Theme tryouts
Themes are sets of templates and stylesheets that determine the entire look of a Drupal website (the term is also used with other systems).
Over in the sandbox, I installed a number of themes last weekend. They are all likely to be compatible with the next version of Drupal, which promises to be available in the early part of next year. I have also given everyone in the sandbox the ability to change their own theme. You can choose a new theme to try out by going to the Edit tab of your My Account pages and selecting a different theme from the default that everyone sees. This will change how the site looks to you but no one else, so no worries.
Please give these alternate themes a test drive. The point is not so much to pick one, as to help you get a feel for how the appearance of the site can change without the content changing at all. Any of these themes can be modified, and there are many other existing themes that might be candidates. It is much less labor intensive to modify an existing theme than to create a new one from the ground up. The default theme in the sandbox is garSWNI, aka Garland like the live site. SWNIzen and genesis are examples of barebones themes designed as starting points. I have built one site so far starting from the same thing as SWNIzen, and while there are some advantages to that approach, it really is quite a lot of work (we're talking weeks and weeks full time). I have also built several sites now by modifying an existing theme such as forest_floor or twt_68portal.
Colors and graphics are generally easy to change, so try not to focus on that so much as on the general layout of things. [disregard the following; it was my browser and not the site doing this] And there's an annoying thing on the My Account:Edit tab in that it defaults to assuming you want to change your password and gives you an error if you don't fill in the Confirm password field when you choose a different theme. You can avoid this by just removing the content of the first Password field.
I went to sbb.swni.org and it
I went to sbb.swni.org and it said the link was broken. How do I check the templates again? I want to see the different designs!
sb6.swni.org
It's not sbb, it's sb6 (for SandBox 6, I guess). sb6.swni.org
Me likey!
I like the FOREST FLOORRRRRRRR!!!!!!! I just want some of our pictures. I don't like how it's squashed though. It's not taking up the width of the page...If we could still have three column format.
So why can our site not look like this http://www.theonion.com/content/index
Do we just not have the space for something like this? Video and images included?
We are going to have access to video cameras through ONI soon. I also will be making podcasts of important meetings and would like to put those on our website.
Extreme updates
oooooooooooooooooooooooh I like extreme updates toooooooo! If we could get a nice combination of forest floor with that picture at the top (or a couple of pictures) and the the three colum format ath the bottom it would be awesome. Except wit the extreme template I don't like that the quick links column is on the left. That should be on the right. The calendar on the left and recent news in the middle. OR again, the last reply I put up has a link to the onion. I like that three column set up too. eeeeeeee! so pretty!
The Onion and such
As it happens, theonion.com is in fact a Drupal site. So in that sense, we could theoretically achieve that look, but remember that it would be a huge help, labor-wise, if we start with an available theme that's pretty close to where we want to be. There are some forward-compatible freebie themes available that do more closely approximate that kind of look, if memory serves. I didn't put up any like that because I wasn't expecting you to want something that complex.
Here's one along those lines: http://960robots.lullabot.com/
This one, http://www.relivinghistory.net/, is based on LiteJazz. The LiteJazz page has links at the bottom to a whole slew of sites based on it. NewsFlash is another theme along those lines, from the same folks, and again, there are a bunch of sites using it listed at the bottom.
The primary place to browse for free Drupal themes is http://drupal.org/project/Themes. There are a great many there. Given how close we are to Drupal 7 coming out, I suggest setting Filter by compatibility to 7.x (in the right sidebar) if you want to browse the themes there. Even limiting it to 7.x (meaning Drupal 7), you'll still get a list of 40 or so themes. Some of them are for Drupal 7 only, so you'll probably want to focus on those that also have a 6.x version listed (in a light-green bar at the bottom of each theme listed).
Standards compliance and testing
I think that whatever theme we use needs to be relatively easy to use.
In addition, it should be
-- standards compliant (e.g. W3C) for compatibility
-- tested on multiple browsers, especially IE6 and above, and Firefox as a minimum.
I like Forest, but don't see whether it's compliant with W3C, or tested on multiple browsers. Genesis is, but doesn't have a 7.x version yet. The sample websites for Genesis looked complex, which would not be a good thing for us, but there appear to be simpler starting points.
