I am primarily a themer.  I am not a designer, and not programmer/engineer, whatever you want to call it.  I am, however, what I like to call a "bridge", a bridge between the design community and the heavy Drupal developer community.  I have a background in art as well as business management in information systems (a.k.a.  CS "lite", for business people who can't program) -- so essentially I can talk the talk to both sides.

What I'm most excited about right now is creating themes and bringing designers and themers into the "inner circle" of Drupal without having to teach them how to use the issue queues and it was DrupalCon DC that got me here.  I'm super interested in sharing my experiences with Drupal and theming as well as my best practices for doing that, thus this blog post.

There are two schools of thought developing in the Drupal themer community: "strip-it-and-rebuild-it" theming and what I call "sustainable" theming.  Let me stress that both methods are valid, I've done both, but I now prefer one over the other.

The "strip-it-and-rebuild-it" method is the process of stripping Drupal's theme layer of all those annoying bits, those things that as a themer, CSS'er, HTML'er…drive you mad.  Those things are primarily the abundant CSS classes and HTML markup structure that Drupal core and contributed modules spit out at you.  This method works best when you want complete control over every part of the markup structure.  However, I'm not sure that it extends well.

At Palantir we strive to build sites that the client can maintain, while still providing a richly architected design, voice, and style guide.  We don't want our clients to have to rely on us to support or extend their site.  The greatest accomplishment for us is the day the client takes over their own site and extends it themselves.  In order to achieve this, however, you have to throw away the "strip-it-and-rebuild-it" method and embrace the "dirt".

The "sustainable" method, which I use on a daily basis, is a method of theming, not skinning.  It is embracing all the annoying bits that come out of Drupal and theming for them, because they are not only consistent, they are reliable, and are there for a reason.  We're not just building Web sites; we're developing Web sites that use content management systems.  They require themes because they are rich with logic and workflow and circumstances that are unpredictable.

Let me give you a bit more background about myself and it might make more sense why I: 
A. like getting my hands dirty and,
B. theme the way I do.  

My friend Joanna and I go to breakfast every Friday morning to gossip, catch up on each other's lives (from the past week, yes) and, well, talk about our struggles.  And this past Friday she said something so obvious to me that I can't believe I've never seen it before -- this is why she's my closest friend.  We were talking about my work and I gave her an analogy for the way I do things…because she's not a Web developer and it's easier (and honestly, funnier) if I make up an absurd analogy to describe something I'm working on.  The analogy was, "Imagine you're a laborer on a new house construction…and you…" (I'll fill in the rest in a bit, hold tight J).

Okay, so what's really funny and very obvious about that partial analogy are two things:
1. My boyfriend and I are currently in the process of looking for our first home and
2. I am the daughter of the president of the IAM Local #126 -- a.k.a. long time union worker, and specifically a machinist.

Joanna at breakfast, after hearing my analogy, responded first with a laugh and then a, "Um, you're just like your dad."

My father is both a perfectionist and a patient thinker when it comes to building things.  This is probably the very thing that I inherited most from him, and the same thing that I do everyday I come to work.

Back to the analogy… 

So what I was describing to Joanna was that, in my opinion, the differences between the "sustainable" method and the "strip-it-and-rebuild-it" method are the way you plan for the life of the Web site.  So for me, in analogy-speak, the "strip-it" method would be the process of finishing one room at a time in the house you're building.  You strip the building to its beams, rightly so.  Then you come back in and start to add electricity, drywall, and eventually add trim to the rooms, one at a time, not anticipating what room is next and whether or not the trim, specifically, is going to work in all rooms or be available the next time you go to the store.  Also, my admittedly imperfect analogy included going to the store and buying the trim before you even took a look at the rest of the rooms.   In my analogy, the "dirty" method would be more along the lines of saying…hmm…I have at least 10 doors and windows that need trim around them.  I suppose the owner could even add an addition down the road.  Let me go measure and then buy trim for the entire house, not just this one room that is almost done.

Okay, is it a bulletproof analogy?  No, definitely not, and the more I write this blog, the more I wish I had come up with a better analogy.  Did it get the point across? Yes, it did.  However, I feel that I need to thoroughly explain.  I'm not saying that the "strip-it-and-rebuild-it" method isn't right.  It's just not right for myself or for the type of sites that Palantir typically builds.  The "strip-it" method gives you incredible control over the theme and the output of the site, which is an awesome thing.  However, it doesn't give you the ability to let a client add a new view to the site and have it follow the theme/style guide.  I fear that it creates sites that are reliant on the developer/designer, and not the owner.

The "sustainable" method is not perfect by any means, but you can create a high-end theme where the style guide is logically complex and still apply it to a Drupal site where the client can add their own views, menus, and blocks, while the site retains its design.  It involves patience and an understanding for the markup and CSS class structures that are Drupal.

Why do I call it the "sustainable" method?  Well, because it involves patience, long-term planning and it truly involves getting your hands dirty with Drupal, getting to know its inner structure, even when it changes and annoys the crap out of you.  I'd rather work with it than against it.