First Tuesday Meeting - Pending...

Events happening in the community are now at Drupal community events on www.drupal.org.
scottrouse's picture
Posted by scottrouse on October 2, 2010 at 9:41pm

Hey all. Both Andy and I will be out of town this Tuesday, October 5 so we will be unable to organize/lead a meeting. I'd encourage the group so self-organize an informal meeting, perhaps at a coffee shop, for chatting and collaboration.

Use this thread to begin organizing a meeting, if desired, and I will post an Event node to the group, if needed.

Thanks to everyone for your participation in this group! You guys rock.

Best,
Scott

Comments

Loose Drupaloids?...not good. :-D

Posted by opegasus on October 2, 2010 at 10:10pm
opegasus's picture

Well I for one am still reeling from your Views presentation and have been learning-practicing nearly every day since. So I have much more to work out on Views/CCK until I feel remotely comfortable.

Ergo the only suggestions I have is for us to skip this months meetup or have an open table forum at Zootown brew or something like that. Yet I am open to (X)?

My many thanks for all you and Andy have shared with the 'loids to date. You guys rock, are you kidding us? Much appreciation as you two have made my transition from Joomla much smoother that I anticipated.

Safe journeys to you both and see you next month!

-Christopher

help

Posted by Pamela Diedrich on October 12, 2010 at 1:30pm
Pamela Diedrich's picture

I was at a drupal meeting where someone talked about using a module that would let you easily change the css features on your site. Does anyone know what the module name is? also it was advised to not used already existing themes, which theme(s) can I choose from. thanks

Modules

Posted by scottrouse on October 12, 2010 at 1:45pm
scottrouse's picture

Hi Pamela,

There are a number of options out there (as with most things in the Drupal world). If I remember correctly, we were speaking of the Skinr module. It works well with the Fusion theme.

If you're looking for a way to easily add CSS rules to your site without editing the theme files, the CSS Injector module can help with that, although that's not a route I'd recommend.

I'm not sure what you mean by "not sure already existing themes." Almost all Drupal sites are built using a version of one of the many available Themes at Drupal.org. If you're interested in really customizing a theme, I've had great luck with some of the following starter themes:

The above themes basically give you a "blank canvas" just waiting to be customized via CSS (and/or by modifying theme template files). Be sure to read the documentation for each theme and use a sub-theme rather than editing the included theme files.

Let me know if I can help out.

Scott

Scott Rouse
http://about.me/scott.rouse

CSS/Themes

Posted by laken on October 14, 2010 at 7:20pm
laken's picture

As usual, Scott has beaten me to the punch with a great summary.

I'd just like to add a few general comments about choosing a theme for your Drupal site:

  1. There are hundreds of free Drupal themes you can find on the drupal.org website here: http://drupal.org/project/themes. However, many of them are not of particularly high quality, either design-wise or code-quality-wise. Until recently that page was just a huge list, making it almost impossible to search or sort – now I notice they've added some filters at the top to make that easier.
  2. Before you choose a theme, you should decide whether you're looking for a finished design, or a 'starter theme' where you can implement your own design.
    • Some themes come with a finished HTML/CSS/images package and are intended to be used pretty much as-is – doing much design modification on such themes may be hard.
    • 'Starter' themes, as Scott said, are like 'blank canvases' with a lot of features to help you implement your own designs quickly. They're not intended to be used as-is on a finished site. Scott has listed some of the popular starter themes, and I'll add another one I've used, Basic which is solid, well-tested and supported, and simpler than Zen.
  3. If you want to implement your own design, your choice of starter theme should be influenced by your preferences in HTML/CSS. If you have a preferred CSS framework you're already using for your web design outside of Drupal (e.g. Blueprint or 960gs) it makes sense to choose the Drupal starter themes that implement those systems (the ninesixty and blueprint themes respectively).
  4. If you want a theme to provide you with a finished design, you need to be careful. There are many free themes available on Drupal.org that have a pretty face, but are not necessarily well-supported, flexible, or bug-free.
    • If your project/client has a little money to spend, I recommend the premium themes at http://fusiondrupalthemes.com – they are well-designed, coded by experts, well-supported, use Skinr for style flexibility, and based on the Fusion theming system which is getting tons of adoption in the Drupal community. IMO these themes provide great value and functionality for the price.
    • If your budget is $0, there are a few free themes based on Fusion you can use, which are just as good quality, with Skinr flexibility, and the other advantages of the Fusion system.
    • If none of those fit, feel free to browse the themes section on drupal.org to find one you like, but you'll need to take care to determine that the theme is well-supported, gets bug fixes promptly, and has satisfied users. You can find this information on the theme's project page, and Scott or I can help you to learn how.

One final thing – your question about theming/CSS would be better as a new discussion rather than a reply to a past event posting. Don't be shy about clicking the 'Create discussion' link at top right of our group if you're starting a new topic, more people will see it that way.

Thanks!

– Andy

Western Montana

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