Articles

By Ishmael Sanchez
July 2009

One of the major benefits of using content management systems such as Drupal is that website content is stored separately from the rules for the visual presentation of that content. This means that it is possible to change how a website looks without having to recreate all its pages. In Drupal, the layer that controls the visual presentation of content is called a "theme". Thanks to Drupal's active community, many ready-made themes are available to download and use. But selecting a theme from the many options available can be a time-consuming task. I evaluated 25 themes that you should consider when you are looking for a good Drupal theme for your Drupal-based website.

Basic Theming

When you first install Drupal, a core theme named Garland, is enabled and selected as the default theme. Drupal also ships with five other core themes: Bluemarine, Chameleon, Marvin, Minnelli, and Pushbutton. You can select other themes by visiting the /admin/build/themes and selecting a new default theme.

Below shows the same page with three different themes applied

 You are not limited to these core themes. Many Drupal contributors have created themes and share them with the rest of the Drupal community. Contributed themes as they are called can be downloaded at drupal.org/project/themes. Once you download a contributed theme, you extract the files and upload them to your site at /sites/all/themes/. Once you have done that enable the theme by checking the "Enabled" box and select the "Default" radio button at /admin/build/themes page.  To use a different theme simply install and enable another theme. You can configure Drupal to use multiple themes. For example, it is possible to enable one theme for public users of a site and a different theme for the site administrators

Change the theme from the admin interface

About Drupal Themes

All Drupal themes can be categorized into five types:

• End User: If you don't intend to customize a theme, try these complete themes that are immediately ready for use "out of the box". Acquia Marina, Dreamy, and Nitobe are examples of end users.
  
  
• Colorable: If you want to simply modify the color scheme of a theme try Twilight, Garland, or Pixture Reloaded.
  
  
• Starter:  If you want to build a custom theme, start with a bare-bones starter theme such as  Zen, Stark, or Genesis.
  
  
• Admin: These themes are optimized for the administration pages of Drupal. Some examples are: Fruity, RootCandy, and  Nerdalistic.
  
  
• RTL Ready: Features and full support for Right to Left Languages. Examples are Tendu and interactive media.

Finding 25 Drupal themes

I set out to identify 25 Drupal 6 contributed themes which would give end users the ability to use the theme immediately after install and provide some additional benefits for their site. I evaluated mainly colorable and end user themes as they are geared more toward the user experience than the three other types of themes.

Before I list my findings I want to mention that I have no affiliation with any of the themes mentioned in this article. Also, note these are simply my observations and my personal opinions based on having used different contributed Drupal themes. In a nut shell all this information is subjective.

Testing Environment

I tested the 25 selected themes on my local machine running Windows XP and XAMPP. The following are the web browsers I tested the themes in: Chrome 1.0.154.53, Internet Explorer 5.5, 6, 7, 8 beta, Firefox 3.0.8, Opera 9.52, and Safari 3.1.2. I used IE tester to render the page in different version of Internet Explorer. I conducted my tests in April 2009 and used the latest version of each theme available at that time.

Selection Criteria

• Drupal 6 themes: Themes that were available for Drupal 6. (I omitted themes that did not have a Drupal 6 version.)
  
  
• Uniqueness: Visually striking themes or unique in their own right.
  
  
• Community backing/support: I selected themes which had multiple version releases. This tells me that people are actively using the theme and improvements, updates, and additional features were highly likely to come from these themes.
  
  
• Sponsored Themes: I also selected themes that were company sponsored as a firm is more likely to attempt to keep its theme highly usable and feature rich.
  
  
• Documentation: One final thing that was important to me despite being somewhat trivial was a link to a demo page and/or a visual screen shot of the theme on the theme page. I believe that anyone serious about their theme would include these items. It shows transparency about the theme and it's a general usability issue that makes me more comfortable selecting that theme.

Evaluation Criteria

After selecting 25 themes that matched the selection criteria I evaluated them based on:

• Cross browser support: The theme should render properly in at least all the browsers I tested (Expect for IE 5.5 which isn't really heavily supported by many sites). Having a theme which renders consistently is important especially considering all the web browsers options available now.
  
  
• Features: Refer to the options available to the site administrator to configure on the /admin/build/themes/settings/theme-name page.  Features of a theme give a site admin with limited knowledge of theming the ability to toggle on or off features simply by checking or unchecking a boxes.
  
  
• Basic search engine optimization: Websites need to attract visitors and having a search engine friendly site is crucial. Search engine optimization means that the theme should print the content section in the HTML before any sidebars, so that the main content gets higher priority when indexed by search engines.

Results

Theme Name	Screenshots	Interesting Feature/s	SEO Optimization & Cross Browser Support	Look & Feel Description
A3 Atlantis		User images, light text dark backgrouud	Yes, Yes	Smooth
Absynthe		Unique images and unconventional design	Yes, Yes	Welcoming
Acquia Marina		User images, SEO modifications, fun icons	Yes, Yes	Web 2.0
Acquia Slate		SEO modifications, rounded corners, sleek design	No, Yes	Modern Corporate
Bluespan		Rounded corners and prominent header	Yes, Yes	Stylish
celju		Tabbed naviation, large header, clean presentation	Yes, Yes	Warm
colorpaper		multiple subthemes, good use of typography	Yes, Yes	Fresh
darkelegance		User friendly icons and layout, distinctive login box	Yes, Yes	Crisp
deco		Clever use of background image, clean color scheme	Yes, Yes	Classy
dreamy		Clean layout, suited for bloggers	Yes, Yes	Grabbing
Fervens		Rounded corners and lots of colors	Yes, Yes	Smart
InfO8		Tabbed main navigation and emphasized header	Yes, Yes	Clean
Inove		subtle design features and simply layout	Yes, Yes	Professional
Light Fantasic		Pleasing color scheme and background graphics	Yes, Yes	Inviting
Lemontwist		Rounded block corners, naturalistic design	No, Yes	Whimsical
Magazeen		Large text, rounded corners, prominent header	Yes, Yes	Logical
NewsFlash		Traditional look, suckerfish menu support	No, Yes	Streamlined
Nitobe		Rotating masthead,creative navigation sytles	Yes, Yes	Simple
Painted wall		Customizable color scheme, cool background images	Yes, Yes	Stimulating
Pluralism		Attractive use of gradients and backgrounds	Yes, Yes	Sharp
Sapo		Large banner image, original color scheme	Yes, Yes	Quirky
Scruffy		Gritty and innovative design	Yes, Yes	Eccentric
Smooth Blue		Lots of rounded corners, very blue	Yes, Problems with some rounded corners	Fun
SuperClean		Cool styles for primary navigation, easy to scan	No, Yes	Classic Corporate
Twilight		Light text dark background	No, Yes	Straight Forward

Resources

• drupal.org/project/Themes  - All current contributed themes
• themegarden.org/drupal6/  - Showcases many different themes
• drupal.org/node/171194  - Breaks down what makes up a Drupal theme
• drupal.org/theme-guide  - Drupal Theming Guide
• drupal.org/node/323990  - Types of Contributed themes

Ishmael Sanchez is a web Developer at Urban Insight and a Drupal theme contributor. Urban Insight, a Los Angeles-based web development firm, offers Drupal consulting.