Presentation Proposal: Theming Drupal with the Zen Theme

Posted by steamedpenguin on February 28, 2008 at 7:27am

I am considering presenting on themeing Drupal using the Zen theme for either the April or May meeting.

Here is what I would like to do:

Explain what Zen is
How to create and use subthemes
Creating regions

I will be adapting several designs to the Zen theme, among them:

spring360 by René Hornig

Where I could use help is for people to ask questions. Don't worry about what your question is because the type of questions asked now will help me determine the scope of the presentation.

Speak up, leave a comment or ask a question. Ultimately this presentation is about what you want to learn.

Comments

Implications of Drupal 6

Posted by cwgriesel on February 28, 2008 at 1:45pm

How much longer will people be designing themes for Drupal 5 now that Drupal 6 is out?

It seems that Drupal 6 has a different theme architecture, which is a significant improvement from 5, so I'm wondering if it is worth my time to learn about Drupal 5 themes. What makes Drupal 5 themes still relevant? Is it because we will still have Drupal 5 around because it takes existing modules and websites quite a while to move to 6, or is the difference between Drupal 5 and Drupal 6 themes not that great and skills learned on one can easily transfer to the other?

Toss out the old, bring in the new...

Posted by steamedpenguin on February 28, 2008 at 2:45pm

Thanks for the feedback. For small sites Drupal 6 is going to be the version people are going to use. However, if you need Views and/or CCK then you will stay on Drupal 5. If Views and the Content Creation Kit become stable before the presentation then I'll shift gears to focus on Drupal 6.

The Zen theme already has a branch for Drupal 6, even though it is a development branch.

That said, the skills you need to theme Drupal 6 are not going to be vastly different from what you learn to theme Drupal 5. If I find that many differences in how to theme Drupal 5 and Drupal 6 you get a twofer; I'll have material for another presentation.

Ultimately I want people to be comfortable enough to theme Zen so that they can contribute Zen sub-themes to the Drupal repository.

SteamedPenguin: Not Your Usual Meal

Great Idea

Posted by maher on March 2, 2008 at 12:40am

Funny cause I was thinking about getting into Zen and see what I can do. I'm no CSS expert by any means so a session about Zen would be just what I'm looking for. As far Drupal 5 vs Drupal 6 goes, well the session wont be until April or May, so may be by then we will have Views and CCK out. If that end up being the case, then a session for Zen and Drupal 6 would be the way I would go!

NOTE: Samir, I have sent you an email, did you get it?

Views as a presentation dependency

Posted by steamedpenguin on March 2, 2008 at 5:05am

Maher,

If Views.module makes it to the Release Candidate stage by the beginning of April I will focus the presentation on Drupal 6 since a quite a few Drupal users will presumably start moving their sites to Drupal 6.

For the purposes of the presentation I will focus on the near-completion of Views for Drupal 6, the near-completion of the Zen theme for Drupal 6 as a guideline whether to focus on Drupal 6 or 5.

For all intents and purposes I won't concern myself with the release timeline for CCK.

SteamedPenguin: Not Your Usual Meal

sounds great

Posted by bryan kennedy on March 4, 2008 at 11:39pm

I would be very interested in hearing about your experience with Zen. I've used it a couple times and think it is growing into a great product for beginning themes. But I also would like to think about a theme that could be a starting point for more pared down efficient themes. Zen suffered for me from having everything and everything when I really just needed a very basic framework to build off of. It will be interesting to talk more about this at your presentation.

This is an awesome topic!

Posted by allie micka on March 14, 2008 at 12:48am

TCDrupaler's can't get enough of the themeing, and It's totally great to be learning more about Zen. Can you post this as an event for the April 23rd meeting?

This is a record for us - 3 future meetings all planned out, with no pizza-withholding required :)

Thanks again!

Meeting Tonight? 3-26-08

Posted by kesmeby on March 26, 2008 at 9:33pm

Is there a meeting tonight at Advantage Labs about themeing? And is that off of Franklin and Stevens?

If so I hope to see you all there.

thanks.

Any updates?

Posted by fei@drupal.org on December 11, 2008 at 6:07pm

Hiya! I was wondering how the presentation went... any info/observations you could share?

Thanks!