[Product-Developers] Thoughts on championing OOTB themes

Thu Feb 21 09:31:07 UTC 2008

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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