Haven't I Seen You Before?

Submitted by emmajane on August 16, 2009 - 3:29pm

I recently put together a little brochure-ware site for a new adventure: The Wellness Road Trip. The group of organizers needed something easy and fast and pleasant to look at. I think they've managed to get all three thanks to a few modifications on the most excellent Acquia Marina theme by Top Notch Themes.

Let's take a look at the before (from Theme Garden's rendering of the template) and after (the live site):

They're definitely related, but they're also a little bit different. The most time consuming part of the theme rejig was developing a banner that was complementary with the original poster. (I had a PDF but none of the component parts.) The sky image is actually a colorized version of this photo. The Acquia Marina is very well written and easy to work with. In my re-jigged version I ripped out multiple regions that weren't needed and dropped the primary navigation into the blue bar (which was obviously recoloured to match the banner). I needed to make a few extra adjustments to the CSS to get rid of the button shapes surrounding the navigation, and that was it.

Tech Summary

Total time (including domain name registration, deploying Drupal and theme adjustments): just under 5 hours.
"Extra" modules enabled and in use: Contact, Path and Update all from core; and Google Analytics from contrib.
Admin theme (not shown): Root candy
Deployment: theme versioned locally with Bazaar and then uploaded using Bazaar Upload (an S/FTP plugin)

emmajane's blog

Comments

August 16, 2009 - 9:44pm

stephthegeek

Thanks for the post and kind words about the theme! It's nice to see a write up on a quick job like this as a counterpoint to all the massive Drupal projects out there. Awesome job in just a few hours!

August 17, 2009 - 10:20am

emmajane

You're welcome and thanks for the awesome theme! :)

August 24, 2009 - 8:23pm

Jeff

Nice job!

I am trying to do some similar mods to Acquia Marina, mostly with the primary menu.

I subbed your style.css for mine but it didn't have the intended effect of dropping the primary menu into the preface bar and moving it to the left.

I noticed you didn't use a local.css file. Did you modify any other CSS files?

What am I missing?

BTW, in FF-3.5.2 , as well as IE8, your banner only extends about 960 px to the right on my 1024 screen.

Tx, Jeff

August 24, 2009 - 8:59pm

emmajane

Just as a reminder: the Acquia Marina theme is available under a GPL license. My custom style sheet is not. While you are welcome to read and learn from it, you may not just plunk it into your own site as if it were yours.

With that said: the navigation was moved by altering the file page.tpl.php and putting the variable for the primary menu into the new location. If you're not sure how to do that, I can recommend an excellent book on theming: Front End Drupal.

August 24, 2009 - 9:41pm

Jeff

I only used your style sheet as an experiment and learning tool.

Yes I have that book.

Thanks

February 4, 2010 - 12:57pm

Lomen

Great job with very high efficiency why you know because you've done it in 5 hours.The theme is beautiful...I do have good knowledge in CSS,but don't have idea about complete package.Normally I prefer to tweak themes to create my own. cat litter review

February 17, 2010 - 8:36am

Anonymous

thank you örgü teknikleri

March 3, 2010 - 6:18pm

ktunnel

I only used your style sheet as an experiment and learning tool.

March 4, 2010 - 6:43am

cep telefonları

thank you

March 20, 2010 - 3:39pm

Dillip

Thanks for the wellness road trip.I must revisit your site to gather good information.
Online Earning