Comments on: Reviving CivicSpace Theme: Making a useful Drupal theme for grassroots communities http://robinmonks.com/2009/01/15/reviving-civicspace-theme-making-a-useful-drupal-theme-for-grassroots-communities/ Only the interesting stuff. Thu, 08 Jul 2010 02:17:31 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 By: Kristin Antin http://robinmonks.com/2009/01/15/reviving-civicspace-theme-making-a-useful-drupal-theme-for-grassroots-communities/comment-page-1/#comment-1852 Kristin Antin Thu, 15 Jan 2009 22:06:28 +0000 http://robinmonks.com/?p=226#comment-1852 I am an online community builder, and my 'community' includes human rights practitioners and organizations from around the world. I have learned that it is important to keep the theme 'light'. My community members do not have the fastest computers or connections, so the lighter the theme can be, the better. I'd rather not have it take 3 min to download the front page. I would also like the i18n translation feature to work well with the theme - making it easy for users to access translated content, and also easy for them to translate the content themselves. For community based organizations, I think it's key that users find it fun and easy to communicate with others, sharing documents, resources, stories, etc - og is a good way to do this. How can we make this more appealing via themes? I am an online community builder, and my ‘community’ includes human rights practitioners and organizations from around the world. I have learned that it is important to keep the theme ‘light’. My community members do not have the fastest computers or connections, so the lighter the theme can be, the better. I’d rather not have it take 3 min to download the front page. I would also like the i18n translation feature to work well with the theme – making it easy for users to access translated content, and also easy for them to translate the content themselves.
For community based organizations, I think it’s key that users find it fun and easy to communicate with others, sharing documents, resources, stories, etc – og is a good way to do this. How can we make this more appealing via themes?

]]> By: Robin http://robinmonks.com/2009/01/15/reviving-civicspace-theme-making-a-useful-drupal-theme-for-grassroots-communities/comment-page-1/#comment-1850 Robin Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:37:37 +0000 http://robinmonks.com/?p=226#comment-1850 I tend to agree. The original CivicSpace actually was a scaffolding theme. It may be best to "outsource" that to an existing and stable scaffolding theme that exists now. Robin I tend to agree. The original CivicSpace actually was a scaffolding theme. It may be best to “outsource” that to an existing and stable scaffolding theme that exists now.

Robin

]]> By: Samir M. Nassar http://robinmonks.com/2009/01/15/reviving-civicspace-theme-making-a-useful-drupal-theme-for-grassroots-communities/comment-page-1/#comment-1849 Samir M. Nassar Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:33:28 +0000 http://robinmonks.com/?p=226#comment-1849 Since this is community-oriented I would like to see this rebased on one of the existing scaffolding themes such as Hunchbaque, Zen, or Basic. I am partial to Zen, but at the end of the day I think it is more important to build as a subtheme rather than creating a new one. One of the reasons for building on a scaffold theme is increasing and deepening the amount of eyes one can put on a bug. Themes are not particularly big and having multiple sub-themes doesn't impact site loading as far as I can tell. Building subthemes gives a really good workout to scaffold themes and helps reduce their bugs. Fixing a bug in Zen helps fix bugs in Zen subthemes, or fixes them outright. Since this is community-oriented I would like to see this rebased on one of the existing scaffolding themes such as Hunchbaque, Zen, or Basic. I am partial to Zen, but at the end of the day I think it is more important to build as a subtheme rather than creating a new one.

One of the reasons for building on a scaffold theme is increasing and deepening the amount of eyes one can put on a bug. Themes are not particularly big and having multiple sub-themes doesn’t impact site loading as far as I can tell.

Building subthemes gives a really good workout to scaffold themes and helps reduce their bugs. Fixing a bug in Zen helps fix bugs in Zen subthemes, or fixes them outright.

]]>