- Part 1: Bartik Explained
- Theme Settings
- Part 2: Enabling Themes Explained
- Part 3: Installing Themes Explained
- Installing the Danland Theme
- Installing the Zero Point Theme
- Installing the Company Theme
- Installing the Sky Theme
- Part 3: Finding Themes Explained
- Avoiding Starter themes, Theme frameworks, Base themes
- Evaluating Themes
- Commercial Themes
- Artisteer
- A Final Note on How Themes Get Built
- Practice
- What?s Next?
A Final Note on How Themes Get Built
In Part 3 of this chapter we’ve shown you three ways to find a Drupal theme for your site.
- Free themes from Drupal.org
- Commercial themes
- Artisteer
In the Drupal community, using free themes is by far the most popular option.
It is very rare to see a theme built from scratch. Nearly every Drupal project starts with an existing theme and brings in a designer to make modifications. Even the most prestigious Drupal projects tend to start with a theme from Drupal.org. Using an existing theme has many benefits:
- The code behind popular existing theme has been heavily road-tested
- Many themes already come with features such mobile-compatibility
- Drupal themes can be complicated to build from scratch
- Re-using existing code saves time and money
It is beyond the scope of this book to teach you how to re-code existing Drupal themes. However, we hope that, for your first Drupal sites, you’ll be able to find a suitable design from Drupal.org, a commercial theme site or Artisteer.