May
18
Submitted by John on Mon, 18/05/2009 - 16:44
Recently the following question was posed on the Drupal consultants mailing list by Sam Cohen:
"I was hoping some of you... can share any theme suggestions, both contributed and commercial, that you think look the most professional."
In the interests of helping others and of promoting the best Drupal themes, here are the themes that got a mention, along with the highlights of the various comments about them:
- Sky
- "highly recommend"
- "top of my list"
- "I love Sky too, but find it a bit heavy on resources"
- "haven't used... but looks pretty nice."
- LiteJazz
- "highly recommend"
- "top of my list"
- "haven't used... would require too much customization to make [it] look like something else"
- "...for very quick jobs that need more bock regions that the ambassador themes tend to offer. Doesn't depart very much from 'Welcome to my new Blog!' meme, but it can be useful perhaps for wire-framing."
- Marinelli
- "I often come back to Marinelli, and its subtheme Alagna. Works great with IE6, which is often a life saver (until we're rid of IE6...) Just retheme its login block, drop in a few nice banners and you've got a versatile theme."
- Amity Island
- "highly recommend"
- "haven't used... would require too much customization to make [it] look like something else".
- Multiflex-3
- Pixture Reloaded
- Aquia Slate
- Slash
- "I think the Slash themes look pretty professional."
- NewsFlash
- "...for very quick jobs that need more bock regions that the ambassador themes tend to offer. Doesn't depart very much from 'Welcome to my new Blog!' meme, but it can be useful perhaps for wire-framing."
- Acquia Marina
- "I've been very happy with the fairly-new Acquia Marina (once you change the icons and florescent green. :-))"
The following themes also were mentioned, but are frameworks to build upon rather than being ready to go "out of the box":
On top of that Sam mentioned converting templates from freeCSStemplates.org into Drupal themes - "well written and easy to convert." Note that the freeCSStemplates.org licence requires a link back from your site.
Do you work in professional Drupal development? Drop us a line in the comments about themes you've personally had success with. Or do you just find it easier to start from scratch?
8 comments
Nice job - I wish more people would summarize threads found on the consulting and development lists, it's good information that is under the radar of a lot of people and blog posts like this help to make that information easier to digest.
Have you thought about putting a few screenshot thumbnails with each of these? Quick visuals in a post like this help even more.
Thanks for posting!
Picture-Reloaded is fabulous!
Acquia Marina does not handle properly themed node-submitted.
Marinelli, 247 open issues! More than a page over a year.
Too many themes are submitted and abandoned. I will not even consider an apparently abandoned theme.
LiteJazz has 23 open issues and has not had a commit in 35 weeks - pass on the abandon-ware.
Amity Island 38 weeks since last commit.
NewsFlash - 35 weeks since a commit.
sirkitree - Yes I should really do the thumbnail thing. I'll see if I can summon the motivation :-).
As for further summaries of the consultants list - if this kind of thing is well received then I'll see if I can fit some more in. Comments like yours definitely increase the likelihood of it happening again!
Nancy - Very interesting point and something worth considering. However I think theme maintenance is not as important as module maintenance. Most themes are unlikely to be security risks and in many cases once you have them going as you want them, you can forget about them. Until you want to upgrade your Drupal version.
As for further summaries of the consultants list - if this kind of thing is well received then I'll see if I can fit some more in.
Have a look at http://www.oswd.org/, this site may contain some nice themes where you are looking for.
Gabriel, although this site is not Drupal related, it seems worth a look. I like the fact that the licence recommends but does not require a link back to oswd.org. That's a breath of fresh air for free web designs/templates.
Picture-Reloaded is fabulous! Thanks for posting! I love your blog. You have a great way of presenting your topic.
Very good post, thanks a lot.
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