My Drupal Blog - 5 Things Drupal Could Learn From WordPress About Themes - Comments

I agree 100%. Drupal's theme

Gabrie — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 20:26:32 -0700

I agree 100%. Drupal's theme are a more dull shade of blue... I don't like it at all.

Wordpress is the best cms

kişisel gelişim — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 08:27:33 -0700

Wordpress is the best cms system I've ever used. But also Drupal is coming into prominence. Thanks. My WP websites: karakalem : )

The Zen base theme is quite

sohbet — Tue, 20 May 2008 14:07:47 -0700

The Zen base theme is quite scary to look at for a beginner. There are almost *too* many files in there to do everything.

Very good! Here is my

Brittany J Corlett — Tue, 13 May 2008 14:23:36 -0700

Very good! Here is my bookmark of this post! http://www.searchallinone.com/Other/RC_in_C__Roys_Web/

Thanks for this well

Claude Gelinas — Mon, 05 May 2008 17:42:02 -0700

Thanks for this well balanced review!

My vote goes to WordPress for all my blogs (on different subjects) mainly because it just feels good.

On one side, admin-wise, I have my blog entries which instantly display correctly and on the other, I have a collection of pages which contain rather static information.

It just works better (sorry, Drupal).

Also, Drupal needs to find a wy to attract more "pro" designers so that complex menus and commercial-grade themes become available.

Drupal is gaining ground but WordPress is still the clear leader, from a web publisher's standpoint.

I use Drupal and Wordpress

Hone Watson — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:22:49 -0700

I use Drupal and Wordpress and I disagree.

Wordpress and Drupal serve different purposes and therefore are not in competition with each other.

Drupal has basically become a CMS framework where as Wordpress is an out of box Blog CMS.

I think Drupal and Wordpress are both just as easy to theme its just that Wordpress has more documentation, the documentation is easier to find, and its organized logically. Drupal theming documentation is hidden away and its organized like mud thrown against a wall randomly.

Thats makes it easier for designers to learn the Wordpress theming engine.

So Wordpress is more likely to get all the hot designers while Drupal gets the sucky designers - developers moonlighting as designers.

You look at all the Drupal themes and they look like they've been designed by coders/programmers/developers and that's because they have. No one else can figure out the documentation.

The Zen base theme is quite

Budda — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 18:19:36 -0700

The Zen base theme is quite scary to look at for a beginner. There are almost *too* many files in there to do everything.

Editing a themes files like Wordpress can be done in Drupal, although the project is stuck in v4.7 land - http://drupal.org/project/theme_editor

I used SMS forums before and

David — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 04:53:10 -0700

I used SMS forums before and its okay, if not extremely customizable like Drupal is, but it has a couple of really cool features.

1. You can upgrade the entire website from the admin panel without downloading or uploading any files.

2. You install packages by uploading the archived file and it handles the placement of the code and the archiving of the code.

3. You can apply a patch to the core code or a module code, again without uploading a file.

It was pretty cool. Some of these improvements are a good idea for Drupal. The repository/distribution model that Linux uses is quite a good one, and although I see it exists in CVS, it's a very manual process still. An apt-get for Drupal would be a good idea.

Dave

I agree with the internal

Dominik — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 22:09:37 -0700

I agree with the internal editing of CSS and getting rid of Bluemarine (I quite like Chameleon) bur most of that is just the surface. Drupal is still much easier to theme if you want total control - and it's getting easier. The thumbnails in the Theme directory would be nice but they are largely the responsibility of maintainers. But I will take Drupal's repository with a proper release system over Wordpress any time. The 'test run' feature is a lot more interesting, though. BTW: A lot can be accomplished with Contemplate. There used to be a module to edit theme files in Drupal 4.7 but I could never quite get it to work.

However, there are lots of other things Drupal could learn from Wordpress. Well, one thing really. Content and comment management. Try weed out spam from a hundred comments on Drupal and Wordpress and you'll see what I mean. (Sorry, for being slightly off-topic, but this is a bugbear of mine and the only reason I have switched one of my main blogs to Drupal, yet.)

Drupal 6 core is actually a

Larry Garfield — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 19:44:57 -0700

Drupal 6 core is actually a lot more themer friendly. It doesn't have a true "easy to mod" theme, but it solves that problem in a different way. "Unskinned" Drupal is now a LOT more themer/CSS friendly. Themers can mix and match templates to override, or even just start throwing CSS on top of the existing HTML to get a variety of really nifty designs. The default look is no longer tables from 2001. It's just begging to be skinned. :-)

That said, a slimmer demo theme in core is a good thing. It's just not as much of an issue as it once was.

This is a good commentary.

Rick — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 19:32:07 -0700

This is a good commentary. I think that most will agree with what is wrong. The issue is that no one has stepped up to implement what needs to be changed (myself included!). There have been planning steps taken towards changing the look of the themes area on drupal.org (see http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-org-redesign-analysis to be sure...).

