Drupal Themes by TopNotchThemes - Premium Drupal Theme Templates

TNT 2.0 and the future of Drupal themes with Fusion

steph — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 08:31:27 +0000

Since late last year we’ve been dreaming of a 2.0 for TopNotchThemes. Our current base theme packs in a TON of advanced features, but there is always room to evolve. So for the past few months we’ve been listening closely to our customers and the Drupal community, and plotting ~~world domination~~ a revolution in theming.

So much of what you want to do with your sites isn’t rocket science — if you’re already a Drupal themer! We’re talking about things like adding a slideshow or sidebar pullout menu, changing the theme width, adding a different list style, changing a block’s colours, centering banner ads, styling a View, floating article images, or changing the comment layout for a certain content type.

Blue Flame

steph — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 20:07:41 +0000

Blue Flame is a 2-3 column design varying blue gradients and block accents. The upper region can be used for your mission statement or with a block overlay, as shown. All regions are collapsible, and menus have a custom blue background styling. This theme would be great for a corporate brochureware site, financial institution, or technology firm.

Theme specifications

Columns	1, 2 (either sidebar), 3
Ideal screen resolution	1024x768
Drupal block regions	16
Layered Photoshop files	Included
Favicon/logo	Yes
Custom search box	Included
Secondary links	Yes

Additional theme features

Create dozens of layouts by placing blocks in different regions
Secondary links menu in upper right
Includes styles for nested menus and custom breadcrumbs
Upper and lower regions all change width and alignment depending on how many blocks enabled
Easily adjust the author/date display, taxonomy (tags), breadcrumbs, mission statement, and SEO features such as page titles through theme settings

All our themes are thoroughly cross-browser tested with a wide variety of content and Drupal modules.

Our promise of Top Notch quality

We’re here to help you with expert technical support via email or phone. Lifetime bug fixes, new features, and upgrades are included. 100% of your money back if you’re not happy with your purchase!

Free white paper for Drupal developers

steph — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:25:22 +0000

All fields below are optional. Please submit the form below to download the white paper.

Theming — the Drupal developer’s challenge

Building a Drupal theme requires a wide range of skills. Is your project best suited for a fully custom design and theme, a free Drupal theme, DIY approach, or using a premium theme?

Based on a survey of hundreds of Drupal users and developers, TopNotchThemes has created the following 11-page report. This report covers topics such as design/theming budgets for projects, average size of development shops, number of projects per year, and an in-depth look at the various theming options when implementing a Drupal site.

TopNotchThemes at Ubercamp/DrupalCamp Colorado

steph — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 21:23:11 +0000

TopNotchThemes is proud to be a Gold Sponsor at DrupalCamp Colorado, coming up in ten short days! Most of the TNT team will be there, and we’ve got two sessions proposed:

Increase ROI with a user-friendly, great looking Ubercart store — if you want to hear about the handful of easy changes we made to our Drupal/Ubercart store on TopNotchThemes.com that doubled our conversion rate, this is a session you don’t want to miss! We’ll be talking about design and e-commerce best practices for improving customer experience.
Are Panels and Skinr the future of point-and-click Drupal theming? Skinr (along with the Studio theme) got a lot of buzz at the recent Drupal designers (D4D) camp, and we’ll be talking about this approach, along with Panels 3 theming to give you a taste of what UI-selectable styling in Drupal can look like.

The sessions are still yet to be chosen, so please add your vote (two days left!) if you’d like to see them at the camp.

We’ll also be demoing the first (semi-)public preview of something very exciting in the works from TopNotchThemes…

Kicking Ubercart up a notch

steph — Tue, 19 May 2009 20:48:55 +0000

In partnership with Ubercart, Acquia, and Commerce Guys, TopNotchThemes is creating a free premium Drupal theme optimized for Ubercart e-commerce sites.

Our first community themes, Acquia Marina and Acquia Slate have been wildly successful, bringing more power, flexibility, and beautiful styling to thousands of Drupal sites. We wanted to go further with a third theme and through our relationship with Ubercart, knew that this amazing suite of modules for Drupal needed the polished look and feel it deserves.

The theme will be optimized with the UberDrupal installation profile (based on Acquia Drupal) by Commerce Guys, who we’ll be working closely with to help turn this installation profile and demo site into something that really shows off the power of Ubercart. Features here are to be determined, but will likely include things like ImageCache presets, blocks, Ubercart settings, and other contrib modules optimized for a full e-commerce site.

