After voting on the design Style and purpose of the Politika free Drupal theme it's time to discuss modules and features.

What modules do you use on your Ubercart sites that benefit from custom theming and what modules do you think have the future. Post a comment if you got experience here!

You can also suggest modules that do not relate directly to ubercart but keep in mind that we decided do build an ecommerce theme so the module should be useful for a webshop.

For inspiration you can check out the cool module styling (book module, forms, skinr) on Synopsis and the other premium Drupal themes by SooperThemes.

Schedule for june

1. June 7th (mon): Present and discuss project
2. June 9th (wed): Discuss Theme purpose (type of website)
3. June 14th (mon): Poll for theme purpose
4. June 16th (wed): Discuss design style
5. July 8th (thu): Poll for design style
6. Aug 17th (tue): Discuss modules and features
7. Aug 21st (sat): Questionnaire about modules and features
8. Aug 25th (wed): Summary of poll and questionnaire results

This part is where your comments really count because I'm not sure what contrib modules and plugins are popular on webshops, other than Ubercart, wich is also what powers the theme sales on sooperthemes.com. Share your experience to help create an awesome GPL theme!

p.s. I also know there are alternatives to Ubercart but since ubercart is the most popular let's not get into that discussion.

In the recently completed Poll on the purpose of the Politika theme we have established that it will be an ecommerce theme!

This is exciting as well as challenging. E-commerce site really need a design that is focused on the content and focused on selling. Good Ubercart themes should also have some nice icons to skin the stock imagery.

I do not often build ecommerce sites but I do have experience in this and I also have a Msc in marketing (pending my thesis) so this project will be a nice combination of my web and uni educations.

Now it's time to discuss the style of this design. I want to build a theme that you all are dying to use on your next project so I would like to hear what kind of design styles are in demand in the community.

Luckily for us, a major webdesign blog has recently posted an overview of big ecommerce website designs where you can get inspiration: http://www.noupe.com/inspiration/showcase-of-big-online-stores.html

Tell me what designs you like! Post comments and I will create another poll so that you can vote on the design style

Since this is an ecommerce site there is also one very important dimension on which we have to choose a position, which is the up-market versus down-market dimension. If you sell luxury products you will want an up-market design like for example http://www.vogue.co.uk. If you sell cheap offers you will want to appear like you offer the best deals and approach a more down-market design style like for example this: http://www.mediamarkt.de/

If you have built a beautiful ecommerce site with Drupal in the past, feel free to post that too!

The discussion will run until June 21st which is next monday; unless the discussion clearly needs some more time, then it will be extended.

Also take a look at the latest Sooper Drupal Themes, Synopsis and Syan. These design styles could also work well for a store.

Schedule:

Schedule for june

1. June 7th (mon): Present and discuss project
2. June 9th (wed): Discuss Theme purpose (type of website)
3. June 14th (mon): Poll for theme purpose
4. June 16th (wed): Discuss design style
5. June 21th (mon): Poll for design style
6. June 23th (wed): Discuss modules and features
7. June 28th (mon): Questionnaire about modules and features
8. June 30th (mon): Summary of poll and questionnaire results

Politika is an effort to make an amazing looking and rich-featured theme for Drupal 7 and 6. For more info check the first project politika blog post!.

As a first step to conceptualize this Drupal theme I would like some input about what types of websites you are building (yes you too) and what kinds of websites are difficult to visualize with the current offering of themes.

Here are some that I can think of:

• Information intensive websites that require big grid-like layouts, i.e. portal websites and news websites
• Photo websites, websites about photography and/or photographers, or portoflio websites for photographers or other artists
• Micro blogs (like tumblr)

That's all I can think of, just post a comment what sort of websites you build with Drupal, or would like to build with Drupal! Just post a comment, it only takes a second!

