Re: [Product-Developers] Thoughts on championing OOTB themes

Veda,

You're absolutely right - we're way behind where some of the other open source projects/communities are on this one.  It appears that the Drupal folks had the same idea regarding the use of csszengarden as a model:  http://themegarden.org/drupal50/   (many, many drupal skins demonstrated.)

If you google 'joomla themes', 'mambo themes', or 'drupal themes', it's pretty revealing how much of a market there should be for a Plone themes site, and I think that's what it likely may take (perhaps a site with a ratings feature and that allows different designers/developers to upload their themes - not just a per-vendor site, though those sites would proliferate more wide skinning of Plone as well.)

Here are some more examples (related to Joomla):

http://www.joomla-themes.co.uk/

http://www.joomla-themes.biz/

http://www.joomla-themes.org/

For mambo:

http://www.themesbase.com/?category=Mambo

http://www.pixelsparadise.com/

http://www.themegurus.com/

Many of the themes are $30-$50 USD, which is pretty amazing to me.  I've though of contacting some of their developers to have them port them to Plone - how hard could it be if you have the PSD files and a little DIYPlone help or paster script help, right?

Just some ideas of what's out there for other tools, anyhow.  I hope that you're able to get something going with the Theming Champ from the PSPS.

Cheers,

Ken

vedaw wrote:

I was not at the summit, and as a result haven't gotten a lot of information

on what's expected from me to improve the theming story for Plone, but I

have a few ideas here and would love feedback.

1) Identify the key players we need to round up for this. I'm thinking David

Convent, Alex Limi, Donna Snow, Denis Mishunov, the 14 year old wunderkind

I've been hearing about, and I'm sure there are more. Maybe the folks at

Quinta Group? I think we should also identify some designers, or determine

if we're going to liberate Wordpress or other similar free themes. I'm not a

huge fan of most of those themes, as most of them seem very ugly or too

dumbed down, but I could be talked into using them.

2) Create a dedicated theming section of the site and pull in select theming

docs there. Break it down into 2.5 and 3.0 so that it's clear, and keep a

link to other theming resources in the docs section. I'm thinking that we

narrow the field here and point them to the core docs. Possible visual

change to that section with thumbnails illustrating what the skins look

like. I'm thinking something over the top here, a la csszengarden.com. There

has long been a perception that the only thing you can do to easily theme a

Plone site is change the color of the tabs, and I want to break that

perception. At the very least, we need to make this page show thumbnails of

available themes: http://plone.org/products/by-category/themes

3) Possible sprint? I'd rather not do a virtual sprint, as I think the

in-person sprints are more successful, but we have to also be aware of where

our skinners live -- on opposite sides of the ocean. Is there any interest

here on this? I'm flexible to leave the country, but I know that many people

are not, due to having families.

4) Review the competition and see what they're up to in their theming

sections. There may be some interesting ideas we could borrow. 

5) Put together some best practices to make sure that users don't have to do

any internal tweaking to make a skin work. I'm thinking specifically

instructions on how to use GS properly when building skins, plus a "right

way" forward -- buildout vs the unified installer. I'm still not sold on

buildout, and this warrants some real discussion. Designers and skinners

don't need all of the overhead that buildout brings with it, and maybe

buildout isn't appropriate? 

6) Joel Burton mentioned a skinning contest, but I'm a little wary of this.

What do other people think? I just don't know how successful these things

are, or what we would offer as a prize. 

Next steps are to get general feedback and additional thoughts. After that,

I'd like to put together a final list of action items, set a timeline and

establish owners. I believe it was Donna who pointed out that 3.0 came out

six months ago, and we don't have a solid 3.0 theming story or the

organizational structure to support what we do currently have in place. I'd

really like to see that change.

Thoughts? 

- Veda

  

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