Any experience with Genesis or other compliant themes?
Standards compliance and testing
Testing for standards compliance is a complex business with a system like Drupal, and there are a great many things that affect it in addition to the theme. A theme is mostly CSS, but there is some PHP code in all themes as well. But the code that ends up on a page in Drupal comes from all kinds of sources: Drupal itself, of course, code that is generated from installed modules, of which there are typically a good number that are third party, and then there's the code that content contributors may have put in their articles and whatnot. I confess that I have not made a methodical test of themes in this regard on any of my sites, though it certainly would not hurt to do it.
I have focused mainly on testing in different browsers. I typically test on Firefox (Win and Mac), IE7, maybe IE8, Google Chrome, and Safari. I don't have a way to test on IE6 here, and I suspect virtually any modern standards-compliant code will produce errors with IE6. And I confess I'm not super sympathetic to someone who insists on using IE6. They really should do themselves and all of us working on the web a huge favor and get a newer browser.
Testing is something that can be pretty time-consuming, and it's an area where I for one would really welcome anyone willing to help with it. There is a free tool available for Firefox that is very handy, Web Developer. It will use the official W3C markup validators to test various kinds of code on a page, among its many other functions. What could be done for theme testing would be to test a page with Garland (which is a core Drupal theme, and is what you're looking at here), and then test the same page with the theme in question. That way you can get a baseline. Because there are going to be errors, regardless of the theme. And an error per se is not necessarily a bad thing. For example, it is common to use CSS hacks that are not standards-compliant in order to coddle IE into behaving correctly.
More themes to try
I have installed some more themes you can check out now in the sandbox. One of them, Sky, I have mildly adapted for a site I launched very recently, OriginalLiz.com. It is a vastly simpler site than SWNI, and I simplified even the Sky theme in some ways. But it is a nice clean theme that's calm without being as bland as Garland.
By the way, I finally figured out that the password behavior on my My Account edit page I mentioned in the first post here was being caused by my Chrome browser! So if you wondered what I was talking about, there's your answer. Chrome saw a username and password field, and tried to be helpful and fill it in for me. Firefox is smart enough to realize I'm already logged in and not do that, apparently. I've been using Chrome more and more lately, to the point where it's now my default.
Theme considerations
Most of these themes are fixed width, and so are not appropriate as the primary, default SWNI theme. If a user has a wide web browser window, then it’s because that’s what the user wants/needs. Fixed width themes rarely expand/enlarge gracefully; usually they just become less and less usable while maintaining an absurd, wasted margin. Bad use of screen real estate. This is a problem for users with poor eyesight, who might want/need larger font sizes. In the interests of accessibility for the sight impaired, we need to rule out any fixed width theme as the primary, default theme. I’m not opposed to offering fixed width theme options for those users who might wish to choose it for themselves. But the default theme needs to be a fluid width theme.
The other essential consideration is that of maintainability. Most major updates of Drupal break most themes. What this means to SWNI is that the life expectancy of many themes is relatively short. Unless we choose wisely, we may be held hostage by our theme, and unable to update to the next major release of Drupal. Fortunately, there is a way to avoid this: Sub-theming. A sub-theme rides on top of a base theme, and makes tweaks to it. So long as those tweaks aren’t overly complicated, chances are good a major Drupal upgrade won’t break your sub-theme. Even modest tweaking can result in a dramatically different look (ah, the power of CSS). And if you’ve chosen your base theme wisely, chances are good it’ll be ready to go when the next major Drupal upgrade comes along. Relatively safe base themes would be those provided with Drupal core (of which i think Garland is esthetically the best), or Zen. The problem with Garland is that it is a beast to work with. It fights you tooth and nail. Zen was designed as an easy to use base theme, and therefore has enjoyed a large following (usage > 37,000 as of July-2010, which is why i consider it a safe choice to piggyback onto). There may be other themes which would be good base-theme candidates, but Zen or Garland would be my recommendations currently.
Update: Fusion looks like possibly another good base-theme. What’s attractive about it is a module which provides a web interface for controlling many aspects of the theme (i.e. theming for dummies and/or the lazy). It also seems to enjoy a large following (usage > 11,000 as of July-2010).