Samaritan’s Purse

Yele Haiti

Housing Works

World Concern

Charity: water

One

World Food Programme

Red Cross

UNICEF

Plan Canada

Bright Hope

CARE

Convoy of Hope

Direct Relief

Feed my Starving Chlidren

Food for the Hungry

Giving Children Hope

Global Aid Network Canada

International Rescue Comitee

Kids Alive

MedShare

Operation USA

Stand With Haiti

World Help

World Vision

American Refugee Comitee

I would like to encourage you to help as you can. Donate your money, skills or time. Look for an opportunity and see what you can do.
Please share this article if you like it, bookmark it, tweet or digg it. Maybe your tweet will cause someone to donate and help Haiti.

There were always two parallel sessions running on Friday and even three parallel sessions on Saturday during whole day. So there really was what to choose from. And to keep it more funny (… and healthy :-)) the sessions were in other rooms, other floors, even other buildings. So it was also very nice cardio training :-).

First session I would like to cover was from Saturday - “Theming Drupal - The gap between PHP Developers and Designers”. Raphael (@rapsli) opened one of the hot topics: whose responsible for area between design and development. He described Drupal’s theming system and showed some best practices of Drupal theming. The conclusion is that Drupal developers and themers support each other work hand in hand.
[session slides]

Essential topic for every Durpal website maintainer: Upgrading Drupal. Whether it is from lower to higher version (like Drupal 5 to Drupal 6) or keeping live Drupal site up to date. Florian (@flobruit) revealed some great practices from his expirience in this field. He described a workflow how to update modules or even add custom functionality to live Drupal web site with as less downtime as possible. To mention at least ingredinces for his recipe, you would need:

• some STAGE server between PRODuction and DEVelopment server
• use versioning control system like SVN, Git, Bazaar, …
• drush magic and shell scripts
• Installation profiles, Features
• … and backup often:-)

To describe whole workflow here is much out of the scope of this post, but I will get back to this topic soon, so stay tuned.
[session slides]

Next session with a bit similar topic but focused on development process - Development workflow and deployment at Absolventen.at - was presented by Klaus Purer (@klausi). Klaus was talking about their team development work at Absolvent.at. Just short list of tools Klaus was talking about:

• [Subversion (SVN)[http://subversion.tigris.org/ "Subversion"] - industry standard tool for version control, CVS is really not a choice knowadays. Use branches for features development, bugfixing and tags for releases and deplyments.
• Document your code. Really. Also check out new Drupal installation profile called Open Atrium. It offers simple document management, communication tools like blog, issue tracking and can by customized.
• Use Simpletest to catch as many bugs as possible.
• Examine your watchdog for “File not found” (some dead links ?) and PHP errors (NULL values in arrays ?)
• Have separated Development, Staging (testing) and Poduction servers.
• Deployment of DB changes:
  • manual DB dumps
  • for some modules you can export the changes (e.g. Views, Rules)
  • custom code hooks
  • export Features
• use Drush to simplify and speed up your work

The session triggered interesting discussion about versioning systems and their future. Should we use Git or Bazaar ? What about migration from SVN ?

Another great session for Drupal developers on animal friendly topic focused on saving kittens: Clean Customizations: use the APIs and save the kittens. Florian (@flobruit) and Daniel introduced a lot of real-life examples, how-tos, very interesting examples of using Views as tools and many other. Simple need-to-know for every Drupal developer (if you don’t want to kill the kittens).
[Florian's blog post]

Very interesting session by Karoly Negesy (@chx) about “MongoDB: a database for websites” introduced future alternative for regulary used SQL databases. SQL databases were designed and developed a long time ago and to fulfill slightly different requirements than web applications like Drupal have. MongoDB is document oriented database which is very fast and with it’s philosophy fulfills the requirements of CMS system much better than regular SQL databases. It will be very interesting to watch development of Drupal in relationship to database systems like MongoDB.

From conception to realization: A journey through the creation of a website by Marek (@sotak). That was the last session on Saturday I attented to. And it was one great session. As Marek says in his blog, this session was almost Drupal free, but defenitely one of the best session on this DrupalCamp. Marek described entire process of creating a NGO website, from the first meeting, through the analysis, design and development to site launch.

