Posted by BillyKoch on November 9, 2011 at 9:52pm
Where is the best place for one to get a theme? I have someone who wants me to build a scuba site - so I see plenty in drupal - themes area but are there other areas that I could also look into?
Comments
Couple good sources
There are a couple of good sources - depending on how much you're looking to spend on a theme. I like Template Monster. They are reasonably priced and the code is usually clean and organized. There is also Symphony Themes and TopNotchThemes, that cost a little more, but still good stuff. I'm not adding the links here, but a quick search will get you to their sites.
Another option is to use Artisteer, which is a program that lets you create customized themes for Drupal, Joomla, WordPress, Blogger and plain old HTML. I've just started working with it and it works pretty well. I've already used it for two client sites. They have their own structure for the code that is a little tricky to grasp right away, but it's not that hard to figure it all out. The ability to build a theme using WYSIWYG tools can save hours of coding time.
Hope that helps.
I have heard great things
I have heard great things about Artisteer. I talked to someone a couple Drupalcons ago, and she was very enthusiastic about it. She is also someone who knows her stuff, so I keep meaning to look into it.
It's pretty good
I've only been using it for about a month now, but it works great and lets you do some pretty cool things on the theme very easily. It provides tons of options for layout, color scheme, images, etc. and you can knock out a good, working theme in literally just a few minutes, and a great one in about an hour.
It comes with 15 block regions defined, so that gives flexibility in content layout. However, adding your own regions can be tricky since you can't do it directly in Artisteer, but rather must edit the resulting code. This is why it's a good idea to use the Artisteer theme as a base template and then create a sub-theme off of it to hold all your customizations. That way, if you go make a change in Artisteer and re-export your theme, you don't lose your changes.
One other issue (and I think this is only related to the Mac version of the software) is that it runs kind of slow. The program takes about 30 seconds to open up, and then when making some changes or saving files, it can tend to hang up for about 10-15 seconds before allowing you to do anything else.
That being said, it's well worth the cost of the software and you can download a trial version to give it a try before you buy. The only real limitation on it is that is severely watermarks all the images in the exported theme, but it lets you see how it works. I highly recommend it. : )
A couple of other options
RocketTheme got their start creating Joomla themes. They do a good job of consistent, clean code with their Joomla themes. I'm not sure how good they are at Drupal themes but they could be a good option. You can check out their Drupal themes here: http://demo.rockettheme.com/drupal/
Alternatively Drupal Gardens is supposed to have built-in themer running on Drupal 7. You can use their WYSIWYG themer to create you theme and then you can stay with their hosting plan or you're supposed to be able to export your entire site as Drupal 7 and run it on your own host.
Also - Books on Developing your own custom themes?
Anyone have any recommendations or any website recommendation?
For those of you going to New Orleans - have fun! Wished I was going, but its my daughters birthday tomorrow so can't miss her Terrible 13th birthday! :)
Billy Koch
Drupal Noob
Books for theming
Hey Billy,
I hear "Front End Drupal"
"Designing, Theming, and Scripting." is good. ISBN 978-0-13-713669-8.
I don't know if they have a book for Drupal 7 yet. I actually have a printed copy for version 6 that I can loan you. I haven't read it but keep it hand for some of the themers in our group.
It's easy to get started creating your own themes.
Look in to the Zen theme. You create a sub theme of it, then all you have to do is add CSS. There is a module called Zenophile that easily creates sub themes for you. The Zen theme is well kept up and there is good documentation in the files to get you started. Colourlovers.com has a lot of color pallets you can search for. I use css3generator.com and http://www.colorzilla.com/gradient-editor/ to generate some CSS. Then use Chrome or Firefox's Firebug to see all the elements.
These two video introduce the Zen theme and are probably the best videos to get started creating themes
Drupal 7: Basic Theming with Zen and CSS http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCg4sTA3DlQ
Drupal 7: Theming Fields and Nodes with Templates http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxZQqgvJk3s
I been playing with the Omega responsive base theme.
Artisteer
I have used Artisteer too, its pretty cool although i failed to add a rotator banner for some of my projects and also i failed to make responsive site.
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