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

> Question. How important is all of this if deliverance becomes the
> standard technology for Plone?
> http://www.openplans.org/projects/deliverance/project-home. It seems
> to me that if we get Deliverance working flawlessly then we open up
> Plone to 10,000s of themes.
>
> I'm just wondering whether the community shouldn't be looking at
> what's left to make deliverance trivial to use for a designer/css guy.
>
> On Thu, Feb 21, 2008 at 4:31 AM, Espen Moe-Nilssen  
> <espen@...> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Hi
>>
>> Den 21. feb. 2008 kl. 01.44 skrev Ken Wasetis [at Contextual]:
>>
>>
>> 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.)
>>
>>
>> The "competition" has lots of nice themes copared to plone.
>>
>>
>>
>> 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-$50 USD, which is pretty amazing to me.  
>> I've
>> though of contacting some of their developers to have them port  
>> them to
>> Plone - how hard could it be if you have the PSD files and a little  
>> DIYPlone
>> help or paster script help, right?
>>
>> With just the PSD files making a theme is not that fast, would at  
>> least take
>> a day, probably more.
>> If you have the access to a site running the theme I consider  
>> things a bit
>> easier.
>> If for example some (different) people wanted the same theme, a  
>> price of
>> 30-50$ would be possible, remember, there is quite a lot of content  
>> types
>> and css in plone.
>> If there is a wish to port some themes to plone and a little money  
>> in it
>> (maybe $150?),, this would be fun to do.
>>
>> Alsoi, if porting A LOT of themes from for example jombla, the  
>> average time
>> to create a theme could be a bit faster (as its possible to search/
>> repleace
>> in css files)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> 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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