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Sufyan bin Uzayr April 5th, 2012

A Showcase of Amazing Drupal Themes

Since its inception, Drupal has had the (rather infamous) reputation of being the developer's CMS. Designing a website using Drupal meant hard-coding every aspect of the appearance of your website. However, over time, and with the advent of Drupal 7, the picture has changed. Drupal too, like WordPress, now boasts of several new and beautiful themes (also called templates), and the number is increasing everyday (including ports of themes from WP). In this article, we take a look at some of the best Drupal themes that are available from the web design and development community. We hope that you will find some new and useful templates in the showcase we've collected.

Free Themes

BlueMasters BlueMasters comes with a large home page slider, a custom frontpage comprised of 4 block regions along with a footer containing 4 regions. It offers support for both 2- and 3-column layouts for pages, as well as multilevel drop down menus. This is a port of a WordPress theme. Bluemasters Demo | More Info Corporate Clean Corporate Clean offers a simple and clean design in the form of 1- or 2-column layouts. The theme also comes with native support for jQuery slideshows and Breadcrumb display. Corporate Clean Demo | More Info Journal Crunch Journal Crunch for Drupal is a port of the popular Journal Crunch WordPress theme released by Smashing Magazine. The theme is ideal for magazine websites or blogs with lots of Featured images. The footer has 4 block regions. Journal Crunch Demo | More Info Sky Sky is a minimal theme that comes loaded with the added goodness of HTML5. It comes with 4 preset color schemes, as well as custom color layout options. Apart from 17 customizable regions (along with a 4-column footer), Sky also offers excellent support for mobile devices and integration with Google Fonts API. Sky Demo | More Info Selecta Just like Journal Crunch and Bluemasters, Selecta is a port of a WordPress theme. It is meant especially for video websites and blogs. Selecta has a 2-column layout, a total of 11 regions, and detailed CSS rules for features such as sidebar ads, comment forms, contact forms, etc. Plus, Selecta has a Javascript powered implementation for 'Featured Videos'. Selecta Demo | More Info ImpreZZ ImpreZZ is a port of the original theme released by Smashing Magazine. It is a 3-column theme meant for personal blogs. Though the theme has become bit dated by now, its unique layout with middle column navigation makes it quite popular even to this day. ImpreZZ Demo | More Info Blacksea Blacksea is a light-weight and flexible theme with a 100% tableless CSS layout. The theme features 8 custom user regions, 2 resizable sidebars, plus support for both fixed and fluid width and jQuery animations. Blacksea Demo | More Info Magazeen Lite Yet another theme ported from WordPress, Magazeen Lite is meant for magazine websites. It comes with JS Slideshow and a 2-column layout. Magazeen Lite Demo | More Info