All responses to this post will be put into a poll next monday, as per the Politika schedule:

Schedule for june

1. June 7th (mon): Present and discuss project
2. June 9th (wed): Discuss Theme purpose (type of website)
3. June 14th (mon): Poll for theme purpose
4. June 16th (wed): Discuss design style
5. June 21th (mon): Poll for design style
6. June 23th (wed): Discuss modules and features
7. June 28th (mon): Questionnaire about modules and features
8. June 30th (mon): Summary of poll and questionnaire results

Also check that you don't choose something that is already covered by my previous (though not free) drupal themes because I want to build something rather unique and more in-the-moment with this project.

Thanks for your input.

Politika is an effort to make an amazing looking and rich-featured theme for Drupal 7 and 6. It will be designed for the community, and in part by the community… though it will not be designed by democracy; to maintain a coherent and high quality design that adheres to web and accessibility standards we will have to be a republic. But the good type of republic, that listens to the people!

Division of project:

SooperThemes:

1. Art Direction
2. Graphic/UX design
3. Drupal theming
4. Documentation

Community:

1. Type of website for which this theme will be designed (blog /portal/ media/ multimedia/etc..)
2. General directions for the style, atmosphere and design stream (e.g. minimal/clean vs web2.0 vs glossy)
3. Recommendations of modules and content types to be supported and designed

Guesstimated timeline:

June/July 2010: Collecting information

July 2010: Being on vacation resisting the urge to make design mock-ups

August 2010: Providing some design mock-ups for the community to choose from

September-??? 2010: Production. The theme will be full featured like the premium themes and these usually take around 8-10 weeks to go through the design/development/testing/QA loops before they are ready for release.

Schedule for june

1. June 7th (mon): Present and discuss project
2. June 9th (wed): Discuss Theme purpose (type of website)
3. June 14th (mon): Poll for theme purpose
4. June 16th (wed): Discuss design style
5. June 21th (mon): Poll for design style
6. June 23th (wed): Discuss modules and features
7. June 28th (mon): Questionnaire about modules and features
8. June 30th (mon): Summary of poll and questionnaire results

What can you do now?

I will post a poll about the type of website that we want to design a theme for next Wednesday the 9^th of june.

Start getting some inspiration from sites like http://buytaert.net/tag/drupal-sites and http://drupal.org/forum/25 and http://www.designfridge.co.uk/ and http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/ and http://www.smashingmagazine.com/ or wherever you like to get inspired so that you can contribute to the polls and discussions that I will post to get the an idea of what the community wants :). It is always nice if you can make reference to websites or case studies (ie from Drupal.org) if you post comments with ideas.

I think the best way to discuss and decide about the design process is something like this:

1. Have a discussion about a step in the design process
2. I analyze the comments and try to summarize them into a poll, and then in the poll the majority decides.

This project depends on your input, so do not hesitate to comment or email. I will manage the project on this blog, on facebook/twitter and via the Drupal.org project page but most communications for development will take place on this blog, using the politika tag. The easiest way to follow the project is the subscribe to the global RSS feed which combines sooperthemes.com content with twitter. If you dont use an RSS reader but you do use facebook, the SooperThemes facebook page is connected to this RSS feed!

What can you expect?

I will make this free theme at least as good as the premium themes and if people come up with cool ideas I have no problem making custom features or jquery plugins to make it work. Expect this for sure:

• GPL license for Design, Theme, CSS and whatever javascript code is made for this theme and hopefully the theme can go fully on Drupal.org. (depends on whether non-GPL font/libraries or icons are needed)
• Cross browser compatibility
• Fixed and flexible width configuration, separate left/right sidebar width control
• SooperFish dropdown menus
• Sooper FontKit integration with hopefully a perfect-fitting free font
• Skinr integration with some distuingished block styles and with grid controls
• Full Color module integration! Including support for image re-coloring
• Sooper Starterkit (a Drupal install profile with database to load demo content)
• Design & Theming for book module, comments, webform module, Poll module, user profiles, taxonomy, twitter module