Latest news

May18
Joining the team

I’m (Lynette, aka esmerel) excited to be rejoining the world of people who get paid for working as a member of the TopNotchThemes team. Being a mom is awesome, and the benefits are pretty fantastic, but the salary is for the birds.

My first memory of Stephanie is from DrupalCon Boston, where she was writing “Drupal Rocks!” on beach balls that were a booth freebie from some other CMS at the trade show that we were sharing the convention center with. I’m pretty sure that my daughter still has one of those around somewhere.
Sprout of Chaos

I’ve been a member of the Drupal community since 2006, when I tagged along with my husband Earl to DrupalCon Brussels. Even though I wasn’t “doing Drupal” at the time, the community was incredibly welcoming and over the next year, I began to be assimilated.

I’ve spent some fifteen years doing software technical support for some large companies. Over the last few, I’ve spent most of my Drupal time doing two things: writing a significant portion of Drupal Building Blocks, and trimming the Views issue queue. When I wasn’t chasing the (2!) kids around, that is. I also head the Views Bug Squad and am the documentation maintainer for Views and Panels.
Bud of Chaos

I’m looking forward to working even more with the community and the TopNotch team!

Read more
Author: esmerel_lynette
esmerel_lynette's picture
March31
Drupal 6 Theming Cookbook - Review

Drupal 6 Theming CookbookI was pretty psyched to get a copy of Drupal 6 Theming Cookbook to review. It’s written by Karthik Kumar and published by Packt Publishing. So without further adieu, here are my thoughts. There is a statement on the first few introductory pages about assuming the reader is familiar with Drupal Installation and has a basic understanding of PHP. I was glad to see this as sometimes I’ve gotten books that are way beyond my capabilities and didn’t know it till 60 pages into it.

Who’s it for?

The is written to help Drupal developers and designers customize their site visually. Drupal does have a learning curve for designers so this book could be a great place to start. The layout and hierarchy of the calls to action throughout the book make it easy to follow. You can scan the books pages quickly to find the tutorial starting point. After you’ve stepped through the tutorial there are more callouts such as “How it works” and “There’s More”.Chapter Summaries

What’s in it?

The content overall is very helpful in going further than just using Drupal’s user interface to add, change and delete content and configuration. The chapter about Development and Debugging Tools (Ch5) gives the foundation for some solid investigate tools (namely the Devel module). I appreciated seeing chapters with descriptive titles. Sometimes I see tutorial books with chapter names filled with puns or a bad play on words (which does nothing for a reader scanning for a particular subject).

callout examplesI like the quick bullet listing at the Chapters’ start of the overall lesson as well. A Views Theming Chapter and an “Advanced Templating” Chapter stood out as ones to bookmark for reference. The book’s only downside is the content organization. And this is my opinion, but I would like to see all the things that can be edited through the user interface towards the front of the book, and the Javascript and PHP towards the back of the book. The “Customizing CCK” Chapter and “Rapid Layout with Panels” seem to more basic than custom templating and adding javascript snippets that are in earlier chapters.

Last Words

I’d recommend this book to web designers wanting to dive deeper than the standard user interface tools available in Drupal. I’d also suggest...

Read more
Author: goody815
goody815's picture
March1
Theming for Drupal Commons, Part 1: Customizing the Commons Theme

Drupal Commons is an awesome new Drupal install profile from Acquia that combines the core functionality of Organic Groups with additional modules such as shoutbox, heartbeat, user points and custom functionality into a package that allows users to quickly and easily launch a robust website geared towards growing a community. Commons is a fantastic install profile for use as a company intranet, community forum or any other situation where users rally around common interests to share information, documents and experiences.

Drupal Commons comes packaged with a theme specially built for use with the install profile, Acquia Commons, design by Acquia and built by TopNotchThemes. Since Acquia Commons is based on TopNotchThemes’ robust theming framework, Fusion, there are many different styling options that can be easily configured through the Drupal UI, without any knowledge of CSS or theming. Also, since Commons uses Panels for page layouts, customizing the presentation of your content is as easy as a few click-and-drags.

In this blog post, I’m going to go over the UI configurations available in the Acquia Commons theme, as well as show some tips and tricks for customizing the theme if you do know how to use CSS. Part 2 of this blog series will cover creating a completely custom theme using the Fusion Commons Starterkit and Part 3 will cover adapting an existing theme to work with Drupal Commons.