Now, we need your input to make this theme even better! Here’s a list of the features and style we’re going to be aiming for, but we’d love to know what else you’d like to see in a killer Ubercart theme. The initial design concepts are being started and we’ll soon set up a project page and post progress along the way.

Lullabot-Learning CCK for Drupal Review

valerie — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 17:19:24 +0000

The Content Construction Kit allows you to add custom fields to nodes using a web browser.

CCK is one of the most popular Drupal modules, with most Drupal sites using it because it gives much more flexibility and control over your content. It is a core building block for many websites.

Here is an overview of Lullabot’s new Learning CCK Video:

Intro – Setting up what examples will be used and beginning to add fields to content
Content Types in Drupal Core – How to add content in the basic default
The Content Construction Kit – How to add extra content beyond core
Adding a New CCK Field – Adding new fields
Text Fields /User Reference – Creating dummy users and roles and how to add user reference field
CCK Formatters – Formatting data and how it appears
How CCK Stores Data – A visual of how you data looks when it is stored behind the scenes
File Field/ Node References – Second content type and linking from one node to another
Multiple Value Shared Fields – Creating multiple field options
Options that Change the Database – How to edit content to change in the database and options that change the database. How to minimize text in the database
Additional CCK Modules – Showing other modules you can use (Date, Calendar, Image Fields)
Field Level Permissions – Permission options and how to configure permissions
Multiple Value Widgets – Creating multiple selections in fields

One theme, many layouts

jeremy — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 19:11:42 +0000

There have been quite a few times where the question arises of how many layouts are possible with one of our themes. I chose RubySands to demonstrate the flexibility of a theme. It’s amazing how many different layouts can be created with the different placement of blocks and content. The framework is all there, just a matter of bringing everything together and making it work for you.

Generate your own Drupal themes -- too good to be true?

steph — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 19:28:57 +0000

Artisteer has been generating some buzz lately. With this (Windows-only, as of this time) software, you can generate unlimited static XHTML/CSS, Wordpress, Joomla, and now with the $129.95 "Standard Edition", Drupal themes.

This could be an exciting way for theming, a historically challenging endeavour for new and experienced Drupallers alike, to be within reach for many more users.

The premise seemed a bit hokey at first after watching their demo — Artisteer doesn’t ‘come with’ themes, it generates them from random or assembled collections of combinations of different aspects of your theme, such as:

Layout
Color scheme
Header
Background images
Typography
Article styles
Block styles
Buttons
Menu

I had to see this for myself and downloaded the trial.

ÜberTip #3: Best practices for e-commerce product images

steph — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 17:00:36 +0000

Photos are the face of your products for your online store. Any photo is better than no photo, but improving your product images can have a huge impact on sales, reduce customer support requests, and minimize refunds or exchanges. Here are some tips for showcasing your products at their best in Übercart.

Make product images clear and consistent

Print catalogs typically hire one illustrator or photography studio to create all the product images in a section; at the very least, they have an art director to ensure that the tone and style are consistent. Even if you don’t have that luxury—if you get your graphics from multiple sources, for example—a few minutes in Photoshop can turn a visual jumble into a collection where all the pieces look like they belong. You can do this by processing all images to have the same proportions, or be the same apparent size, or have the same effects (such as a drop shadow or glow).

Which one of these more clearly shows what’s being sold? With the one on the right, there can be no mistake. Imagine your customers trying to quickly scan over a page full of product photos like the one on the left!

Newspaper and blog themes for Drupal

steph — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 16:30:20 +0000

Two themes of a new breed have launched on TopNotchThemes recently. We’ve heard a lot from our customers and potential customers about the need for real newspaper and blog themes for Drupal. You ask and we theme!

Extra! Extra!

What makes a Drupal newspaper theme? Navigation is very important, and horizontal dropdowns are a favorite of news sites everywhere. Also a prominent search, plenty of advertising spots, featured content, and of course, lots of block regions for building your site. This theme hits on all of these and provides a clean grey/blue design, with accents of red and a featured block region at the top.

Copywrite

Wordpress gets all the open source blogging platform glory, but Drupal is actually an amazing system for building a blog-based website because you can go so much further. However, it’s definitely been lacking in the theme department. Why is Copywrite a great blog theme? It’s got a custom style for AdSense blocks, tons of regions, a flexible two or three column layout, and a blog-oriented post style, in terms of the way taxonomy, author/date, and other node links are laid out. We’ve also thrown in icons for tags, comments, users, and email/print links.