The situation with Drupal themes has increasingly caused me frustration, it’s pretty well known that in comparison to the majority of other content management systems, Drupal is really hurting in the theming category.
Sure there’s the occassional OK looking theme but there aren’t very many that may a person say “Wow, I really want to run Drupal and use that theme!”
So what is it that is creating this situation? Is it because it’s difficult to theme Drupal or is it easy and people just aren’t inspired enough?
Why do themes for Joomla! and WordPress and other platforms look so good in comparison yet, even though the community sizes are fairly similar, Drupal themes tend to be quite archaic or ugly (most, not all).
Yes, I know there are some that are decent looking but they are few and far between.
Perhaps it’s due to the fact that Drupal tends to draw more of a coder crowd and less of a designer audience, so what can they do to turn this around?
What are your thoughts on the situation?
I don’t want to turn this post into a “This theme is great, check out this link” but more of a discussion about what can be done to improve the selection because, whether you agree with me or not, it’s lacking.
About Mike Johnston
Read this article from our friends at Four Kitchens:
http://fourkitchens.com/blog/2009/09/30/why-drupa…
Todd has a pretty good explanation about why he thinks that there aren't any good themes for Drupal, and offers some solutions to the problem.
The comment stream is pretty good as well.
I also posted something on this a while back (http://himerus.com/blog/himerus/why-there-arent-more-great-drupal-contributed-themes-availalbe-community)
It's simply a matter that Drupal is a much more complex system, and building out a site & theme end up 99% of the time being very specific to the use case, and contributed modules and/or custom functionality that are involved in making the site/theme "beautiful"
I've created so many themes that my plan was "I'm going to release this theme, and it will be awesome!", yet by the time I'm done with the site, the theme is too specific to the use case for my site, and would not work or look even remotely decent out of the box for other users.
It takes a TON of time to create something generic enough, while being an amazing, beautiful theme. But it only works from my experience when considering EVERY potential use case for the theme, and mapping it all out ahead of time.
One thought as to a possible reason for this reality is that drupal, more so than joomla or wordpress, is highly extensible for fitting a wide variety of use cases. Drupal, therefore, doesn't necessary have some sort of standard site you can theme for. Also, theming in drupal is tied to the output of the modules you're using in your use case. So the contributed modules used would have to be essentially part of an install profile which is more than just a theme. Most designer/developers who do the work to build a full site with various contributed modules, do all the configuration, and then theme that don't necessarily want to simply give away all that work.
> Most designer/developers who do the work to build a full site with various contributed modules, do all the configuration, and then theme that don’t necessarily want to simply give away all that work.
Not to mention that as a designer if you are getting hired to theme a site for your client, they probably don't want you even selling it, much less giving it away for free.
Interesting thought! As a designer, themer, and developer I agree that Drupal doesn't have a great selection of beautiful-out-of-the-box themes, and I think you hit on the reason for this: Drupal's crowd.
I think WordPress has more attractive themes because the audience using it isn't looking for a complicated, monsterous website builder, which Drupal certainly can be at times. Drupal's entire interface takes time to get used to. Views? Blocks? Modules? Nodes? Most people are like, "What is all this?" I remember hating it when I first touched it. WordPress users can range from a code savvy expert to my grandmother who wants to create a simple blog to post updates about her cat. You don't need to know any code. Drupal on the other hand would be very difficult to do everything you want with 0 code knowledge.
Because of this, Drupal isn't as attractive to non-coders in the first place. Even if there was a giant library of really pretty themes, people would have a tough time implementing their chosen theme to a certain degree. I've never used a theme out of the box. I've had clients pick a pretty one and say that's it, no touchy touchy. But then they always want something changed and that requires custom theming including PHP templates and CSS.
I think the designers/themers that do use and understand Drupal come from companies that do custom work, like myself. Clients typically want to brand themselves or have a unique design, not just some design that any Joe could go grab for free. So we do custom design and start out with Zen, Ninesixty, or another base theme from which to build. This way, we know exactly what's going on with the CSS, templates, theme functions, etc.
I think the issue lies in the fact that Drupal itself isn't as user friendly as WordPress or other CMS's. I think WordPress's word choice is a little more user friendly with "page", "post", "plugin", etc. Drupal's getting there in terms of making it easier to use out of the box, but still, most low-level website builders don't have the time to learn what views, blocks, nodes, modules, etc. are.
You are exactly right IMHO.
It is so easy to create a "beautiful" WordPress theme, simply because well for 99% of the use cases, it's a simple blog setup, and at most you have a bunch of random widgets thrown in the sidebar.
In EVERY site I've themed for Drupal, the styles/theming became VERY specific to the output of those modules, and sometimes even proper configuration of those modules, making it much more specific to that site/that client.
I'm not saying that it isn't still easy or possible to create these "amazing" themes for Drupal, but it just takes time for a great designer/themer to focus 100% on creating JUST that, regardless of functionality. It simply takes a lot of time that most of us never have tied into client work.
I've spent hundreds of hours already on my Omega base theme (not even a pretty one, but just the base theme), and all the time I've put into really trying to set it up for any user's need.
I think its because there are more developers using drupal instead of designers. Drupal is too complicated for designers to use.
This is true, Drupal does not have any themes that are nice out-of-the-box. The problem with this is that the design process with diffrent drupal kits are very complex, and the user cannot easily manage the theme and change is to their liking. The themeing is done 10x better (hey, just my opinion) in Joomla and WordPress, this is why you can find alot of very beutiful themes for free (and tons of premium too).
Ok, there are starterkits in drupal, but they really give no other than just the basic black template, and the only thing that is easily editable is the basic css included.
Maybe this will change in the future, but for now, im staying with Joomla. The 1.7 version looks and feels very promising.