Changed the look of membershipsites4free.com - in an instant with a new theme on my Drupal site

Drupal's standard theme is not the most attractive but is certainly functional. You can modify the standard Garland or Minnelli colour scheme, use the boxy Pushbutton theme and tweak to your heart’s content. But in the end there is no substitute for using a more visually appealing theme.

Originally my development started with the Marinelli theme, but this seems a bit overpowering, exhibiting what I didn't want, a bit of a claustrophobic look.

So I looked around, downloaded several themes onto my off-line test setup and played around with the settings. In less than an hour I had changed the look of my test site probably 5 or 6 times.

To make sure I was happy I used an off-line backup of my content and loaded it into my test setup, so that I could see exactly how things were going to look.

In the end I settled on the Danland theme, an open layout with lots of space around the content it gave me the look I want. I may change a few things to the layout as time goes on, but that's a future project.

The point is, with a Drupal setup you can reconfigure the look of your site in a very short space of time. There are a huge number of themes available for you to evaluate and try out. From standard three column layouts, through to some weird and wonderful specimens. There are even commercial themes that a third party will setup for you should you get into trouble, like those based on TopNotchThemes.

So don’t be afraid of experimenting with the theme you are using with your Drupal setup. Should you make a mistake you can always go back to a ‘standard’ theme, fix the problem and move on.

So give it a go, what have you got to loose ?