Free High Quality Themes for Drupal
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Today I launched a new project that will port hundreds, probably thousands of Joomla, Wordpress and other CMS themes to Drupal.
3rdWorld Themes will become the home of a large repository of free, high quality ported-to-Drupal themes.
The idea has been nearly a year in the making. Phase one was the development of a highly flexible and extensible starter theme called Genesis. I needed a theme I knew like the back of my hand and that I could bend and twist to suit most themes. Unknown to most of you I also built a rather wicked grids based starter-theme but caught a lucky break when Ninesixty came on the scene. I mention these two themes because all the themes at 3rdWorld will be subthemes, either of Genesis or Ninesixty. UPDATE: I have added both Zen and Blueprint themes as possible base theme for subthemes, this should open it up to more themers and provide some competitive spirit:)
Phase two was amassing a gigantic repo of free and open source themes that were not only free, but beautiful as well. I have around 500 to-be-ported at the moment but believe me when I tell you there are thousands, possibly in the realm of 3000+.
Phase three was more tricky, scheming a year off work so I can do this. I have taken a year sabbatical and will work on this nearly full time from August onwards. The downside is I actually have to study at the same time and write a thesis so I can only be “mostly full time”.
Phase four is now - building the 3rdWorld Themes websites and porting the first couple of themes. I have only done two themes so far due to all my other commitments and the need to wind up professional contracts up until late June. Then I take a month off in July and start back in earnest in August.
Please understand the site is in early beta, I will be adding Views soon enough so we can sort and filter more effectively.
Right now I only plan to support Drupal 6. Post code freeze I’ll start looking at the Drupal 7 situation more closely. Sorry, no plans to support Drupal 5.
Why Port themes, what about original works?
First, I am not a designer, so I have to do what I do best and thats building themes from other peoples designs. Second, I don’t have time to design 1000 unique and original works. Third, there is an abundance of free and open source themes that look great on Drupal, so why not.
Whats the Catch?
No support, no forum, nothing. Just download and use. This is how almost every other project operates. I cannot afford to run busy forums or provide any support in any way. If you email me it will be ignored.
Can I Participate?
Dam strait you can. There will be many ways to contribute:
- Port themes and upload them
- Add PSD designs you want ported to Drupal
- Nominate open source themes you would like ported
- Give me money so I can eat (and go to Drupalcon Paris)
Of these options only number #1 is currently possible, and you will need to sign up an account and have it approved. Because we do not have support or version control it is very important you build themes of high quality that don’t break, easily.
I know theres going to be detractors to this. Well, Drupal is a do-ocracy, and I’m doing it. Enough of this talk that Drupal cant look great, because it can, and I for one am putting my hand up and making a monumental effort to redress the situation, starting now.
Download our first themes now - 3rdWorld Themes.
Cross posted from my original forum post on d.o.
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Comments
#2 Sounds great
This sounds a great idea.
There more open-source, free good looking themes there are, the wider the choice for everyone looking at drupal. Well done and good luck!
#3 Wow... your dedication is impressive!
I’ll be really, really interested to see this as it goes forward. It’s awesome that you’re dedicating yourself so much to a project that’ll benefit so many people.
#4 This is welcome news, indeed!
This is welcome news, indeed! I’ll spread the word at the upcoming Drupal Design Camp in Boston.
#5 wow
Great idea man, but don’t burn yourself out! I mean 3 - thousand themes! thats a lot.
I just installed and checked the 68Portal theme and it looks like it s a great port. Looking very tidy!
Just the page looked a little unloved but very tidy alltogether.
#7 Really great idea. What about
Really great idea.
What about licensing? As I know every drupal theme should be GPL-ed and themes from joomla … are not usually licensed under GPL.
And, will you commit those themes to drupal.org?
#9 Nice, but...
It’s great that you want to put in the time and effort to do this. My gut feeling however is that you’re not going to be able to decouple support and the issue queue from the porting of the themes.
What I predict will happen, if you don’t provide an issue queue for your users, then they will simply take your themes and upload them to Drupal.org themselves.
As a Drupal developer, I would do this if I decided to use one of your themes, because I want to hear other’s opinions and use-cases for the theme so it can grow and improve. I would also want version control over the code. So to me it would make sense to fork it.
