Posted by Marmalade on July 19, 2010 at 12:31pm
Start:
2011-01-22 08:00 - 2011-01-23 17:00 Australia/Brisbane Organizers:
Event type:
Drupalcamp or Regional Summit
We're excited to announce DrupalDownunder — a national Drupal conference to be held in Brisbane on January 22-23, 2011. If you're interested in getting the latest news about plans for DrupalDownunder head on over to the site and fill in the form! http://drupaldownunder.org
We'll be rolling out more features on the site as time progresses but we wanted to get the word out so you can save the date!
We're backing off LCA (Linux Conference Australasia), the largest Open-source Conference currently in Australia — feel free to check out what they're up to! http://lca2011.linux.org.au/
Looking forward to joining together to make DrupalDownunder a spectacular event.
Jeff and Sheree
& the DrupalDownunder Team
Comments
Whooo-hooo!
Really looking forward to DrupalDownUnder.
We'll be promoting it at Software Freedom Day on Saturday.
Donna Benjamin
Former Board Member Drupal Association (2012-2018)
@kattekrab
Interested in Theme and Design Stream
I know that things are at the planning stage so I guess I just wanted to put out there a desire to see some sort of design/theming component to DrupalDownunder.
It is something which has started to become part of DrupalCon and it would be great to get any comments on board from others who are thinking of attending.
There is some stuff which the design for drupal group started working on after copenhagen: here http://groups.drupal.org/node/90849 which is aimed at building communication paths for designers and themers with the more dev oriented parts of the drupal community.
It would be good to hear from anyone on how we could use this work for drupaldownunder. There is some stuff if you scroll down to the Goals which may be possible to think about.
I'm happy to contribute at my level of experience but it would need input from others who could provide higher levels of knowledge.
Over to you, do you think it's possible and worthwhile to try to do something?
theme and design stream
Yeah - I'd be very interested in a theme and design stream too :)
Donna Benjamin
Former Board Member Drupal Association (2012-2018)
@kattekrab
theme and design stream
Yes BernieCram,
Getting in at the planning stage is good. We are very interested in developing a broader discussion, presentation point for more design/theme related issues and certainly a best practices document for UI designers and designers/themers in general.
A few goals we would like to see posted and even pondered
1. An essential design list - your site must have this!
2. 10 benchmark sites - best practice design - code and UI
3. Designers and themers guide on how to work with coders (productively) and the flip side.
4. Designers and themers FAQs online document.
Most of this is really coming from the designer/themer side - however many of our coders would like designers/themers better informed too.
A best practice document that is is simple and doesn't contain over 145 checks and balances.
I hope this gets some consideration.
best regards
Anthony
Can we refine this into a list of presentation areas
Hi Anthony,
Thanks for contributing your suggestions. I emailed Jeff and Sheree separately to ask about incorporating some of this into the planning, so it is also on their radar. I would imagine though that they will be plenty busy with just making sure that everything happens as well as keeping their real work under control. If we could get a few ideas for the type of presentations we think people would be interested in, it may be possible to get others in the community to dob in people with talent in those areas so that we could ask them to put in a proposal for an interesting talk.
If any of the organisers think that this approach is useful/helpful or conversely unhelpful it would be great to get a comment back here.
I like all of your suggestions but think that the first three fall into the possible presentation area. So we'll kick off a list with those and I'll add a couple in
I have no feel for the level of interest in this area from the people who will be attending. Anyone who is going and would like to see some of this content can you please add a comment, suggest something design or theme related or suggest a talent to coerce.
Also could we just add a category into the Australia group for design and theme stuff, that could cover a faq with links to theming resources and also links to any good case studies we find.
Thanks All
Bernie
Another one
I just thought of another.
• designing the admin and edit experience for non-techs
B
Great Ideas
As the Lead Designer in Marmaladesoul and working with one of the best theme/coders in Drupal ;) (lol) I do think this would be fantastic to have as a session at DrupalDownunder. Drupal is amazing and powerful and has the potential to not only be beautiful under the hood but on the outside as well. We'll certainly take note of the topics suggested above! Working together is so imperative to having fluidity in the design process. It's really important to touch base with your coders because they can help shape the design to work smoothly with what Drupal provides most easily.
If there are people willing to speak then please go and submit a presentation! Tossing up whether to contribute in this way — I would love to actually as this is a HUGE passion! — but we're really flat out with the organisational side of things so will wait and see what others submit.
Seeing Drupal raise the standard in its design elements would be amazing as I know they have the goods in the code. :)
Cheers,
Sheree
marmaladesoul.com
please do so sheree
would love to hear you on this - please please please!
Speaking strictly of
Speaking strictly of front-end design, I think there should be absolutely no relationship with Drupal and the design of the site. The choice of CMS should not impact front-end design at all, if it does then that is a limitation of the designer and/or the CMS. I personally cringe when I see obvious Drupal elements, such as the user login block, with merely some rudimentary CSS styling. That's fine if you're banging out quick, cheap sites in a day but to me that contributes to the perception that Drupal is not up to the task of producing professional quality websites.
