes? Why can we not propose themes and look for bounties? Why is the Drupal system of organizing themes so darned limited? Must all themes just be added to big long unreadable lists where they may become comfortably lost and forgotten?
You want to know how to get people to look at your themes now? Name it ".Aardvark". You might get some views if you do that...
I would love nothing more than to see Drupal come up a few notches in these areas and I can say with confidence that if we do not do something about it. Drupal will not easily see any improvement in theme quality and most likely reductions in quality will increase. Furthermore, without improvement of categorization, Drupal itself may very well be relegated to the history books. **
Derek Webb
http://collectivecolors.com ***
** I LOVE Drupal so it truly pains me to see such foibles continue in this respect.
*** Please pardon the stale site. I am working on a new one at the moment that will be much better than the present one. I have been busy for the last year and have hardly had a chance to work on my own stuff until about a month ago...
Comments
I would like to add one thing
Even implementing #1 on the list above would be a [{ Humongous }] step toward getting great designs at Drupal.
There really needs to be some way by which the "wheat can be separated from the chafe."
If item one were implemented, the big issue would be getting folks to go though and tag their themes according to what "purpose" they personally see it being useful for.
This way, if I want to design a theme for use with an antique shop, I can do that. I can have a purpose to my design and it can be that much better for it. How about an auto parts theme? Or maybe a clothing shop? Shoe store? See where this could go? Oh it would be the grandest thing to happen to Drupal themes since Drupal I bet, but I would like other people's comments.
Derek
PS: I realize that getting this done would be very hard because we would have to convince the Benevolent Dictator to sign off on it but I think that it would REALLY help Drupal and I am all for that!
https://coraltechgroup.com
These sound like some really
These sound like some really essential steps towards making this section make any sense at all.
Regarding voting, however, I'd like to note that the biggest problem inherent in such a system is future-proofing. Over time, the quality of any user-driven content tends to become better. Because of this, it's less valuable to know what's popular over time, and more valuable to know what's popular over a more recent timeframe.
I propose that any voting system either default to sorting by recent votes, or that votes degrade over time -- either through time-based weighting, or by just disappearing. Does anyone know of a voting model that would support something like this?
Time frame granularity
Is a very intriguing idea. You may want to talk with Eaton to see if the voting api system supports that. I love the idea though. Data does get stale and the results when that happens can sometimes be very bad indeed.
I was just writing a post (Our history) at our development site about how market data became stale over time and reduced the usefulness of pattern recognition software that did not take that into account. Stale data seems to reduce prediction accuracy... There is a trade off though: It is important to have enough data to actually have meaningful results, but if that data is stale then the results may not be meaningful anyway. A paradox it seems. I know it is a bit off topic but I think it is neat connection anyway.
I hadn't though about how that could apply to votes as well.
Do you think that it would be a very noticable issue regarding voting on a theme? I guess with each new revision the votes of the that applied to the previous version would have to lose some value or disappear?
https://coraltechgroup.com
Guys, let's do our due
Guys, let's do our due diligence.
Suggestions 1, 2 and 4 are being implemented as part of the new d.o redesign.
http://drupal.markboultondesign.com/iteration11/themes.html
http://staging.dosprint.org
Great!!!
Due diligence is indeed a virtue. I should have known that the friendly folks at MarkBoultonDesign would be bring Drupal's main site out of the proverbial stone age... So my apologies about er... not doing "due diligence." My remarks were off the cuff in response to your opinion that a competition would bring more themes to Drupal...
Currently, I have a very tight deadline for getting my own revision done, so I have not been watching what the MBD group has been up to. You may have noticed that my site has not really even been touched in about a year - that is, I am trying to bring it out of the stone age - just like you are yours apparently ;-) (more lovely due diligence)
We got on a contract that lasted almost a year and the time was spent 100% on that and nothing else. Currently I am getting to know the changes that went into D6...
Hey, I don't suppose you know when the new Drupal site will be ready do you momendo?
Thanks again for the info!
Regards, Derek
https://coraltechgroup.com