Very useful method for determinig features of the site is so called MoSCoW method. It helps you to define MUST have requirements and cathegorize them into SHOULD have, COULD have and WON’T but WOULD like to have groups. Another great helper to define mood and colorisation of a web site are Mood boards. Just take a scissors, some magazines and put together some pictures that will define mood and colors of your site. Or do it on your computer. It’s a great starting point for creating a design. You can use another tools to extract colors from a picture to color palette and use it as a basis for your web.

Use wireframes to create layout of the pages and have them signed by your client. There are a lot of tools for it, online and offline.

After site’s launch make some buzz around it, write a blog post, present a case study on a comunitty meeting and don’t forget to track your work even after the site is launched. There is a lot you can learn from live site. Check out the statistics, Google Analytics or Chartbeat, very interesting is ClickHeat mapping (Drupal module for it). You will find all mentioned links in the session slides.

Thanks again to all organizators and speakers for great event and educational sessions, you have done a great job. And don’t forget ! The First Slovak DrupalCamp is comming soon !

About the author: David Lukac - @davidlukac is a managing partner in Mogdesign.eu - a Drupal design company. He is passionate about Drupal, music and his beloved family.

• Web Design Process: Zee Site
• The Four Key Components of a Great Web Design
• 50 (fresh) Beautiful and High-quality Free Icon Sets
• Top 10 Photoshop Feature Requests
• 50 Fresh And Inspirational Corporate Designs
• 10 Expert Tips for Designing a One Page Portfolio
• 21 Resources for Getting Design Feedback
• 18 Free Dingbat Fonts Great for Interface Design
• A Collection of Useful Web Design Wireframing Resources
• The Evolution of Web Design

Development

• 20+ Brand New and Incredibly Useful WordPress Plugins
• You Don’t Know Anything About Regular Expressions: A Complete Guide
• Top 20+ MySQL Best Practices
• 43 Minimal And Really Clean Free Wordpress Themes
• Fresh Web Development Goodies Bag
• 15 Useful Resources to Get Clued Up on HTML5
• How to Evaluate What CMS to Use

Blogging

• 25 Blogs To Help You Stay Current With Social Media
• Stories behind your favourite blogs
• Tips, Advice, and Truth About How to Make Money Online with Blogger and Increase Traffic
• 10 Things You Must Do Before A New Site Or Blog Launch
• 25 Funny Comic Strips About the Web & the Internet
• How to Build & Develop an Awesome Blog

Freelance

• Freelancing For Agencies: Pros and Cons
• Why Your Worst Clients Should Still Get Your Best Service
• Designer’s Guide to Passive Income – 7 Essential Readings
• HOW TO: Get more brand exposure, traffic and sales using Facebook
• When You Need to Subcontract
• How To Create The Perfect Client Questionnaire
• A 4-Step Process for a Positive Web Marketing Approach

In the first session cgalli showed us “How to build a Drupal website in 40 minutes“. He presented the “usual suspects” modules like cck, views, imagecache and using a Marinelli theme he built a basic website for an Austrian football club.

Second session was “Reaching your audience with an Accessible CMS” Shadi Abou Zahra presented on how to make Drupal more usable and high quality. Explained the purpose of W3C and WAI initiatives. Accesibility means that people with disabilities can use the web. He pointed out that any content on the website must be: Percievable, Operable, Understandable and Robust.
Key features of accessible web:

• Semantic structures using supported standards
• Images, videos and audio with alternative text
• Layout and font sizes that can be used by keyboard
• Forms and controls that can be used by keyboard
• Consistent and predictable navigation and usage
• Device and browser independant operability

Semantic Drupal is a big thing at the moment and the third session “Getting Your Site Ready for Web 3.0: The semantic Web and Drupal” was a good example of it. Lin Clark explained what the basic principles and benefits of semantic web are.
Core benefits:

• Programs and sites can exchange information
• Search engines can display more relevant information in results
• Data mashers can combine data from different datasets to find new and astounding things

Lin also pointed out different approach of Mmachine understandable, RDF, SPARQL, Linked Data, Federated datased, Giant Global Graph and how to use them all to get the best results with Drupal. RDF will be a part of Drupal 7 core, that will make Drupal more semantic.

