Hello,
This is a question for members who were involved in theme development. Could you tell me a ballpark average time span it took to develop a new theme? Can be in hours or weeks, and approximately how many people worked on it.
Thank you,
Marina
Suggest you might get best responses in the themes forum:
https://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=46
IF I re-call correctly, Mary Evans is moderator of themes forum and might be able to move your posting there as well as respond.
Also suggest you provide some specifics as to Moodle version as that is a factor.
'spirit of sharing', Ken
Thank you, Ken,
I'll that.
Marina
You can develop a new theme in about 30 minutes but it won't do much. I've spent weeks on themes in the past that had very specific requirements.
You really need to give us an outline "specification" of the theme you have in mind. Consider that most theme developments are "children" of existing themes (typically Boost these days). That's the way themes are designed to work. You only change the bits that need to be different.
Anyway, moving to Themes forum...
Agree with Howard - your question is of the 'how long is a piece of string' variety.
With Boost based themes you can create a new Preset (probably based on an existing one) that recolours and brands your theme in under half an hour. Or creating a complex theme such as Essential, Fordson or Adaptable can take weeks initially and then require ongoing development and maintenance.
Are you looking to redesign the look and feel - colours, shapes, logos etc - but without additional functionality that some themes add? Then allow anything from the half hour (changing the brand colour variables in a Preset) to a couple of days to create and style a simple child theme. Anything beyond that depends entirely on what/how many different additional features you want to add to your theme - possibly by bringing 'best of the rest' aspects of other existing themes (carousel, marketing spots, tiled presentation of courses, course header images, etc, etc, etc).
There is also the time element of whether you are the actual designer as well as developer - or do you have to coordinate with a client or marketing department? Working with a client can mean working through several iterations of the design and frequent changes in specifications.
Thank you, Richard, your response is actually pretty helpful. This theme is actually going to be a complicated as it gets - a complete reshaping of the look. So I guess I'm really asking for like the worst/hardest case scenarios.
"complicated as it gets" takes forever.
As you are asking the question I am assuming you have no experience in Moodle theme design. Therefore you won't know what is possible and what is not (or not easily). If you are starting out with a highly complex theme involving overriding of many renderers and suchlike then you're in for a big learning curve and then doing the work on top.
It is impossible to answer your question but you should not underestimate the task. Moodle is complex and you may be getting into many parts of it.
Non of this is to put you off. Just allow enough time/effort.
As Mary says - tell us what your "target" Moodle version is?
It will be the latest version, 3.4.
Timing is my big concern. I don't want to underestimate how much I would need. I've done a kind of "face lift" css work with themes before, but nothing like this one.
Thank you for all your input.
Marina
One question.
What is the most complicated thing you are faced with?
Just thinking that what you see as complicated we may find eazy because we know lots of tricks that we have learned over time.
Mary
Theme development can take hours and hours depending on your knowledge and experience in this field.
It woukd help to know the Moodle version you are intending to use?
Thanks
Mary