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DrupalCon San Francisco 2010

theme development

Drupal themes go nuclear with Fusion

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By Bryan - Posted on 04 March 2010

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.

CMS Report's Ten Additional Stories for 2009

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By Bryan - Posted on 30 December 2009

A couple days ago, I posted CMS Report's Top Ten Stories of 2009. The articles listed were ranked by popularity based by how many times viewed and the rate that they were viewed through the year. Popular stories do not always signify well written articles or are always an indication of personal favorites. Each year, I write a number of content management or IT related articles that I love but for various reasons you the people didn't have interest in reading and sharing.

Below are some of my favorite articles written in 2009 that were not a part of the previously posted Top Ten list. If I had a Top 20 Stories list the articles in both of these listings would be included.

Book for Magento's Powerful Theming Engine

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By jude dsouza - Posted on 24 August 2009

Packt is pleased to announce Magento 1.3 Theme Design, a new book that helps users give their Magento store a unique branded look and feel by creating their own Magento themes. Written by Richard Carter, this book is packed with essential hints and tips that are required for an effective Magento web design.

Magento is an Open Source, e-commerce web application that was created by Varien, and built on components of the Zend Framework. Magento is the hottest and most powerful e-commerce software and has gained popularity in a short period of time. Users can control the look, content and functionality of their e-commerce web site with the help of Magento’s powerful Theming engine.

Magento 1.3 Theme Design provides users with different design techniques that will help them customize the look, feel, layout and features of their online Magento store, allowing them to reinforce their brand message and increase sales. Users will learn to embed social media tools such as Twitter, and social bookmarks to promote and improve their Magento store with the help of ideas and examples that are present in this book.

Create Professional Themes with New Plone Book

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By swatii - Posted on 07 August 2009

Packt is pleased to announce Plone 3 Theming, a new book, which helps web designers build new templates as well as refactor their existing ones using Plone's templating system. Written by Veda Williams, the editor of the documentation section of Plone.org, this book is a step-by-step guide which will help create a customized Plone website and ensure that the concepts are well understood.

Plone is a free open source Content Management System (CMS) that’s built on top of the Zope application server. Plone lets non-technical people create and maintain information for a public website or an intranet using only a web browser. It is because of its superior security and advanced back-end, that it holds a technological edge over many major CMSes.

Plone 3 Theming provides designers with handy tips and tricks, thereby simplifying the theming process. This book provides a sneak peek into the future of Plone's theming system as well as provides useful information which will help designers create a robust and flexible Plone theme. Designers can then set up a productive development environment which will help them build a quality theme product.

Theme development and the GPL

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By Bryan - Posted on 02 July 2009

Some of the most intense debates I've seen in the open source community have been discussions covering what is or what isn't required by the popular open source license, the GNU GPL. For example, it is common practice in the open source CMS market to distribute themes that include the templates (the code) under the GPL and the artwork (including CSS) under a different license. Under the GPL, is this practice legal or not?

On opposite ends of the GPL debate are staunch supporters for and against the GPL. Someone usually argues that distributed theme packages for a GPL licensed CMS must always be distributed under the GPL. To do anything else would be illegal. Another person will usually argue that the time and money the theme developer put into a theme gives him or her the right to distribute the theme any way they wish. When the discussion has finally reached this level of completely opposing views, the sparks will fly.

This time around it was the Wordpress community that found itself asking the various legal questions. Matt Mullenweg of Wordpress asked the Software Freedom Law Center for some legal clarification on the GPL issue. Today, Matt posted an article with the law center's response and provides his own input too. The truth can be found somewhere in the middle.