[support] Why SubTheme?

[Mark Shropshire]

Fred,

If you are comfortable developing a theme from scratch and using only that them on a site, it is perfectly fine. The advantage of using Zen or Blueprint is to give you a jumpstart with a framework theme (often called starter themes). Framework/start themes often reset css and provide helper code to make theming with Drupal easier. 

The main reason I would subtheme is to allow easier updates to your framework/starter theme from d.o. If you have just hacked those themes downloaded from d.o, you have to merge your changes back in. Of course that can be done with git, but I still think sub-theming is better. If someone else looks at your site, it will be easier for them to see what is going on..

Thanks!
Mark

On Mar 13, 2011, at 7:44 PM, Fred Jones wrote:

> Here http://drupal.org/node/225125 one can find a few ideas why one
> might want to use a subtheme. But if I have a site that needs only one
> theme, it's just one site, and there's no real interest in playing
> with ideas of different looks, is there any reason to use a subtheme
> of Zen or Blueprint as opposed to how I always do it and just make a
> fresh, 'regular' theme?
> 
> Thanks.
> -- 
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