So then you’re going to end up with two versions of all your work, and the version that users will flock to will be the Drupal.org one, with the support and clear issue queue, version control, etc. Since you wouldn’t have created the Drupal.org project, you won’t have control over the theme or be able to insist on getting the credit for the original port.
#11 It’s interesting that
It’s interesting that Wordpress distributes themes with tarballs, I wasn’t aware of that.
Just want to point out that you are contradicting yourself when you say users don’t want support (as shown by your poll), but that you find forum posts “all the time” about your themes. Maybe then the problem is the perception. Issue queues for themes need to be made more user friendly.
Also, the poll you refer too doesn’t quite make sense. The options “more regions”, “theme settings” and “JS eye candy” all actually fall under the option “Better support”! They are all just specific support requests. So I would say the poll is a bit inaccurate, because the users are actually asking for support, just not in those words.
Anyway. I think the reason why themes lag behind in Drupal compared to Wordpress is because of the confusing CVS system, lack of good documentation, etc. There aren’t enough people who understand how to write a PHP theme override, good HTML/CSS and commit it all to CVS.
That is why I absolutely think what you are doing is a good idea - if you have all the above skills, then please go for it!
I just want to point out that abandoning Drupal.org may not be such a good idea. Why not make a site like http://drupalmodules.com/? On your high quality themes site, just provide a link to download the latest tarball from Drupal.org. Also provide some basic help for people who don’t understand that the issue queues can be used by mere mortals. ;)
You’d essentially just be re-framing the project page of each theme, if you follow what I’m saying… You don’t have to actually help anyone in the queue, but at least give people the chance to help each other.
Also, as a developer, how will you work personally without version control? Don’t you want to be able to revert your changes, diff files, make sure that you don’t lose work, etc?
#13 Ummm… I said: There aren’t
Ummm… I said:
There aren’t enough people who understand how to write a PHP theme override, good HTML/CSS and commit it all to CVS.
And you are agreeing with me, by providing examples of these Indian people who don’t want to learn CVS. Which is exactly what I have said.
So I’m not sure why you “totally disagree” with me? I never said that there aren’t enough designers.
#15 Awesome Idea!
You know, I think this might be something I could contribute to. I’ve tried about 8 times now to get into the CVS stuff on drupal.org, as I have three themes which are ‘good enough’ for sharing, but are simply way the heck too much a hassle to get on the Drupal.org theme section. I am a designer/CSS/XHTML guy. I know only enough PHP to use snippets and adapt things to how I need them.
If I could just zip up a file, throw it on a server, and put a couple tags with it, that would be nice.
Most independent designers I know don’t use versioning systems; we don’t use SVN, we don’t use CVS, we don’t use diff. We build out a design, then move on to another. If one needs updating, well then heck, just update it. Then re-zip it/tar it/whatever.
Designers don’t work in systems that are set up for programmers. And Drupal.org, right now, is set up for programmers.
I’ve seen many, many posts on people’s sites concerning Drupal’s “Theme problem” (heck, I’ve even posted on it at drupal.org). Almost every one mentions the number one problem being the high barrier to entry for posting a theme to drupal.org. At least jmburnz is doing something about it! Maybe we can incorporate his idea into a section of the Drupal.org site, or have some way of allowing non-CVS themes to appear on Drupal.org? Who knows. Something needs to be done, and I’m fully behind jmburnz on this one.
Count me in for helping with a theme or two!
#16 I agree it would be good to
I agree it would be good to get these on Drupal.org, but also understand why you wouldn’t want 300 issue queues.
There’s a couple of options though - Project module lets you not have an issue queue for specific projects, so you could just switch it off. Another option is to contribute the theme then immediately mark the project as abandoned (assign it to the ‘abandoned’ user) - then it’s clear to users they’re on they’re own, but if someone wants to pick the theme up and support it, they can do so - and when the redesigned Drupal.org is launched I expect we’ll get a much nicer themes page.
