I am in the process of updating our in-house site that was based on an extremely convoluted custom theme and series of modules. It was quite a pain to get the D7 ported site up and running with just the content.
I am a one man shop at our organization and looking for advice on which base theme in your experience would be friendly to an intermediate skill level (but getting better all the time) developer who isn't afraid of the frontend or backend side of things.
There are a few to choose from that seem very popular. But, before selecting one to use as my base to create the new theme I would like to hear some pros and cons from those who may have used a range of the different bases in production.
The first step would be to create a theme that mimics our current site but in the next year there will be a redesign, which I would like to base on the same base theme. So being flexible is key. A well documented option would be also the best choice for me.
Comments
Omega
Omega (http://drupal.org/project/omega) all the way.
Omega is a good theme
I like it because it comes w/ responsiveness baked in, in addition to other features. It works really well with context/delta modules too...a great trifecta.
Omega
I'd be surprised if anyone didn't say Omega, to be honest.
And while it works great with Context/Delta, we use it with Panels and the responsiveness carries through nicely. It comes with a set of responsive panels in the theme to mimic the stock Panels.
zen theme
We recently used the newly updated Zen base theme -- 7.x-5.x which is HTML 5, responsive, with compass/sass integration etc -- and had a good experience with it, so I don't think Omega is the only way to go here.
Zen vs. Omega...
If I have a client with detailed mockups of the design they want, I reach for Zen 5.x. Because Zen is a barebones starting point -- there are few nice stylings (CSS3-based gradients and fades on tab hover, etc.) but it's really just plain black on white out of the box -- I don't have many base theme defaults to override. I can start styling from the ground up.
But, if I have a client that doesn't really know what they want ("just make it look nice and modern") I would go for Omega because I can get a lot of nice base styling without any work on my part. I would hope that Zen subtheme's would fill this niche eventually, but that's not the case yet.
Either way, make sure you go with the 5.x branch of Zen or the 4.x branch of Omega to benefit from the SASSy goodness they've both added to those branches. Both are basically equal in terms of HTML5 support, responsiveness, grid-based layouts, etc. The main difference is that Omega puts most of the control over the theme in a very slick UI while Zen relies on you writing code. The flip side is that Omega tends to be heavier, though Chris (cellar door) says that's going to change in 4.x.
(As a sidenote, I use Panels instead if Context and had problems getting Panels working with Omega 3.x which initially pushed me towards Zen.)