CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

*

News:

Have a question about CiviCRM?
Get it answered quickly at the new
CiviCRM Stack Exchange Q+A site
This forum was archived on 25 November 2017. Learn more.
How to get involved.
What to do if you think you've found a bug.



  • CiviCRM Community Forums (archive) »
  • Old sections (read-only, deprecated) »
  • Support »
  • Installing CiviCRM »
  • Drupal Installations (Moderator: Piotr Szotkowski) »
  • How to choose the best Drupal theme for the best compatibility?
Pages: [1]

Author Topic: How to choose the best Drupal theme for the best compatibility?  (Read 6310 times)

ldkramer

  • Guest
How to choose the best Drupal theme for the best compatibility?
May 25, 2010, 07:44:20 pm
Hello all,

I'm very familiar with Drupal but I'm going to setup a new site soon with Drupal + CiviCRM and I've never worked with CiviCRM before. I've been reading the CiviCRM documentation but I don't think I'll really understand how they work together until I roll up my sleeves and do the installation.

Here's a question that I'm wondering about off the bat...

Can you use any well-written "off the shelf" Drupal theme or do some themes work better with CiviCRM than others?

Thanks for any insight you might have!

Hershel

  • Forum Godess / God
  • I’m (like) Lobo ;)
  • *****
  • Posts: 4640
  • Karma: 176
    • CiviHosting
  • CiviCRM version: Latest
  • CMS version: Mostly WordPress and Drupal
Re: How to choose the best Drupal theme for the best compatibility?
May 25, 2010, 10:28:09 pm
While it's true that "some themes work better with CiviCRM than others" you should without question be able to "use any well-written "off the shelf" Drupal theme."

You can also use http://drupal.org/project/civicrm_theme if necessary.

HTH
CiviHosting and CiviOnline -- The CiviCRM hosting experts, since 2007

See here for the official: What to do if you think you've found a bug.

Michael McAndrew

  • Forum Godess / God
  • I live on this forum
  • *****
  • Posts: 1274
  • Karma: 55
    • Third Sector Design
  • CiviCRM version: various
  • CMS version: Nearly always Drupal
  • MySQL version: 5.5
  • PHP version: 5.3
Re: How to choose the best Drupal theme for the best compatibility?
May 26, 2010, 02:45:05 am
A little word of caution.

I've always used Garland to keep things simple.  In my early experience with Zen based themes I had a fair amount of problems getting things like more complex tables and Ajax to properly render.  I guess you good say that that this was not a well written theme, but actually, it did the job nicely for the Drupal site it was running on - just wasn't designed for Civi.  And probably you should apportion some of the blame to Civi's HTML and CSS also.

From that, I came to the conclusion that it was best to stick with Garland.  Having said that, I know that a lot of has gone into improving themeing recently, so I am probably being over cautious.

Also, a little bit more on civicrm_theme (which is confusingly titled because isn't a theme, but is a module that allows you to switch between your Civi theme and another theme).  You might also want to look at themekey which allows you to do the same but with more flexibility.
Service providers: Grow your business, build your reputation and support CiviCRM. Become a partner today

ldkramer

  • Guest
Re: How to choose the best Drupal theme for the best compatibility?
May 26, 2010, 09:04:31 am
Excellent advice. Thanks all.

Erik Hommel

  • Forum Godess / God
  • I live on this forum
  • *****
  • Posts: 1773
  • Karma: 59
    • EE-atWork
  • CiviCRM version: all sorts
  • CMS version: Drupal
  • MySQL version: Ubuntu's latest LTS version
  • PHP version: Ubuntu's latest LTS version
Re: How to choose the best Drupal theme for the best compatibility?
May 26, 2010, 12:49:41 pm
I have used 'waffles' without too much hassle and am using 'compact lime' now.
Erik
Consultant/project manager at EEatWork and CiviCooP (http://www.civicoop.org/)

carlosmirandalevy

  • I’m new here
  • *
  • Posts: 6
  • Karma: 0
  • CiviCRM version: 4.0.3
  • CMS version: Drupal 7.02
  • MySQL version: 5.1.41
  • PHP version: 5.3.2
Re: How to choose the best Drupal theme for the best compatibility?
June 28, 2011, 02:42:40 pm
There are plenty of issues with "advanced" Drupal themes and modules and CIVICRM. Many of these issues are related to jquery, ajax. lightboxes, suckerfish menus and several libraries that CIVICRM includes or loads which were not or are not commonly included in Drupal but are loaded by such themes, conflicting with the ones loaded by CIVICRM.

I have learned this the hard way :'( twice -- once in 2007 and forgetting about it again now in 2011. On both occasions I got CIVICRM to work properly with the sites in both occasions, but as soon as I flush the caches, I would get the White Screen of Death (WSOD) for all admin pages and no theme loading for the front page, no relevant error entry going into the log files.

As I finished adjusting theme functionality and appearance prior to deploying CIVICRM and since I don't have time to create a new theme or adjusting an existing one right now, I am going to deploy CIVICRM as a standalone site on a subdomain and make sure it works the way we want and then later test it with several themes before merging it with our Drupal install.

Acquia Marina, Fusion based themes, Pixture are some of the many themes documented to conflict with CIVICRM. Other themes such as Danland had similar conflicts, but they have since been fixed.

It would be a good idea to set up a wiki with a list of CIVICRM-safe Drupal themes to use...

You can see some of the issues in the links below:

Danland is un-Civil
http://drupal.org/node/784696

Rounded corners do not work in Acquia Marina; jQuery namespace conflict when using CiviCRM
http://drupal.org/node/776308

New theme broke javascript in CiviCRM
http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php?topic=13317.0

3.1.4, pixture_reloaded and Javascript problem
http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/topic,12912.0.html

3.1.4 + Javascript + themes = problems
http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/topic,13539.0.html

3.1.2 - 3.1.3 Drupal 6.14 UI issues
http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/topic,12510.msg59322.html#msg59322

Solving conflict between CiviCRM with Superfish, Cycle, and pngFix
http://www.danetsoft.com/resolve-conflict-civicrm-jquery-plugins

Upgrade to 3.2.2 breaks javascript
http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/topic,15207.msg65582.html#msg65582

Problems w/ Display/Theme after install
http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php?topic=20121.0
« Last Edit: July 03, 2011, 02:43:18 pm by carlosmirandalevy »

jsvasan

  • I’m new here
  • *
  • Posts: 7
  • Karma: 1
  • JS
    • J Srinivasan's website
  • CiviCRM version: None. Intending to start
  • CMS version: Drupal 7+
  • MySQL version: 5.0.92
  • PHP version: 5.2.13
Re: How to choose the best Drupal theme for the best compatibility?
June 29, 2011, 07:12:59 am
Thanks for sharing!
I'm just about to start the install of CiviCRM and your post was an invaluable caution  :)
Thanks.
JS
Pages: [1]
  • CiviCRM Community Forums (archive) »
  • Old sections (read-only, deprecated) »
  • Support »
  • Installing CiviCRM »
  • Drupal Installations (Moderator: Piotr Szotkowski) »
  • How to choose the best Drupal theme for the best compatibility?

This forum was archived on 2017-11-26.