Christian Ziegler shared examples of “Intranet, Collaboration and Project Managemeng in Open Atrium”, explaining why is Drupal easy to use with social networking. He did a short demo of OpenAtrium.com a Drupal Project management and collaboration installation, Organic groups, Features, Storm project management module, CiviCRM.
Watch this video to get a better picture of what cloud computing is.

“Productivity without web with CCK, VIEWS, PANELS” session by hagengraf was filled with great tips for building Drupal website. Use CCK, Views, Panels as a Lego blocks to create Drupal website as a Lego building, plugging in different features and modules. Modules mentioned: Galleria, Mp3player, Emfield for videos, image, audio or podcasts, Node Relationships.

Fago’s session “Rules: How to leverage rule-based automation” presented great workflows to save clients money, developers time and make users happy with creating Rules for automation process. He demonstrated a automated process of notifying and blocking inactive users.

“Securing your drupal site” by pivica presented some best practices for having a secure drupal site. Some examples:

• Enable update module
• When using contributed module, check if module is popular, actively mainainted , developer, security holes in past, using db_query, check_plain?
• Consider using captcha; login_security; persistent login; single login; password policy; Salt; Phpids; httpbl modules
• If you don’t know what you are doing don’t use php input filter; Never trust a user input
• Consider disabling logging to web browser on production sites
• Check_plain($text), Check_markup(), Filter_xss(), l(), t()
• Never write and/or execute sql commands manually, use drupal db layer; Use db_query() properly; Use db_rewrite_sql to respect node access restrictions
• Forms api protects you from invalid form data, against CSRT
• Don’t trust js for input validation
• When using ajax use drupal_get_token and drupal_check_token
• Respect and define new permissions, Use menu access arguments
• Be safe in your themes, Write clean template files; Provide custom variables in preprocessor functions

To feel the atmosphere of DrupalCamp Vienna take a look at pictures, tweets, and this amazing Flickr Twitter mashup

Last note: there are multiple DrupalCamps coming up in Europe in coming months in Bratislava, Ghent, Essen, Munchen. Looks like Europe discovers Drupal :)

• Powerful Use of Typography In Christian Motion Graphics
• Beautiful Hand Drawn Websites
• The Making of “Constant Slip”
• 40 Seriously Funny Print Ads
• 54 Cool Examples of Custom Error 404 Pages
• 40 Beautifully-Designed Navigation Menus
• 20 New High Quality Free Fonts
• Designing “Coming Soon” Pages
• 30 Web Designs with Amazing Attention to Detail
• Dissection of Holy Websites: Modern Church Web Design Trends & 88 Inspiration
• 50 Inspirational and Fresh Minimally Designed Web Sites
• 60 Trendy Web Design Interfaces Created In October
• 20 Do’s and Don’ts of Effective Web Typography
• The Ultimate Ugly Showcase of Current Government Websites

Development

• How to build a Social Networking Website with Drupal
• 26 Must Have Resources for the Web Developer’s Toolbox
• What Beautiful HTML Code Looks Like
• Coding a Web Design for Speed and Quality
• The History of the Internet in a Nutshell
• Top Five Best Database Management Tools
• Top 20 Essential Firefox Add-ons for Web Designers
• 5 Damn Easy Ways To Improve User Experience
• 10 Tips for Writing Better CSS

Blogging

• 16 WordPress Sites to Help You Build a Better Blog
• iPhone Blogging Tools Roundup
• 12 Essential Plugins for Your Wordpress Design Blog
• 10 Ways to Find Inspiration for Your Writing
• Three Types of Commentators – And How to Deal with Them
• Five Ways to Be a Trendy Blogger

Freelance

• Does Freelancing Make You Happy?
• Taking Your Business on the Road: How to Work While Traveling
• How Freelance Businesses Can Measure Social Media Results
• Take Control of Your Finances with the Web
• Kristina Halvorson on Content Strategy for the Web
• 101 Essential Freelancing Resources

A time for another giveaway on Mogdesign.eu has come. We are giving out 30 Google wave invites to 30 Drupal developers. Comunication is a core condition for each succesful development project, and Google Wave is a tool that makes real-time communication and collaboration easier and more effective. Enjoy!

