For 40 years, scientists have searched for a way to bring nuclear fusion to the masses. If successful in bringing fusion online, we all could have an inexhaustible form of power to meet our world's energy needs. The promise of fusion is a dream that many have hoped to see become a reality in their lifetime.
Perhaps not for as noble of cause, Drupal users have sought better themes for their Drupal sites. Four years ago, it seemed to me that creating a good theme for Drupal was almost done as an afterthought. There simply were not too many places for a user to go for a quality Drupal theme. I recall spending a lot of wasted time maintaining my own (boring) themes for Drupal sites. The Drupal days of version 4.4, 4.5, 4.6 and even 4.7 for themes were dark days indeed. Luckily, Drupal 5 introduced us to a new theme called Garland. Garland may not have been a perfect theme but in my opinion the theme marked the beginning of an era for a new style of Drupal themes.
In the past few years, the number of Drupal themes provided under open source or via private companies have exploded. Along with that explosion, various starter and base themes have been introduced too. On the top of my head I can think of Zen, Genesis, Basic, and AdaptiveTheme. These starter/base themes offer theme developers opportunities for everyone to build or use professional sub-themes. In fact, this site used Zen in the theme's early years and today we're currently using a Genesis based theme called Extreme Updates (slightly modified). With each passing year, the theme offerings for Drupal has steadily improved in quality and quantity. This year is no exception and brings us a new official base theme to carry us over into the next generation of themes made for Drupal.
The year 2010 brings us Drupal's newest base theme, Fusion. Currently, there probably isn't a Drupal theme that offers site owners more control over layout and style than a Fusion based theme. Fusion has the support and backing of well-known Drupal theme shop, TopNotchThemes. TopNotchThemes appear to be serious enough about Fusion revolutionizing the way themes are done in Drupal. This week they publicly announced their new line of themes and a website called Fusion Drupal Themes. Most of the themes offered at the site are for a price, but there are a couple free themes also being offered that should give you a chance to see what Fusion is all about.
If you're still with me so far, you have to be wondering why I'm writing an article that sounds more like a commercial. Well, probably because this article does indeed sound like a commercial. But I'm not attempting to push Fusion on you and I currently have no financial connection to TopNotchThemes. This commercial should be considered more of a Drupal Service Announcement letting people know that I think Drupal is hitting another milestone in theme development. Fusion, just as Garland was, is a good indicator for marking this new paradigm shift in Drupal theme development.
If you think Drupal 6 themes are something to get excited about, wait until you see what Drupal 7 will be offering for theme development. Stephanie Pakrul from TopNotchThemes has already said that Drupal 7 will be in their sight once the Fusion launch dust settles. Better yet, she believes the theme improvements in Drupal 7 core is "good news" in that they should be able to make Fusion even leaner by taking advantage of "the improvements that have gone into Drupal 7". She expects they'll be able have their first Drupal 7 Fusion theme ready around the same time the release candidates of Drupal 7 are available.
You can be sure that there are plenty of theme development shops out there also getting ready to bring the next generation of Drupal themes to the community once Drupal 7 reaches critical mass. Better yet, those days of Drupal 4.x and being defensive on the state of theme development in Drupal are things of the past. This time Drupal themes developers are on the offensive and helping Drupal to take on more market space. This is a very good time to be running your site on Drupal.
Comments
I'm sorry, but I'm simply not
I'm sorry, but I'm simply not that impressed by Fusion. I think it has a ways to go and any theme builder functionality will be dwarfed by Acquia's DrupalGardens.. though fusion is GPL'd, so at least it's got that goin for it.
Not the same thing
Fusion + Skinr and the Drupal Gardens ThemeBuilder aren't competitors - they're two different ways of making theming easy, aimed at slightly different audiences, and you can do great things with both of them. Acquia Prosper and Acquia Marina are now Fusion themes, and we're looking forward to the new Fusion-based Acquia Slate as well.
What ksenzee said :)
If you want a hosted, GUI-based theme builder, you can't get any better than Drupal Gardens. Fusion isn't and won't try to be that. We're ecstatic about what Drupal Gardens brings to organizations and individuals who want to use Drupal.
But Drupal Gardens isn't a theme framework for developers to build something from scratch, nor is it a place to get a relatively unique theme that's ready to go out of the box, which also provides support. Nor will you be getting something geared towards Ubercart e-commerce sites.
They're both great products (yes, I'm biased) but very different markets.
Fusion is my favorite
Having tried Zen and Genesis and never really feeling super-enthused, for whatever reason Fusion just makes sense to me. I've been much more productive using it.
Thanks for this review, it's
Thanks for this review, it's quite useful.
Fusion looks really promising, and there are plenty of great themes based on fusion.
Nothing looks good to me
Hello,
I am trying to switch from Joomla and Wordpress over to Drupal. What I am not seeing in either Wordpress or Drupal themes, is page level control built right into the CMS. With Joomla, you can choose which elements are on any given page. As soon as I looked at the Fusion configuration page, I started wondering if that was absent in Drupal. It was asking questions about how to layout the whole site. Yuck. I can't build a very professional looking site doing that.
I want a theme that allows me to choose a page and THEN choose a layout. I want total control over the layout of every page.
Modifying the look per page
Changing what elements appear on what pages can be controlled in Drupal.
Blocks-visibility depending on the page you're on.
Blocks are building blocks you can put around the content. It is possible to manage where they appear and when they have to be disabled. Show them to logged-in-users. Show only on blog-page. Show only to users with a specific role. Show only on home-page. Etcetera.
Panels: layout per page
With the Panels-module you can build pagespecific layout in any way you want.
Layout is not on the fly available.
It is true that you can not pick a layout per page immediately. But I don't see why this is needed. The whole idea is that all the pages have a similar look so that there is consistency in your site. In preparing the site one can choose what a section (blog, faq, links,...) will look.
There are a lot of ways to control the look of pages in Drupal. It depends on what you want and then you build it. After that, you place the content. Some people like this way of working and others don't.
So be it.
Hi Bryan, I have some
Hi Bryan,
I have some questions, Can you tell me, how can I use the collapsible regions and theme settings to set up the layout. I'm newbies for drupal. Please give me some advice. Thank you.
I prefer Adaptivetheme,
I prefer Adaptivetheme, http://drupal.org/project/adaptivetheme, because it is focussed on accessibility and standards. Adaptivetheme for Drupal 7 is now HTML5 ! AT has many cool subthemes developed for it, one of them is the Mobile theme.
I find it easy to develop from “scratch” with Adaptivetheme. The biggest strength of AT, in my opinion, is that it is easy to port your existing HTML / CSS to AT. If you have already a site, it is easy to map your design, HTML and CSS to AT, and port it with little change.