It is that time of year again!  I want to change the look and feel here at CMSReport.com.  My current theme, LiteJazz from RoopleTheme, has served me well this past year.  I'm now looking for a theme that provides two columns to the right of the body (content on the left side).  Something along the lines of the contributed Drupal theme Marinelli is what I'm seeking.

If you have a good suggestion for a Drupal 6 theme that you think would be perfect for this site, please leave your suggestion as a comment or contact me. Also, if you are a theme designer, you're welcome to take this opportunity to advertise your product (within moderation of course).  I'd prefer a free theme for my site but I'm always open to a quality theme at the right price.

"Intended Audience

This article has web designers, developers, and anyone who has http://www.csszengarden.com in their bookmarks, firmly in its sights. We want to bring your fabulous skills to a fabulous web content management platform: Drupal.

Drupal has never suffered from having too many professional designers offering Drupal themes. This shortage has intensified as the use of Drupal has grown. Good looking themes go a long way towards raising Drupal’s profile, and supporting that growth. Take a squiz at our presentation on Drupal theming, and jump into the "great Drupal great themes" postitive feedback loop!"

Complete Story

I have had this itch to change the theme I'm using for CMSReport.com.  I decided to scratch that itch.  I'm currently playing with some freely available themes out there for the CMS I'm currently using (Drupal).  The theme in use at CMS Report this week is LiteJazz by RoopleTheme.

So what do you think about the LiteJazz theme and is it an improvement over the theme we've been using the past year?  Feel free to use the comments section below to voice your opinion.

"I often get asked for advice about picking a Drupal theme. Themes are extensions of the Drupal content management system which allow a site admin to quickly change the look and feel of their site. You just download the theme you like, install it, select it, and your whole site has a new design.

However, like finding high quality Drupal modules there are some good rules of thumb to follow in your theme search."

Complete Story

"As a self-proclaimed Drupal theming “ninja”, I’ve built plenty of sites that don’t look like Drupal. But to be honest, it’s certainly not that easy. So for the next 5.0 release of Drupal, I’ve done my best to get in as many patches as possible to making theming in Drupal easier—and you know what, we’ve certainly made some great progress. Here’s a rundown of the top theming patches that I got in:

• #73961 — Simplify adding CSS in Drupal

This was a great little patch that made it very clear and consistent how to add CSS files in Drupal. In 4.7, adding CSS files was a bit of a mystery, as I outlined in a previous Lullabot article. Now, starting with 5.0, it’s very easy: drupal_add_css($cssFile, $type = 'module'). That’s it. Just specify the type of CSS file, core, module, or theme, and this function will handle the rest, loading them in a correct and consistent cascading order."

Complete Story

Something old is new again. The Blue_mark theme for Drupal 4.7 is available at CMS Report. The Blue_mark theme uses Drupal 4.7's default theming engine, PHPTemplate. This theme is released under the GPL.

The Blue_mark theme was originally offered by Charles Lowe and available for download at his site, cyberdash.com. The original theme was written for Drupal 4.4's Xtemplate theme engine. I maintained the theme through Drupal 4.6 for a personal site of mine. With the switchover to the PHPTemplate theme engine as the Drupal 4.7 defualt, significant work was needed to keep old Blue_mark alive. The Blue Marine theme was used as a starting point. Minor tweaks were made to Blue Marine's PHP files and significant changes were made in the CSS.