Source: Flickr.com

About Google Wave

Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

• A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.
• A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.
• A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

How To Enter

1. Leave a comment at the end of this blog post, including your Drupal.org ID, which must be registered before November 13th, 2009 (latest on November 12th).
2. If you have a twitter account please tweet this message: 30 Google #Wave Invites Giveaway for #Drupal Developers by Mogdesign.eu - @jojototh http://bit.ly/3ODqqb

Prize

• Each winner will recieve a Google wave invite.

Rules

• Give away will end November 19, 2009.
• Winner will be announced on November 20, 2009.
• Participants must leave contact information: email and Drupal.org account ID, which must be registered before November 13th, 2009 (latest on November 12th).

• 5 ways to avoid the most common mistakes in web design
• Create a Funky Perspective of a Model Riding Digital Volume
• Latest High-Quality Free Fonts for Your Designs
• 6 Ways To Take Your Webdesign From Good To Great
• Grunge In Web Design: Samples And Best Practices
• CNN’s New Website Design Deconstructed
• Breadcrumb Navigation Examined: Best Practices & Examples
• Trend Spotting: The Beauty of Using Two Colors, Black and White in Graphic Design

Development

• The future of interface design
• Simple CSS Tips that Go a Long Way
• Website Maintenance Tips for Front-End Developers
• 40 New Useful Web Development Tools and Resources
• Essential CSS/HTML Lists Styling Techniques
• Minimal and Modern Layout: PSD to XHTML/CSS Conversion
• 10 Free Server & Network Monitoring Tools that Kick Ass

Blogging

• Blogging: Secure Your Spot as the “Go-To” Blog
• How to Write a Blog Post That’s Stickier than Velcro
• What I Do When I Read a Good Blog Post
• Great Online Hangouts for Bloggers
• Selling ad space: tips from top design blog owners
• The 5 Essential Pillars of a Social Media Campaign
• THE Blogger’s Guide to Facebook
• Introducing the Obox Micro Blogging Theme Collection

Freelance

• Bling Freelancers: Get Rich or Freelance Trying
• How to Get Your Ideas Across to Clients
• Getting Clients to Embrace Fresh Ideas
• Invoice Like A Pro: Examples and Best Practices
• 7 Handy iPhone Apps For Your Work
• Freelance Guide to Building Customer Loyalty
• Calling All Freelancers On Twitter
• Five Ways To Find Revenue Sharing Opportunities

BlogBuzz

2 column, tableless blog theme, that comes with three color schemes soft stone, coffee black and sky blue. It is lightweight and interface mostly done by CSS which means it is very easy to customize for your own style.

• Link: http://drupal.org/project/blogbuzz
• Demo: http://www.antsin.com/demo/blogbuzz

Agua

Agua is a simple center aligned site with the ability to have left, right or both sidebars. Navigation allows for secondary links as drop downs.

• Link: http://drupal.org/project/agua
• Demo: http://drupal.amandarodriguez.com/

Dessert

Dessert is a simple, fixed width, Standards-Compliant XHTML 1.0 Strict/CSS layout, with a dessert themed colour scheme.

• Link: http://drupal.org/project/dessert
• Demo: http://dessert.outcome3.com/

Misty Look

Use <div> elements for layouts; Support for site name, site slogan, primary links and search box; Fixed width (780px), Two sidebars/Right sidebar; IE PNG Fix, Show or hide breadcrumb, Setting display for taxonomy terms; Tested on Firefox 3, Safari and IE 6-8; Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional and CSS 2.1

• Link: http://drupal.org/project/mistylook
• Demo: http://kiterminal.com/

beMiracle Browny

Its time to introduce a beautiful brown theme for Drupal based on Acquia Marina. It supports 3 columns and regions as Acquia Marina but brings a more elegant, eye catching look. The design and color were influenced by a chocolate colored theme I had seen on another site. Typography and most of other layouts, settings and designs are retained from Acquia Marina.

