Posted by RickJ on Sat, Jul 23, 2022 - 9:52am

I'm looking at whether I should migrate a site with a lot of custom modules from D7 to Backdrop rather than struggle with D9 (isn't everyone?!).

But one thing that is doing my head in is the default themeing, both Basis and Seven, it's just making working with Backdrop so hard. It's fallen foul of the (to me) incomprehensible modern fashion of making everything on the screen as BIG as possible - huge fonts, huge margins around every box, etc. The result is very few items on the screen at once, so instead of, for example, just quickly scanning a list of items you have to continually scroll to see everything. All that white space may look pretty to some people, but it's not the point, it's not productive.

Curiously, the admin bar drop-down is almost the reverse, it's very compact, you might even say the font is too small.

I could make my own sub-theme to create a more comfortable Drupal-7-like experience, but I don't want to go to that hassle if someone else has already done it.

At this stage it's mainly Seven that's annoying me, trying to configure a site. I will hopefully be able to port my user theme over from D7 is due course.

An offers?

Most helpful answers

The Backdrop team was

The Backdrop team was amazingly helpful, stepping me through the process. Thank you all!

The Modoc theme is now available. 

https://backdropcms.org/project/modoc

Ladies and/or Gentlemen: I

Ladies and/or Gentlemen: I have my theme, Modoc, ready to make available. Being new to the process, I need instruction on how to go about doing this. It's in a repository on github, with (I think) everything in order.

https://github.com/ericfoy/modoc

Tips on how to proceed will be appreciated. Thanks. 

Update:

The kind and friendly Backdrop Team stepped me through to success... 

https://backdropcms.org/project/modoc

!  -;)

Eric Foy. We noted your

Eric Foy. We noted your application to the Contrib group which is the first step towards getting your project listed on BackdropCMS.org. 

If you need additional help, I recommend finding someone in Zulip (or come to office hours) to help you out. We'd really love to see your theme in the contrib space and will try to provide whatever help possible. 

Comments

bugfolder's picture

Sat, Jul 23, 2022 - 10:13am by bugfolder

Sorry I don't have anything to offer, but I, too, would welcome a nice, compact admin theme.

My current workaround is to subtheme Seven, and then override the CSS to tighten up some of the larger Views and other listings.

Sat, Jul 23, 2022 - 10:15am by yorkshirepudding

I think there is one other working admin theme called Lumi but that seems more spacious.

There is also a kind of base subtheme for Seven called Seventy that might make it easier to reduce margins and padding if you favour a more compact admin theme.

You can of course use any theme as your admin theme and maybe one of the bootstrap themes would be a suitable base.  

indigoxela's picture

Mon, Jul 25, 2022 - 6:57am by indigoxela

Hi RickJ,

it may depend on what you think is "compact", but I belief, Corporate Kiss, Axioma and Monochrome are relatively compact.

And you can still use Bartik (core), which almost looks like in D7.

Or create a minimal subtheme, that just shrinks things a bit (fonts, margins...).

Tue, Nov 29, 2022 - 11:23pm by ericfoy

My overall impression of Backdrop's out-of-the-box theming is the same as that expressed by the OP.

Working toward the same end, I have been slowly developing a theme to my liking. Right now it's just a giant hack-n-patch of another theme, but the results are very encouraging. I believe it will be well received if I ever get to the point of putting it out there. 

Sat, Apr 15, 2023 - 11:40am by ericfoy

Ladies and/or Gentlemen: I have my theme, Modoc, ready to make available. Being new to the process, I need instruction on how to go about doing this. It's in a repository on github, with (I think) everything in order.

https://github.com/ericfoy/modoc

Tips on how to proceed will be appreciated. Thanks. 

Update:

The kind and friendly Backdrop Team stepped me through to success... 

https://backdropcms.org/project/modoc

!  -;)

Thu, Apr 13, 2023 - 3:21pm by stpaultim

Eric Foy. We noted your application to the Contrib group which is the first step towards getting your project listed on BackdropCMS.org. 

If you need additional help, I recommend finding someone in Zulip (or come to office hours) to help you out. We'd really love to see your theme in the contrib space and will try to provide whatever help possible.