If I were to have a vote, I'd say that all of the themes except Garland are taken out of core immediately for Drupal 6. Not offering other options is better than the bad impression that the out dated themes give. Hopfully new themes hit Drupal 7 core. I know that there is a talk of a theming contest coming up.

From 4.6 -> now I've seen increasing amounts of design centric types begin to use Drupal. I do think that there is a shift taking place towards making Drupal pleasurable for designers. D6 will be a HUGE boon to themers, especially those with little or no PHP knowledge. Good things will come to those who wait...

Rick

Have you looked at the Zen

Simon — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 18:38:28 -0700

Have you looked at the Zen theme before? I think that theme would be a very good one to include in the default installation of Drupal, if we're going for a nice-looking theme that's easy to customize.

5 Things Drupal Could Learn From WordPress About Themes

Laurence — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 12:50:58 -0700

OK, so before everyone starts sharpening their knives I would like to make a couple of points:

I am not a closet WordPress fanboy ;) I have just been playing around with WordPress theming a bit lately, and these are some (hopefully) fairly objective observations.
Drupal is in competition with WordPress. If Drupal can learn from WordPress in areas where WordPress is superior, and improve upon and surpass WordPress in those areas, ultimately it will help Drupal kick some WordPress butt.

All that said, here goes:

1. Pictures sell

Start by looking at the main theme download page on WordPress and compare it to Drupal's main theme download page.

Which one of those do you think looks more inviting to a designer trying to decide where they should spend their time, or a new user looking to develop their first site?

It's true that Drupal's main theme page has a lot more technical and detailed information, unlike WordPress' which actually has none, but when choosing a new theme I'd reckon that the single most important consideration for the majority of people is what their new theme will look like. If they like the look of the theme, then they will be concerned with other factors like the number of columns, validation, cross-browser compatibility etc. A good number of the Drupal theme listings don't even have screenshots – why not?

My suggestion would be to do one of two things, either:

put up screenshots for all of the themes, and leave the rest of the details to the individual theme listing pages, or
if you still wanted to provide details on the main page then do it alongside the screenshots but in a more user friendly way.
For example, why not get all theme contributors to fill out a series of yes/no questions when they upload a theme to drupal.org - things like is this theme valid CSS? Then just display the results in an easily digestable table alongside the screenshot. So, for the CSS you would have a little CSS icon and then a tick or cross to signify validation.
This would create uniformity making it simpler for the user, and also potentially allowing for a WordPress style list of filter options to sort themes by - like 1 column, 2 column, white, blue, red etc.

2. The default core theme

WordPress' default core theme is Kubrick (on the left), and it's pretty uninspiring. In fact there are a number of things I don't like about it like it's pretty dingy, the links in the sidebar are too small, the sidebar background color is actually not controlled from the CSS but is instead a part of the main background graphic etc.

By contrast, I think Drupal's default core theme, Garland (on the right), is much nicer. And the included color picker is undoubtedly a bonus. But, have you tried theming Garland beyond the stage of just changing the color scheme? It is one tough mutha.

As a designer, the first thing I did with WordPress after having a look around was to try and theme it a bit by editing some of the core theme files. It was a relatively simple process, and one which would give me the confidence as a designer/themer that I could well do a decent job on some more advanced theming of WordPress.

It's not that I think Drupal should compromise on Garland, but what about offering a nice themer friendly core theme as well - which brings me on to point 3…

3. Other core themes

WordPress only ships with one other core theme - classic, whilst Drupal ships with three others - bluemarine, chameleon, and pushbutton. That said, with themes I think it should be a question of quality not quantity.

So…

Firstly - 'classic'. It's pretty dull.

Secondly - 'bluemarine', 'chameleon', and 'pushbutton' - also pretty dull.

I do get that bluemarine, in particular, is intended as a good base theme for themers, but come on – how long has this theme been released with Drupal?

Just because a theme is intended as a base doesn't mean that it need be ugly, or that it couldn't be updated. IMHO that is one old skool looking theme.

I think Drupal could really get a jump on WordPress here by refreshing these alternative core theme options, and impressing potential users right out of the box.

4. Theme editor

Now this is an interesting one.

In WordPress there is a theme editor which allows you to edit a theme's files (like page.tpl.php, style.css etc. in the case of Drupal) from within your admin panel. No need to make a change to a file on your local machine and then re-upload the file, or even to change the file on your server and then re-save.

The flip side is that you could quickly get a version of your site on the server which is different from the version on your local computer, and you have a good potential for conflicts.

Whilst I'm not convinced that I'd necessarily use this theme editor for general editing, over the short period of time that I've been using WordPress I have liked this feature, and I could see the benefit for making minor theme alterations.

5. A note to the WordPress admin

And finally…I couldn't find a point 5 (sorry - I am a Drupal themer after all ;) ).
Anyway, luckily at the time of writing this post the main theme download page of WordPress looked like this in Firefox

Note to the WordPress admin:
Check the page, then write the headline ;)