• Link: http://drupal.org/project/browny
• Demo: http://demo.theebgar.net/drupalZ

Sea Breeze

Support for site name, slogan, primary links, mission, shortcut icon and user pictures; Fixed width layout; Drop-down primary links menu; Cross browser compatible; Funky drop-down search widget (javascript/jQuery); Rotating banners; 2 column layout with multiple regions; Tested in IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox 2, Firefox 3, Safari 3.2 & Chrome

• Link: http://drupal.org/project/sea_breeze
• Demo: http://demo.agileware.net/?theme=sea_breeze

Quicksilver

The Quicksilver Drupal theme features a black and yellow colour scheme and is specifically geared towards the auto industry. Support for logo, primary links, mission, shortcut icon and user pictures; Fixed width layout; Drop-down primary links menu; Supports both 2 column and 3 column layout; Cross browser compatible; Tested in IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox 2, Firefox 3, Safari 3.2 & Chrome

• Link: http://drupal.org/project/quicksilver
• Demo: http://demo.agileware.net/?theme=quicksilver

Arthemia

A port and modification of the Arthemia Free Wordpress theme converted to Drupal. The theme is of high quality, has 11 configurable regions and can be used in one and two column layouts.

• Link: http://drupal.org/project/arthemia
• Demo: http://arthemia.theraggedyedge.co.uk/

Summertime

Summertime is a beautiful theme with lots of small fancy things which will make your Drupal website look unique. Smart 1-2-3 columns; Fixed width (1024px); Tableless (css based); Tested in firefox 3+ / opera9.x / safari3 / chrome / ie6+

• Link: http://drupal.org/project/summertime
• Demo: http://sidashin.ru/summertime/

Zenland

This is an attempted marriage of Zen and Garland, the core theme; 1, 2, or 3 column, fixed and fluid layout; Both sidebars are placed on the right, with additional top and bottom sidebars; Supports external link popups, inactive by default. Activate it on script.js; Custom feed icon; Compact search block; Optional header graphics; More color options; Cross-browser tested in IE7, Opera, Chrome and Firefox, you may need to install pngfix.module to help IE6 though

• Link: http://drupal.org/project/zenland
• Demo: http://gausarts.com/

Acquia Prosper

Acquia Prosper is an advanced Drupal theme by TopNotchThemes, with a monochromatic look and clean lines. It is designed as an Ubercart e-commerce theme but is extremely flexible for any type of site. Positioning and block styles are controlled through Drupal’s UI via the Skinr module.

• Link: http://drupal.org/project/acquia_prosper

960 Robots

960 Robots is a theme created by Lullabot for its Drupal theming videos and DVDs. This theme, based on the 960 grid system, features two columns on the right side of the page, a two-column footer, calandar-page dates for posts, and real-name usernames in posts (requires profile field with the machine name “profile_real_name”). The theme also uses Twitter’s search API to display a random message based on a configurable search string as the site’s slogan (PHP5 required).

• Link: http://drupal.org/project/ninesixtyrobots
• Demo: http://960robots.lullabot.com/

Blog Grail

This theme is based on Holy Grail and controlled by Grid and developed as a subtheme of Zen. This theme is designed for bloggers, lazy coders and all end users who may have less need to modify, save for the logo. It’s surely flexible, extensible (mostly commented) and tends to be lightweight once all comments removed.

• Link: http://drupal.org/project/bloggrail
• Demo: http://gausarts.com/

Elements Theme

Revolution Elements is a dark, two-column theme with unique style that showcases images alongside the text of recent posts on the homepage. The theme is based on the old site of well-known WordPress designer Jason Schuller for his website WP Elements.

