Zikula Blog

I am currently picking up work on "Noobtheme". I started two themes some months ago: Basetheme and Noobtheme. Both to help start with themes. While basetheme is a minimal theme that you can install and hang you CSS tinsel on via text editor, Noobtheme addresses the need of newbies for a nice looking basic theme that they can customize. It was the first theme to make extensive use of themevariables. But themevariables are hidden in the administration, which made me take it to the next level.

At the moment you can install Noobtheme like any other theme. When you are logged in as admin you see a fixed toolbar on the top of the screen. There you set the themevariables and enable a navigation bar and decide how the columns should be distributed, set colour palettes, rounded corners and so on. There are more options in the working. And when you change a value, you instantly see the effect.

But all this leads to a master.htm that no newbies understands - so it's really easy to make the first steps and then practically impossible to take the next and start advanced adjustments to the theme template.

This lead me to the conclusion that it could be a solution to offer an export. The users sets up the theme to her idea and when she is satisfied she can export that with a new name as a new theme. The new theme in turn has simple templates again and will be easy to customize.

What do you think? Is this the way to go?

Noobtheme 2.0 is not complete yet, but you can get it here from the SVN: http://code.zikula.org/community-german/browser/themes