Preparing a cute little theme for contrib

I'm finally following up on a threat I made in class to post a bunch of the themes that I created during past themeing workshop examples. I have an element that I teach on converting simple HTML templates into full fledged Drupal themes, as you can see here.

So the template that I pulled out to contribute was a great old school "punk" styled blog layout originally released as a free HTML template by Tony Pires. Tony's free template called "Free Style" was distributed in a batch of 2500 free HTML templates that are given free to new customers of a particular web hosting plan. I gobbled it up for a class because it had a little more teeth than some other Drupal themes and it was a great example to play with.

By "punk" I think the original author meant that it harkens to pink and yellow neon spray paint as a graffiti backdrop to a blocky stencil-like typeface. It's about as representative of anti-establishment rock n' roll as dreadlocked yellow smilies are of the reggae movement. But it has some cool things going for it like some nice positive and negative space usage and some torn edge styling almost like a DIY flyer printed in your friend's basement.

This theme could arguably align with a skateboarding style, which may have been the other element the author wanted to tap. The ink splash accent at the bottom is a dead giveaway to a well characterized style of the 1990's. I'm no style expert, I grew up in the 80's, conveniently right between the punks of the 70's and the skaters of the 90's.

So what I've done is walk through my tutorial to swap in Drupal theme elements and do my best to style the admin layouts. I've hit the major points but I'm hoping someone else with a smarter nose for themeing will pitch in help bang out the nuances. I'm also seeking CSS folks who can talk to Windows browser compatibility. With community feedback and support this could be a great little theme that is a bit unlike the others.

Apart from posting patch files on the forums and issue trackers, this will by my first direct contribution to the Drupal project and I'm pretty excited. I have an application open to the CVS repository at Drupal.org for an account to take this little theme to the big time.

I'll follow up here when the dev version theme is properly contributed and ready to try out.

Posted September 29th, 2008 by Sean in

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Comments

On October 7th, 2008 Wim Mostrey (not verified) says:

Could you provide a link to the original theme? You say it's "free" but could you also say what license it falls under? I'm asking this because it looks like the Zimplit CMS is also offering this theme. Why this is special? Because Zimplit requires you to pay if you want to remove the copyright symbol from your site. So it distributes a "free" and copyrighted version, for which you could use this theme. I wonder if they asked permission from the original creator.

On October 7th, 2008 Sean says:

Thanks for asking! I first got Tony's design in a bundle of 2500 free HTML templates as part of a new web hosting package. The author's note said only to give him credit for the design, which I did in the .info file of the converted Drupal theme. I've emailed with him and have cleared my use and redistribution with him. This Drupal theme is now a derivative (and attributed) work and GPL as per requirements to contribute to Drupal.org.

Wonder if Tony knows what Zimplit is doing with his work? I'll email him again.