• Link: http://drupal.org/project/elements_theme
• Demo: http://nicolasborda.com/

Chrono

It _needs_ some primary links (horizontal top menu) because the strong color of them is needed for optical balance. It is very happy with colored images in the content area, with a populated right column. Only one tiny menu is not much. Included an alternative version of the header, so you can leave out the gradient on the right sidebar if you don’t like it (alternative header because the gradient has overlap with the header). Better for blogging or a straight structure than for a content-heavy site with many blocks, but it may be whatever you like.

• Link: http://drupal.org/project/chrono
• Demo: http://www.dug-hannover.org/

Alpha

The Alpha theme is a sub-theme of the Omega base theme. The Alpha theme is primarily designed for Drupal blogs, and will include some features that will enable some default functionality based on the theming for this great out of the box blog theme.

• Link: http://drupal.org/project/alpha

Fields 2009 template

Fields 2009 template is a simple Drupal Theme with three standard regions (header, sidebar and content) plus three small regions below the header. It has been optimized for a minimum resolution of 1024×768 and it is easily customizable from the CSS.

• Link: http://drupal.org/project/fields_2009
• Demo: http://www.themes-drupal.org/demo

Beach

Site logo; Site name; Site slogan; Mission statement; Top search box; Primary Links; Secondaryry Links; Top and Bottom content block regions; User pictures in posts and comment; Accessibility Navigation; Tableless Layout; 1 Left, 1 Right, Both sides or None sidebar; Flexible Footer block regions (up to 4 regions); 6 levels of page width, from 780px, 840px, 960px, 1020px, 1140px and Fluid page width. (inside theme settings);  jQuery Transparent PNG Fix for IE6 and below

• Link: http://drupal.org/project/beach
• Demo: http://studio.webzer.net/drupal/beach/

Abaca

Abaca has a dark background with white text, has one column on the right side with the primary navigation at the top

• Link: http://drupal.org/project/abaca
• Demo: http://drupal.dropshipaccess.com/

Bonus: 2 Fresh Drupal 7 themes

PocketT

PocketT is a free (GNU GPL) Drupal 7 theme. Its sole purpose is to be compact and focus on blogging, while still maintaining an interesting yet simple design. You can leave the sidebar empty and it will not show up, and you will be left with the original clean single column design.

• Link: http://drupal.org/project/pockett
• Demo: http://pockett.patrickteglia.com/

Dingus

A theme for Drupal 7. Clean, simple, light.

• Link: http://drupal.org/project/dingus

RootCandy

RootCandy is a 3 column fluid or fixed layouts theme focused on administration section.

• Supports node/add /edit pages
• Re-colorable, Icons, Sliding region
• Top navigation by role
• Simple dashboard
• Rootcandy dark sub-theme

Eldir
A minimal (nearly CSS-only) theme that focuses on components provided by the Hosting module and a clean administrative UI.

Seven is a backport of the default Drupal 7 administration theme (designed by Mark Boulton and Leisa Reichelt). This is simply that theme made compatible with D6 for anyone who wants to start using it now. For more information about the theme itself, visit Mark and Leisa’s Drupal 7 site at http://d7ux.org

Nerdalistic
A mix of Google and Wordpress ideas and colors in an easy to use and configure layout.

Polpo Admin Theme

Specifically designed for making administration tasks clearer and easier to navigate, Polpo uses a fluid two column layout ideal for content editing on larger screen resolutions. This is achieved through the use of larger font sizes, clearer spacing and distinct colours to aid the usability of common tasks.

Berylizer
Berylizer is a Admin Theme for Drupal 6.x.

• xHTML, CSS2 and a little bit CSS3
• 2 column fluid layout
• Drop Down Mainmenu

Strix

Strix is a theme specifically designed for the Drupal administration pages. It is built as a sub theme of Zen,

• Clean and compact /admin overview page
• CSS based drop-down effects for the navigation menu block (see Configuration in the Readme.txt)
• Fieldsets on the node edit and node add pages are in a column to the right.
• Primitively recolorable: just change the body background color

Fruity

Fruity is a clean, colorful administration theme with a small footprint

ActiveSite
Administrative-oriented theme

Bonus

Admin

The admin module provides UI improvements to the standard Drupal 6 admin interface. It implements some of the ideas being explored for usability improvements in Drupal 7.