#18 Account
I just set up an account (geerlingguy). I am most familiar with Zen, although I could probably get into Genesis pretty quickly. I’ll download a copy and work on a theme next week (maybe even this weekend). Do you have a list of themes you’re wanting to port? If not, you might want to set up some sort of system so users can put a notice up if they’re working on a theme… this makes sure two people aren’t doing the same conversion at the same time…
#20 Comments for Themers
I think comments for themers only would be good.
#21 Great idea! Sounds like a teachable moment
Wanna commend you on a GREAT idea, Jeff! I, too, have learned that sometimes you just have to go out & just do it regardless of all the uncertainties.
In reading the comments, it reminded me of something I have been thinking of for a while- Drupal´s usability (& how to use it as a teachable moment). I´m an old QA guy & what I know is that end users (for the most part) will not research issue trackers, etc. Heck, only about 50% of non-devs even know what a bug is, by traditional means. Ironically, those forum posts are bug reports so it´s not that end users don´t know what CVS/issue tracking technically is, it´s in how it´s presented to them.
So I have a solution for you, Jeff. In your last post, you mentioned placing statuses on your themes. Version control systems were initially created for this feature alone- avoiding overlapping work. So why not integrate a ¨mini¨ version control system into your site? Of course, this adds more work for you but it´d be more a community of Drupal designers. Not only that, but you´d be making lots of designers more comfortable w/version control.
Statuses:
(1)To be ported - ability for several designers to tag a theme as this, would allow for community to share ideas
(2) Port in Progress- Only 1 designer could ¨check out¨ a theme & be working on it
(3) Port Complete- What it says + adds a link to community member who did the port
As a non-designer, something that´d be nice to see would be a voting system (maybe broken up by categories like e-commerce, web portfolio, education, etc.) so that users could vote on what themes they like or would like worked on first. Contributors could get karma points or a star system for each contribution. You could provide tutorials/screencasts on how to port themes to get more community members involved (& maybe some of them wouldn´t mind answering questions from end users).
/end braindump
#22 genesis
Thanks Jeff. This is just what was needed. I like what you said about Drupal being a do-ocracy. I am a lurker at default but I hope to learn from you there. I had a couple of rough starts to get going with Drupal Theming and after brushing with zen and layoutstudio I got to genesis, which is awesome and flexible. How about doing a minisprint in Paris to get some devvers to provide an improved iteration of 3rdworldthemes.org that meets some of the suggestions in this thread (like Miguel’s)? Good luck with your thesis!
#24 Thank you
I think that your intentions are great.
I don’t know if it is of any help but I think the flexibility that Gala layouts by Alessandro Fulciniti offers could be advantageous to Drupal themes or in fact any theming.
http://blog.html.it/layoutgala/
40 different layouts that you can use with each theme!!
I dislike the limitations of not being able to choose a different layout, if/when I discover it would suit the site better, after a theme is downloaded as it doesn’t have the flexibility for it.
#26 Thanks again
I must check those out. I have only used Newsflash and Acquia_Marina so far. If there is a list of Gala based themes somewhere I would appreciate being directed to it.
I still think it would be ultra-flexible to integrate this functionality across the board (core?), although I admit that as a new themer I am not sure if this is too much to ask. Another CMS that I have seen uses this approach so I guess it is possible :)
#28 Great initiative
Hi, jmburnz.
I’m a novice, not a developer and have just managed to set up a site with Joomla - one of the reasons being the availability of great templates.
I am now debating with myself wheather to set up a new site using drupal (due to the apparant flexibility in content (CCK, Views, taxonomy ect.) and stubeling upon your intitiative definatly pushes me further in the direction of drupal.
I hope all will go well for you.
#29 Hi, I wrote about you in
Hi, I wrote about you in http://www.drupal.ru/node/30755
#30 So how to get started grokking Themes
Jeff, is there a book or website you recommend to get started understanding Drupal 6 themes?
#32 Hehe…even more awesome — the
Hehe…even more awesome — the “Front End Drupal” book has a Kindle edition for a double-dose of nerdiness :-)
#1 Sounds awesome. Any chance
Sounds awesome. Any chance we can access larger screenshots? A Lightbox 2 popup or even just a link to the original file would be awesome so we can get a better feel for it before downloading/deploying. Thanks for your work!