So as I mentioned in my previous and first post on this site I have a start up plan for this site. I want to record my exploration of Drupal and all my web related journeys I venture on.

The first step in my grand plan is creating a base theme for this website. As I've seen so far there are three ways to taking on the task of creating a theme for Drupal. You can either create a theme from scratch, copy and hack an existing theme or you can sub-theme an existing theme.

I've tried creating a theme from scratch and to my amazement it really isn't all that hard. Drupal is really easy in it's setup of themes by using the amazing power of the .info file. You can just create your regions which Drupal will handle like possible content placeholders (more information about the .info file).

Copying and hacking an existing theme is not a working method I find attractive. It might be for some people, but it sounds like a dirty method to me :).

So the next step for me was trying sub-theming from an existing theme. As always I looked at what the package hands out of the box. There are a handful of themes at your disposal. In exploring these I found that they are very complete, but with that they feel bloated for the start of a theme. So I started the search for a theme-less theme... Does that make sense? Well it does sound right in my head and within minutes I found a theme made just for the purpose of sub-theming! Behold the ZEN theme.

Creating a theme for Drupal is really easy because it only requires you to know how to create a layout in HTML and CSS. It's just a lot of work to implement every element within Drupal. So sub-theming ZEN is actually more easy because the base is there and you can just apply the styles you need without forgetting anything, the true ZEN feeling :).

It's a real treat to have these choices with Drupal theming and not having to pick the lesser evil of solutions as I've been forced to do with other CMS systems. Yeey Drupal!