Thread

I have long been interested in the topic in this discussion, and I agree with DitchMonkey on all of his points.  You all will probably think I’m hopeless, but even “slapping EE tags in place of static placeholder content” as Derek Jones suggests above seems daunting to me, and I’m sure to others who I remain convinced could be customers for EE.

As someone who has long promoted EE—I’ve blogged about it (on my Typepad blog 😊 ) several times and commented about it even more as a great tool for nonprofits—I am excited to hear more about EE 2.0.  Is the example site a “standard template” that will come pre-loaded with EE?  Can non-techies like me use it to pull apart, and pick and choose parts to create a website?  Will old EE themes work in the new 2.0?  Are you planning on relying on third parties to create one-click themes?

Sorry if these all sound naive.

Thanks and happy holidays to all.

You may want to browse the EE Blog as we’ve talked a little more about the Example Site since this thread started.

most of you are designer superheroes and would never use a stock theme anyway.

This is a severe misconception. In my extensive research into solutions for an upcoming project, I have made an interesting discovery related to the rapidly growing Drupal services industry:
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And that in my mind is EE’s greatest weakness.

EXACTLY! I know for a fact, that there are many who’d love to use EE, but simply can’t afford to start from scratch, developing their own themes. Personally I’m just starting a huge project for a newspaper, and I wanted to look back here (as I often do) to see if it would be possible to use EE.

But as I can’t buy a stock theme that I can use as a starting-point, I’l have to go with Drupal. The budget simply won’t allow me to develop a complete set of templates, nor have I been given the time to do so.

I’m not a second in doubt, that the site would be better had it been based on EE, but this is the real world, not some fantasy-land where time and money does not matter, and where my philosophy is more important than my customers wishes and needs.

I get the whole “one-click-theming-not-possible-thing”, but that does not change the fact, that there is a huge need for high-quality starting-points for EE. Not one-click theming, but something to get you started. Developers need to present some working version quickly, and spending time going from scratch simply is not an option, not here in the real world, it just isn’t!

With the release of 2.0 Final, it would suit this great release, to remove the old theme library page, and include some great starting-points. So that - for example - a “Magazine” or “News” style sites would be easier to create. You’d see a lot of business from people like me, people with a budget, people with clients, people ... yes, people in the real world…

There’s a reason this is mentioned so much, and it’s the same reason some get so angry when it’s mentioned: There’s a HUGE need for this, and everybody knows it. I pray this new feature will be the start of many great themes for EE 2.0, I really actually pray 😊

TommyKnockers - if you look at 2.0, it includes the Agile Theme.  If you look at that you’ll see in 2.0, at time of installation, you can use a theme setup for 2.0, and have the entire setup done by the installer.

This is only available at time of installation, not after installation, but it’s definitely a step toward what you are talking about. 

In the Agile Theme, look at themes/site_themes/agile_records/default_content.php to see how it’s all set up.

If you want just the templates, not channels and other database stuff set up, then you can use a template set from anywhere by saving templates as files, having the template files set up appropriately, and dropping them into the directory in which you save templates.  Because in 2.0 groups and templates can be created in the file-system this helps the distribution of templates and installation thereof become a much easier process.