Premium Themes

Community (Regular License: $40) As the name suggests, Community is a theme built for community websites. It offers 12 different color schemes and backgrounds, both fixed and fluid layouts, 2 jQuery sliders, as well as support for banner advertisements. Community Demo | More Info Wellfolio (Regular License: $35) Wellfolio is a minimalist portfolio theme for Drupal 7. It comes loaded with 3 pre-defined skins, jQuery animations, built-in contact form and Google Maps support, etc. All in all, Wellfolio seems to be the ideal theme for showcasing your portfolio or projects. Wellfolio Demo | More Info Creative (Regular License: $50) Creative is a theme that comes with unlimited color options and 16 flexible regions, along with both fixed and fluid layout options. The theme is cross-browser compatible and features jQuery powered animations. Creative Demo | More Info Smooth (Regular License: $40) Smooth comes with 8 different color schemes, flexible sidebars and 15 regions that can support any number of blocks. The theme supports Google Fonts API and over 6 different menu styles. Smooth Demo | More Info Simple (Regular License: $45) Simple offers 16 flexible regions, 1- 2- or 3-column layouts, split sidebars and a jQuery powered home page slider. Just in case that doesn't impress you, the theme also comes with 12 different color schemes and 23 background options (including 12 block theme colors). Simple Demo | More Info Clean Design (Regular License: $45) Clean Design is a minimal theme that offers a great deal of customization – you can pick from 17 accent colors, 11 link colors, 11 block title colors and 6 different backgrounds. Plus, you also have a jQuery-powered Featured slider on the home page. Clean Design Demo | More Info City Magazine (Regular License: $40) City Magazine is a theme meant for magazine websites and blogs. The theme offers a home page slider, animated menus, separate block themes (including a 'typewriter style' quick news block), and the ability to create sub-themes. City Magazine Demo | More Info Corporate X (Regular License: $35) Corporate X is a multi-purpose theme for Drupal 7. It offers over 27 jQuery effects, auto-resizing of images, 6 base color themes and enhanced SEO settings. The theme also offers two separate page layouts for creating a portfolio and automatic thumbnail generation for images. Corporate X Demo | More Info AT Headliner (Club Membership: $65/year) AT Headliner is a child theme of the free Adaptive Theme for Drupal 7. It is meant for magazine and news websites, and offers features such as custom front pages, Google Fonts API, color module support, home page slideshow, multi-column footer, etc. AT Headliner Demo | More Info Ukulele (Standard License: $60) Interesting name, isn't it? Ukulele is a theme with a unique color scheme, targeting sports blogs and websites. It has in-built e-commerce features (just in case you decide to sell souvenirs and T-shirts on your sports blog). It comes with 3 color schemes and 8 block regions. Ukulele Demo | More Info AT Magazine (Club Membership: $65/year) AT Magazine is another Premium Drupal 7 theme meant for news and content publishing websites. The theme comes with 5 color schemes, 32 regions, selectable textures, multi-column footer, and homepage slideshow. Just like most other themes by this provider, AT Magazine also is a child theme of Adaptive Theme for Drupal 7. AT Magazine Demo | More Info Shemisen (Standard License: $60) Shemisen is a theme primarily meant for photographers. It comes with support for separate blog and gallery sections, advertisement blocks, social networking icons, etc. It offers 6 color schemes, enhanced SEO settings, and newsletter options. Shemisen Demo | More Info Neptune (Standard License: $70) Neptune offers almost the same set of features as Amoeba, but it is organized in the form of a grid. It is best suited for content publishing blogs or websites with a rather informal touch. Neptune Demo | More Info Barracuda (Standard License: $70) Barracuda is a rather loud theme with 8 custom regions, jQuery animations, support for slideshow, CCK and Views Modules as well as a 100% tableless CSS layout. Furthermore, Barracuda is compatible with both Drupal 7.x and 6.x . Barracuda Demo | More Info Starboard Magazine (Standard License: $70) Starboard Magazine is meant for news and magazine websites. It has resizable sidebars (both left and right), fixed and fluid width options, 8 custom user regions as well as support for various custom modules. Starboard Magazine Demo | More Info That does it for this end. Now we turn things over to you. Do you run a Drupal-powered website? If so, which themes do you use? Feel free to share your thoughts with us in the comments! (rb)

Sufyan bin Uzayr

Sufyan bin Uzayr is a contributor to a variety of websites and blogs about technology, open source, web design, content management systems and web development. He is a published author, coffee lover.

14 comments

  1. Good review Sufyan. I find these information very useful.
    By the way, add up to your list, I find this guy is worth to take a look on: http://www.themebrain.com
    They are new but provide very high quality Drupal themes as well. For free right now.
    They also develop a base theme for Drupal, called TB Nucleus.

    1. Funny, I think the same thing. Whenever I see inspiration Websites, most of them are WordPress powered, and all Drupal and Joomla sites tend to look the same. Bland and all alike. I am getting a hang of making custom themes on Drupal, so my opinion may be incorrect.

  2. “Designing a website using Drupal meant hard-coding every aspect of the appearance of your website.”

    When did it mean this? In the days of Drupal 3 or something? This makes it sound like “with the advent of Drupal 7” the Drupal world was finally introduced to portable themes for the first time with all the wonder and fear of a caveman discovering fire.

    1. lol, funny characterization. Actually, though, that’s not what we got from the author’s statement. In fact, with the very next line that follows the one you quoted that is answered. “However, over time, and with the advent of Drupal 7, the picture has changed. ”

      We take this to mean, that over time that changed, and now with the Drupal 7 even more possibilities are open to designers and developers. Sorry for the miscommunication. Had we thought it was not clear, we would have had the author clarify it better. :)

      Noupe Editorial Team

    2. Hello Beth,
      No, I didn’t mean that Drupal 7 gave us Jedi power overnight. :)
      To quote, “Since its inception, Drupal has had the (rather infamous) reputation of being the developer’s CMS. Designing a website using Drupal meant hard-coding every aspect of the appearance of your website. However, over time, and with the advent of Drupal 7, the picture has changed. ”

      I wrote “Since its inception” right in the first statement, and did use the terms “over time..” in the last statement as seen above. I meant to say that Drupal initially began as something that wasn’t the first pick when it came to third-party themes. Of course, as Drupal has grown, things have changed, and Drupal 7 finally took those changes another step further.

  3. Howdy! I’m at work browsing your blog from my new iphone 4! Just wanted to say I love reading through your blog and look forward to all your posts! Keep up the fantastic work!

  4. I have seen many themes of Drupal which you provide here which is very helpful to all the comers of this field and can use in their site also.

  5. Thanx Sufyan! Plz pay attention to Theme Forest as well – they got some very nice responsive themes, Kalypso and Elegantica, for instance.

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