Featues of Fusion

A lot of the flexibility of customizing Drupal Commons comes from features of our theming framework, Fusion, and is universal to all the themes we make here at TopNotchThemes. A lot of the information I have for you in this post is a re-telling of our Fusion Documentation. If you need more info, be sure to take a look at http://fusiondrupalthemes.com/support/documentation

One of the best features of Fusion is the integration with the Skinr module. Skinr allows you to easily change some design aspects of a theme through the user interface. First, we’ll go over some of the changes you can easily make to your Drupal Commons site.

First, let’s take a look at a Commons group homepage as it looks when we first install the site.

...

Read more
Author: sheena
sheena's picture
November12
Ch-Ch-Changes: TopNotchThemes.com Gets a Drupal 7 Makeover, Plus We're Hiring!

TopNotchThemes.comWell, things haven’t been boring - to say the least. We’ve had tons going on here at TNT headquarters, and for the past month it’s mainly been about redesigning the TopNotchThemes.com website using the Drupal 7.x beta.

Yep, TNT has undergone a gorgeous facelift by our very own Sheena Donnelly to reflect our new direction. The site will now solely be the home of our custom Drupal theming and professional web design services, but we’ve also added usability testing and expert theming consulting to our roster of can-do services. Would you like an apple pie with your order?

Don’t worry, though, if you are a proud owner of one of our TNT themes - we’re still here for you! If you’re looking for something and/or need technical support, we can help you find what you’re looking for:

  • Looking for support for your TNT theme? No problem. Your theme is still fully supported by TopNotchThemes. Contact us and our support staff will take care of you.
  • Looking for your user page and your theme download? Most of our TNT themes have been converted to Fusion themes and you’re eligible for a free upgrade! Contact us for your upgrade to Fusion.
  • Looking for a premium theme? Our online store for premium themes is now at Fusion Drupal Themes.
  • Looking for a handbook page or a blog article? Sorry, but we don’t have those up yet (but we’re working on it!). In the meantime, take a look at our documentation and blog at Fusion Drupal Themes.
  • Looking for anything else? Contact us and we’ll get you the information you need.

And if you need a kick-ass premium out-of-the-box Drupal template, look no further than our Fusion theme store.

We’re hiring!

So on top of all that craziness, we have some major changes in our team line-up to boot. TNT is looking to fill two crucial full-time positions: the visionary role of Drupal Developer/Lead Front-End Architect as well as a creative, passionate Drupal Themer with a sharp design eye. If that sounds like you or someone...

Read more
Author: stacy
stacy's picture
September22
Workshop: Build your dream website with Drupal & Fusion

Hands playing the pianoNeed to build a Drupal website but not sure where to start?

Kick off the Fall season with some Drupal schooling to build an awesome Fusion-based site! Read on to get a coupon code for 25% off and find out how to get a free 2-month Fusion PRO membership.

We’re very excited to announce that Fusion Drupal themes are featured in a three-week Webinar course designed by internationally renowned technical author and trainer, Emma Jane Hogbin, whose company Design to Theme teaches you how to make beautiful web sites.  Emma Jane will lead this intensive online workshop that shows you how to take control of your Drupal 6 site and build it right the first time!

What will you learn?

The first Webinar in the series takes place on September 30th and targets new Drupal site builders who are serious about creating a successful, dynamic website for their organization. This initial class will largely focus on working with Drupal layouts, and step-by-step approaches for controlling the display of page elements and clicking your way to the desired layout.  Whether you’re using a premium or free theme, Fusion makes it possible to quickly build an advanced website without needing to be a programmer or edit CSS.

On October 4th, the second Webinar hones in on working with Content and Information Architecture like learning how to create custom content types with CCK, and lists of content with Views. Emma Jane will also delve into taxonomy and menus, and will show you how to hook these core modules to your content with a few extra helper modules that make all the difference.

The final workshop on October 12th revolves around working with images - from Banners and Backgrounds to Carousels and Galleries.  In addition, you’ll learn how to get Drupal to automatically resize your images, create image galleries with ease, and add fancy effects to your site.

Design to Theme

What’s included

Each week will have a new step-by-step instruction booklet so that you can easily replicate any of the techniques you see in the class. Plus, as an added bonus to the Webinar, you’ll receive:

  • Recordings of all live workshops.

    • ...
Read more
Author: stacy
stacy's picture