Theming is different because there's definitely some knowledge and skill required in turning a design into a Drupal theme. Also, the 'Edit' pages for content creators/editors are obviously influenced by the CMS. But apart from that, the designer does not need to know or care that a CMS is being used.
Thanks
Yes valid comments, design is design but I think that the design for drupal movement is about developing closer working relationships between the designers and developers and how to get people who have come from backgrounds other than development involved and contributing. This is not going to work for everyone.
I think that the suggested topic areas are in that theme/ui area which one or two person operations will have to deal with rather than in the real design area like what colours are hot at the moment.
I guess it's just good to know if there are others interested and would go to sessions making it worth the DDU organisers time.
Session proposals now up on DDU
Well it's all happening today, just got the email through that the session proposals are open, http://drupaldownunder.org/sessions
If you have a big budget then
If you have a big budget then you can make Drupal do anything. But I do think choice of CMS impacts front-end design choices greatly. I would always recommend you chose a designer who is familiar with Drupal as it always gives very build-able, professional looking results without having to fight what Drupal provides at a starting point. I always think, if you want it to look like Wordpress then go with Wordpress (unless you have the budget to twist the beauty of Drupal into something else) otherwise, work with the power of Drupal incorporating your design into that equation. Design isn't only about the "prettiness" you see so it's always impacted by the UX already provided by the CMS.
marmaladesoul.com
I really don't see that it
I really don't see that it requires a big budget to get Drupal looking any way you like. You can build your site pages in HTML, replace the content with 'print $content', the title with 'print $title', etc., copy the head out of an existing theme, save as page.tpl.php and you've got a page template. Set up your content variables in _preprocess_node, lay them out on in HTML, save as node.tpl.php and you have a node template. Create page and node templates for every page type that requires it. If you use Views, hooks to use views-view-*.tpl.php templates are automatically available for every row, field, and element. I don't see any of this as any more work than trying to modify an existing theme to fit a project. Inheriting from a base theme is good as you can inherit _preprocess and other functions from template.php that set up page template suggestions, body classes, etc., and add some very basic common CSS styles from stylesheets, but that's really all you need them for. If you're having an issue with theming code in Drupal core, copy the theme function, paste into your template, rename it and alter the code so it does what you want.
We have three great graphic designers here. 90% of our projects are done in Drupal and we never tell them what they can or can't do. They create the design that is best for each individual project without a thought of what CMS we're using. Drupal is infinitely themable. If the skills of the themer are up to scratch, I don't see any reason why the designer should have to compromise in any regard.
When I said big budget — you
When I said big budget — you need a big budget to alter what Drupal does if you want to theme it "just like Wordpress" as one client once told us. Sure, we can but it does cost to force Drupal to be something that it's not. For eg changing the mark up that Drupal provides for tab navigation or for node links. Changing that mark-up can be done but if the design is sympathetic to that mark-up the whole thing can be implemented much more easily and therefore more cheaply.
As a designer I feel at an advantage knowing Drupal and working for Drupal-only clients. I can work with and yet tailor these sort of factors into a coherent and beautiful design that works in with my coders instead of getting them to fight against these factors simply for the sake of "beauty" or a design. Code and design go hand and hand and working together has been really beneficial. I love the input the coders and the themers bring and knowing how it is going to be built has certainly streamlined our process from the initial design to the end outcome.
I love what Chapter Three have to say about it all: http://www.chapterthree.com/blog/nica_lorber/design_drupal_template_appr...
They have a list of elements inherent in 90% of Drupal sites, some basic, and some Drupal specific, to serve as a tool to make sure every last element had a style, including ones that were not obvious in the initial designs. Clever cookies!! :)
When designing a new element, I will mock it up, take it to the coders and themers and take on board the build feed-back and make any adjustments that will ensure something co-herent and the best fit and are not going to waste time on build. Unless it is something imperative and then they in turn, just make it happen. Give and take. :)
I don't see it as a compromise, I see it as a definite advantage that ensures a smooth workflow amongst our team and with a beautiful end result both inside and out.
Cheers,
Sheree
marmaladesoul.com
I've never had massive
I've never had massive problems theming Drupal, but some of my css friends find it a pain... I'm about to embark on a very conceptually designed Drupal site so we shall see... To be honest I'm getting sick of the 'Wordpress-looking' sites, they're all starting to look the same!
Tickets
Just wondering when ticket sales are likely to open. The site says "Registrations commence October".
w00t!
I'm looking forward to seeing what you get up to at this conference.
Registrations are open!
Registrations are open! http://drupaldownunder.org/
Bevan/
Wish I could afford it ;-(
Wish I could afford it ;-(