Starter theme for Drupal 7? Stark? Zen?

I have been using Drupal 6 for a year and always used Zen Sub-Theme for every project. So, should I keep using Zen for Drupal 7? Or is Drupal 7 bringing a better alternative? Maybe the Stark theme?

I am a long time Zen user myself and I have also used Zen for a Drupal 7 project recently. Although I have [some doubts][1] about the number of style sheets, I still found it very easy and familiar to work with.

I think you cannot compare Zen to Stark, because Stark is not really meant as a starter theme, but rather a theme (or should we call it a non-theme?) that shows what Drupal looks like without theming. There are other starter themes you could consider, like Fusion and Genesis for instance. Check out the [Starter Themes][2] page for more info.


[1]:

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[2]:

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Take a look at

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for a stripped-down approach to a starter theme. As a disclosure, I worked for the company that originally developed the theme, but I still think it's worth considering on its merits.

Have you considered a grid system?

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is a particularly nice reworking of the 960gs theme.

After some research and tests I decided to build my own base theme starting from Stark up. Just follow the online documentation and keep it as flexible as possible, I'd suggest.

You can always add your own `template.php` and or `.tpl.php` files when needed.

I'm building a site now using AdaptiveTheme (

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).
Having used Zen on drupal 6, AdaptiveTheme feels a bit more cutting edge with all the latest web standards.

You might wint to try out the [Zentropy][1] starter theme. Great for starting a template, well maintained and cutting edge.

From the Zentropy Drupal page:

> Zentropy is a base theme which
> attempts to bring the best of a couple
> worlds together:
>
> It converts the core template files to
> HTML5 markup (based on Boron - all
> credit to Scott Vandehey (spaceninja)
> of Metal Toad Media)

>It adds useful
> features from the classic Basic theme

>It includes an HTML5-friendly CSS
> Reset & other best practices from Paul
> Irish's HTML5 Boilerplate

>It also
> features a bunch of other goodies
> thrown in: more regions, Google
> Analytics integration, support for
> Modernizr (

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)
> and all sorts of awesomeness


[1]:

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It's also worth mentioning [Tao][1] for the record - as the name suggests it was a new take on the Zen idea, very popular for a while.

It's a good, solid, straightforward, non-nonsense base theme that doesn't get in the way. It's also got some useful themes built on top of it, particularly the excellent admin theme [Rubik][2]). Here's a [good article comparing Tao to Zen][4] (drupal 6 angle, but the comments bring it up to date and the general idea is relevant to Drupal 7).

You should be aware however that at time of writing its [sponsor company appears to have ceased development as they move away from Drupal][3] and that documentation was never anything like as good as Zen had.

---
Finally, regardless of base theme, for anyone interested in keeping stylesheets sane and manageable, it's worth checking out the [LESS CSS preprocessor][5] module - [here's a great article explaining what it does][6].


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