[Product-Developers] Thoughts on championing OOTB themes

[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?
>>
>>
>>     
>
>