Thoughts on championing OOTB themes

[vedaw]

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

[Steve McMahon]

Sounds like a great start!

I think there was also some discussion at PSPS of the idea of shipping
Plone with a few themes that would provide good OOTB baselines for
some common uses (intranet, personal, collaborative ...).

On 2/20/08, vedaw <veda@...> 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
>  --
>  View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Thoughts-on-championing-OOTB-themes-tp15598172s20094p15598172.html
>  Sent from the Product Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
>
>  _______________________________________________
>  Product-Developers mailing list
>  Product-Developers@...
>  http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/product-developers
>

--

______________________________________________________

Steve McMahon
Reid-McMahon, LLC
steve@...
steve@...

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[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.)

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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[vedaw]

Good idea on contacting the other open source designers out there. At least the themes are significantly better than the Wordpress themes I've seen. I wonder if there's a way to entice these designers to contribute...

I think the plonethemegarden idea is a little lower on the list of priorities than getting some good working skins to ship with 3.0, but i'd love to pursue it as an option regardless.

Thanks!

Ken Wasetis [at Contextual] wrote:

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.)

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?

[Ken Wasetis [at Contextual]]

Veda,

It seems to me to be a very easy sell (then why haven't I?) to the
existing mambo/joomla/drupal skin producers to just learn enough about
another tool (Plone) that gives them yet another channel to get a few
more miles out of designs they've already done the hard work on.

These people/shops already run ecommerce sites to sell/download their
new Plone skins from and understand the model for doing that.  I think
they just hear of the Plone learning curve and get scared off, but I've
seen non-Python/non-Plone developer-designers pick up the Plone skinning
process rather quickly.

If these designers see the size of the Plone market and the dearth of
available skins for download, I would think they'd be licking their
chops to repurpose their skins and get some more sales.

I really think that attacking this from the perspective of getting those
who already sell site themes and from the perspective of having some
free site themes, but then also really good ones for a fee (just like
their model on the other CMS platforms) is the way to grow the available
pool of Plone skins quickly.

Plus, if my work is any indication, I think a lot of the Plone work is
done for 'clients' versus there being a lot of mambo/joomla/drupal sites
that were done by hobbyists that just want to throw a cooler skin on
their site than the default.  So, a lot of the Plone skins out there, I
suspect, are more client-specific and less able to be shared to the
general downloading public.

just my .02 again.

-Ken

vedaw wrote:

> Good idea on contacting the other open source designers out there. At least
> the themes are significantly better than the Wordpress themes I've seen. I
> wonder if there's a way to entice these designers to contribute...
>
> I think the plonethemegarden idea is a little lower on the list of
> priorities than getting some good working skins to ship with 3.0, but i'd
> love to pursue it as an option regardless.
>
> Thanks!
>
>
>
> Ken Wasetis [at Contextual] wrote:
>  
>> 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.)
>>
>> 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?
>>
>>
>>    
>
>  

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[jpburbank]

Hi Veda and all,

I'd be in for a theme sprint and or helping with theme docs.





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Today's Topics:

   1. Re:  Problem installing LDAPUserFolder on plone3
      (AttributeError: getMemberInfo) (Matthew Wilkes)
   2.  Thoughts on championing OOTB themes (vedaw)
   3. Re:  semi n00b-question: how to enable vanilla	users the
      right to add stuff tomy custom folder? (Gilles Lenfant)
   4.  mailtoplone released (Hans-Peter Locher)
   5. Re:  Thoughts on championing OOTB themes (Steve McMahon)
   6. Re:  Thoughts on championing OOTB themes
      (Ken Wasetis [at Contextual])
   7. Re:  Thoughts on championing OOTB themes (vedaw)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 20:33:46 +0000
From: Matthew Wilkes matt@...
Subject: Re: [Product-Developers] Problem installing LDAPUserFolder on
	plone3	(AttributeError: getMemberInfo)
To: product-developers@...
Message-ID: 96BA74DB-A7B3-44BB-8938-6C6C4BC09F0F@...
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed


On Heisei 0020-02-20, at 185723GMT, Tim Knapp wrote:

  

Hello François,

This list is for the development of Plone itself, please use the
plone-users (General) list instead.
    

Actually Tim, this is product-developers not plone-developers.

This is probably on topic for here.

Matt


------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 12:57:02 -0800 (PST)
From: vedaw veda@...
Subject: [Product-Developers] Thoughts on championing OOTB themes
To: product-developers@...
Message-ID: 15598172.post@...
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii


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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[Yuri-11]

Ken Wasetis [at Contextual] wrote:

> Veda,
>
> It seems to me to be a very easy sell (then why haven't I?) to the
> existing mambo/joomla/drupal skin producers to just learn enough about
> another tool (Plone) that gives them yet another channel to get a few
> more miles out of designs they've already done the hard work on.
>
> These people/shops already run ecommerce sites to sell/download their
> new Plone skins from and understand the model for doing that.  I think
> they just hear of the Plone learning curve and get scared off, but
> I've seen non-Python/non-Plone developer-designers pick up the Plone
> skinning process rather quickly.

Me too, I've a volunteer in my organization with a little python
knowledge (he is doing a human faculty), which I told: "take the
tutorial on DIYPloneStyle and do a new theme". He did with almost no
help by me :)

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[espenmn]

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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[David Bain-5]

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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[Tom Lazar]

FWIW, i, too find deliverance very interesting but the way i  
understand things, deliverance will never be (and could never be) a  
full replacement for a 'handmade skin product'. but i'm sure it would  
be fine for the majority of usecases.

in this context i was wondering whether it would make sense to include  
one 'barebones' plone skin that soley exists to serve as 'fodder' for  
deliverance. OOTB plone pages are rather heavy-weight and offering a  
light-weight version might speed things up.

just an idea. right now i don't have the ressources to actually set  
something up and benchmark it, but i have a client project in the  
pipeline that might warrant such experiments. unless somebody beats me  
to it ;-)

On 21.02.2008, at 14:39, David Bain wrote:

> 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 skinn