I have starting a Drupal theme design company which I hope to launch this upcoming year but I wanted to get some feedback and possible your experiences with buying themes, theme support, quality and so fort. Here are some topics to get our discussion started.
-For professional top quality themes what is the average price you would pay? (per theme and custom theme)
By top quality themes I mean those designs that follow web design procedures (professionally)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_design#Website_Planning
-What is the positive & negative experiences you had with theme support?
-What advice will you give to a company that wants to be on the top Drupal theme sellers?
Any help, ideas, suggestions and comments will be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks!
Comments
themers
there are essentially 4 types of drupal themers, as I see it:
(a) those who prefer working with a framework/blank canvas.
(b) those who want a theme shell they can work with.
(c) those who want a specific theme, e.g. a drupal ecommerce theme or a Drupal forum theme.
(d) those who want a nice complete theme.
At the moment nobody (at least I haven't seen anyone) is providing complete themes for sale or specific themes...I think there is a huge gap in the market for that. The most common theme sales sites cover just themer B demands...a shell theme.
Incidentally, by complete I mean not just the front page, a node page and a contact page...I mean a theme that has depth..e.g. it covers forums, comments, login page, request password page, maintenance page, error pages, nice editing pages, client admin page, profile page etc.
Maybe nobody else is providing complete themes because there isn't a demand for it...but, I think there would be...especially if you sold them on a modular basis...e.g. A Drupaller can visit your site and buy a core theme, plus the forum theme add-on, plus the Drupal ecommerce theme add-on. While another Drupaller can buy a core theme with just the forum theme add-on.
hope that makes sense and is of use.
...
The problem with "complete" themes is the amount of work needed and ongoing maintenance. You can theme every inch of Drupal but you have to think ahead about your future goals for the site and general upgrades by Drupal core and contrib modules. It's not impossible but good luck in finding it in a ready made theme that won't bite you back as time moves on.
The only advice I can give is that you should know every bit of Drupal's theming system. How's it go? Know the rules to break them to your advantage? ;) Keep it clean and execute it well. Approach it systematically and stay consistent in how you piece things together. And of course, keep it simple. You can't please everyone so don't even try. Stick to your core competency. That's pretty generic advice but that's all I can think of. ;)
No one true base..
It's true that having one mater theme base.. sounds like a good idea.. but in reality (and having rolled out over 40 Drupal sites this month), it doesnt' really work..
The best you can do is have either
1) a complete blank.. but ready to add content..
2) a good base.. you know works..
3) Good css examples you can reuse
4) A pseudo base with style switches etc..
5) A mega base code.. that lets you vary everything
We started working on 5 and with 5 awhile ago.. but actually find it easier now to work with 2/3
We have a few base sites.. and good css "rules"
I'd love to connect/discuss withanyone doing more advanced theming, and looking for work
We're also involved in setting up www.ThemesMadeEasy.com
as well as www.ProDrupalThemes.com (the www.ProDrupalThemes.co.uk site is already up in beta)
What I most see is that you need good design at the start..as on www.BestBabyStuff.co.uk
Then you can forget about the fact it's Drupal.. and design what you want.. and get great customer experience