Raincity Studios "Basic" theme on Drupal.org

Steve Krueger
2008
23
06
created on Mon, 2008-06-23 09:15 P1000833.JPG

For those who weren't in attendance at Drupalcamp Vancouver last month, Mark, Hubert, and myself prepared and presented a production version of our internal base theme that we use for client development called "Base5".

Since then, Hubert has fine-tuned the theme in preparation to contribute back to the community. We've also changed the name to "Basic".

Screen shot of Basic drupal theme

Basic boasts a clean and simple HTML structure with a top-down load order for improved SEO and features a table-less layout with the option to either have a fixed or fluid width.

This new theme is freely available in both Drupal version's 5 and 6 and provides only the essential functionality found on the current ZEN theme (located on drupal.org).

Note that the work being done on Basic is by no means a fork of the much appreciated efforts being produced towards the ZEN theme. Basic's goal is to provide themers the building blocks needed to get their designs up and running quickly and simply.

Take a look at the Basic project page and tell us what you think.

Photo of Steve (and Audrey) of RCS by GregoryH, on Flickr - added by DaveO.

Why is this needed?

Do you think that Zen is bloated? Hence the need for a "stripped down" version?

You say Basic's goal is, "to provide themers the building blocks needed to get their designs up and running quickly and simply" -- Isn't that Zen's goal as well?

I can imagine there's a need for your new theme (and I'm not trying to be disagreeable) but from what you've written I don't see how Basic improves on Zen or is much different.

the barebones

hey Kyle,

This theme was initially intended for internal purposes and to provide our employees with a consistent framework to work and train with. Although we could have essentially trained ourselves and new employees with ZEN, we felt it was bloated and packed with too many extra bells and whistles that were never used or never needed.

We definitely appreciate what ZEN can accomplish and how extensible it is but we find that we're always de-constructing ZEN to fit the needs of the project and client. Basic provides only the barebones that are needed to get started. If you want the extras, you can add them in.

Zen is bloated. Its a great

Zen is bloated. Its a great tool to see how XYZ is done. But most times X and Y and Z are not needed in a single theme. A flexible bare bones theme is definitely worth evaluating.

Documentation ?

Hi

Good job, but in order to check it I wonder where is the documentation ? There is no "readme.txt" in the basic template.
As you said it's a starter theme, the lack of information about it is a kind of funny. By the way I really apprecied the structured TOC ogf Framework's Theme. It's a very good idea.

Oh of course newbies want always all for nothing ;-) But the question is there any help files ?

Regards

Very good point, I guess

Very good point, I guess this is next on my priority list :) !
Funny we didn't really talk about, I'm the first one to swear at developers who don't provide documentation!
Thanks for pointing that out!

Syndicate content