[development] Themes - Trying to do too much in one theme?

[Mark Hope]

On 4 Oct 2006, at 21:18, Bèr Kessels wrote:

> Chiming in.
>
> IMO a theme is not just a look. But mostly a 'feel'. The *only* way to 
> get
> the 'feeling' good is to make a  theme for a specific need.
>
> There is absolutely no way that anyone can make a good theme for a 
> protal site
> about Beer, that works on a Muslim blog, stil runs well as the 
> professional
> theme for a doctors practice, and also suits the needs of thousands of
> kiddies that want a blog about pocahontas and their newest playstation 
> five.
>
> If you make a theme for a blog,it will look brilliant on the default 
> bog, but
> it will fall apart on any more advanced grassroots community site.
>
> IMO we should focus. Make themes that work for one case, forget about
> Drupal-for-no-one-in-particular. Forget about all these silly options 
> in
> theme setting. Forget about the option to turn on or off the 
> 'submitted by'
> settings on certain node types. On a brochure-ware site you never ever
> want 'submitted by' on /any/ page. On a personal blog you want 
> 'submitted on'
> not 'by' (its all 'submitted by SuperUser', why bother.) Just make the 
> stuff
> the way people need it in a certain case.
>
> Make good themes for certain cases, and be clear about the case they 
> were for,
> and don't try to be for 'nothing in particular'. Because then you end 
> up with
> a theme that is not 'for not one case in particular' but instead 'never
> really good, for anyone, at all'.
>
> Just my shot.
>
> Bèr

Well said!

I've only been using Drupal for a couple of months so don't shoot me 
down, but...

Having just skimmed over this thread but it was starting to sound like 
a "designing by committee" client meeting from hell. I think the thread 
title "Trying to do too much in one theme" is spot on. The fact that 
Drupal can do so much means that people expect the default theme to do 
so much.

What's wrong with having one standard flexible theme that suits the 
default installation, albeit more polished than Blue Marine, and let 
people choose from the contributed themes? I don't see the problem.

If anything the theme section could be split into sections or have 
themes tagged under suggested suitability.
Corporate/Blogs/Community etc.

Can this not be thrown open to designers/themers, asking for 
contributions under the various sections and then make a selection to 
distribute with Drupal? Drupal-Blog, Drupal-Corporate etc?

Making a theme look corporate is only part of the problem - as a new 
user I found Taxonomy and Category module extremely hard to get my head 
round - in fact I'm only just getting it. As a new user how do you go 
about applying taxonomy to structure a site and produce subnavigation? 
With difficulty.

Surely this whole thread points to different distributions of Drupal 
with pre-configured taxonomy, categories and sub menus.

Just my thoughts - OK go on, shoot me down.

Mark