Drupal Themes

Hello,

Before I start wrapping my head around the legal issues of starting a Drupal theme business, I want to gauge the interest.

How many people here think they would be interested in using Drupal as a CMS if commercial themes (pay per download) were as readily available as they are for CMS's such as Joomla! and WordPress?

I am proposing to potentially sell themes here: www.drupalsnippets.com

Paul

 

What legal issues are you wrapping your head around?

Drupal is a popular CMS, so I'm sure there is a market for themes...

 

Issues with the GPL that Drupal is released on. So far as I can tell I would need to distribute the .tpl files freely and only charge for the code.

I'm just curious to see how much interest this post generates, before I go steaming off, spending hours on development.

 

I encourage you to go on with this. The biggest problem with Drupal right now is its inability to entice with great themes. There definitely is a need for a site like that.

 

Start with some free themes..and than go ahead for paid themes. Drupal really lacks good themes. Although they are best CMS in my opinion.

 

'Free' is extremely popular, but I bet some people would pay if you could come up with some nice themes.

As for the GPL thing ... not really sure if you could charge or not, you probably can.

 

I will be interested if you can really build some professional & good-looking templates and keep them up compatible whenever latest version of Drupal is released.

I am sure lot other people will also be interested.

I feel the only thing lacking for Drupal is the good themes.

 

Some of the sites we have created with Drupal are below:

www.realworksmedia.com
www.drupalsnippets.com
www.baxxt.com - nearly finished
www.lime-blue.co.uk

Hopefully that gives you an idea of the sort of work we can produce.

When we have a couple of our current projects out of the way I will make some time to start producing themes.

I would be interested to hear your ideas on the sort of designs (colours, layout, navigation, etc) you would like.

Cheers,

Paul

 

Hi Paul. Such a site would be great. I might pay for a couple of drupal themes.

Any idea of how much you'd charge for a custom theme (rather simple)?

Anyway, i also encourage you to go into such a business, as drupal is great but unfortunately unless one does it by oneself it is very difficult to get new themes (maybe easier with drupal 6).

 

Drupal is popular but learning curve rumors have scared alot of people away. Won't be as popular as selling Joomla and Wordpress themes. I think the reason you don't see as much themes for sale is that drupal is used by much more serious companies. You can charge a lot more for a custom drupal job than say the average Wordpress or Joomla user would be accustomed to spending.

 

I think this is spot on.

Developing a Drupal site takes quite a bit of time, and yes - there is a significant learning curve compared to other options.

Given the commitment level it takes to do Drupal "right", I think most Drupal developers won't have any problem expending a little more time/energy to build their own themes, or modify those provided at Drupal.org.

I'm not saying there would be no demand - I just think your target audience is much larger elsewhere.

 

Drupal is a great cms. But I don't use because of the lack of quality themes. I'm sure many people feel the same way I do. I think you should carry on with this project, I'm pretty sure it would be successful.

 

Paul, I've seen several threads discussing this at Drupal's forum and saw many people that agree with me. An equivalent of rocketheme or joomlart for Drupal would be awesome and I'd be a customer for sure.

As Suri.CMS said, the only bad thing about Drupal is the lack of good loocking themes and I'm sure the first one that makes a decent website with some themes on it will make good money.

By the way, would you mind PM'ing me the appoximate price of a Drupal theme port? For instance, the cost of porting our current theme or doing one fresh new like this one?

 

Hello,

Thanks for all your comments and feedback.

Drupal does have a fairly steep learning curve (about 3 months for us), but once you master it nothing comes close to bettering it IMHO.

We have a couple of designs that we would like to offer as themes but they are still in Photoshop at the moment so there is some work to do yet!

Based on the interest above we will be offering themes for download at www.drupalsnippets.com. I will post here as soon as we have a couple of themes available.

Thanks again for your feedback,

Paul

 

I've seen more Joomla themes than Drupal. Let me encourage you to pursue your dreams.

 

if drupal got good themes I would convert from Joomla.

 

I suggest start free and than go commercial. It will be good to build a foundation of loyal users as well as see if your themes are actually up to par. Start off like RoopleTheme by making a few really good free templates.

 

Hello,

We have decided that we will be going ahead with this project, we love the Drupal content management system and we love designing great sites.

By developing themes and not whole sites, we will be able to concentrate on what we enjoy the most.

We welcome your suggestions for new Drupal themes here: http://www.drupalthememachine.com/forums/drupal-theme-requests

Happy Drupaling,

Paul

 

This is awesome news Paul! I've registered myself there but I'm still unable to post anything. Check control access to at least enable forum posting for authenticated users.

I don't have many ideas but would love to support you guys all I can!

 

I'll take a look.