Offline

A theme for you dead site and to use in the maintenance mode.

Base Theme Classics

Zen
Zen is the ultimate starting theme for Drupal. If you are building your own standards-compliant theme, you will find it much easier to start with Zen than to start with Garland or Bluemarine. This theme has fantastic online documentation and tons of code comments for both the PHP (template.php) and HTML (page.tpl.php, node.tpl.php).

Framework
Framework is a blank canvas for theme developers. Use Framework as a user friendly starting point to help facilitate your theme development.

Genesis
Genesis is an standards compliant, accessible and semantically rich starter theme for Drupal 6. Genesis is easy to theme yet extremely flexible, giving you endless theming possibilities. Genesis makes building a standards compliant accessible theme easier than starting from scratch.

Basic
Originally a stripped down version of the ZEN theme, basic has now become its own concept of a theme starter. Basic boasts a clean HTML structure with extensible CSS classes and ID’s for unlimited theming possibilities as well as a top-down load order for improved SEO.

Clean
The idea behind this theme was to make a clean, versatile theme that has just enough styling to be usable right out of the box. Clean theme is analogous to using a reset.css file to start a project, but in the form of a Drupal theme. Clean theme provides a solid foundation on which you will be able to create a bespoke theme within the shortest possible time.

Blueprint
Blueprint is a starter Drupal theme meant to make development of custom themes faster.

AdaptiveTheme
Adaptivetheme is a powerful starter theme with many layout and configuration options built into the theme and easily modified via theme settings and use of the Skinr module.

Fusion
Fusion is a powerful base theme, with layout and style configuration options built in that you can control through Drupal’s UI. It’s based on a simplified 960px or fluid 16-column grid. It’s designed to be used with the Skinr module, with numerous block styles included.

Beginning & Beginning 2
The beginning theme has to be considered as another blank canvas for theme developers. Use beginning as a starting point to help facilitate your theme development. Simply add background images and you’re done !

Alldrupalthemes.com Basetheme
ADT Basetheme v2 is the basetheme for all new drupal themes on alldrupalthemes.com and the themes produced by the Design to Drupal service.

Blue Trip
The BlueTrip theme for Drupal is the adaptation of the CSS framework BlueTrip for the Drupal system.

Grid Based Base Themes

NineSixty (960 Grid System)
NineSixty is a base theme with all the files provided by the 960 Grid System. From the sketch sheets to all the styles from the framework are included. There are a few modifications so it better fits into Drupal.

Zen nineSixty (960 Grid system)
This is the NineSixty theme (http://drupal.org/project/ninesixty) developed as a Zen sub theme for use with Zen theme (http://drupal.org/project/zen) for Drupal 6.

Fluid Grid System
If you already tried Blueprint or 960, two very popular grid system, you probably noticed that most of the grid system only offer a fixed, centered width of 960 or 950 pixels to create your designs.
Fluid Grid provides a grid system that works with any page width, even fluid layouts! With Fluid Grid, you can keep working within a grid system, but the grid is now completely configurable.

New themes on the block

Omega
The Omega Theme is a powerful and free Drupal theme based on the 960gs. It harneses the power and features of many popular themes to provied an excellent base theme, and sub-theming system to help you quickly prototype and theme your site.

Starkish
Starkish is Zen’s younger, leaner cousin. It saves the helpful classes and ID’s of Zen, but rips out all the CSS and extra markup.

Five
Five is a Drupal base theme written using HTML 5 and uses the 960 CSS framework.

Stark
The Stark theme is provided for demonstration purposes; it uses Drupal’s default HTML markup and CSS styles. It can be used as a troubleshooting tool to determine whether module-related CSS and JavaScript are interfering with a more complex theme, and can be used by designers interested in studying Drupal’s default markup without the interference of changes commonly made by more complex themes.

Mothership
The mothership theme is the über “clean up this html that drupal provides” theme - so if you wanna make any sense of this them use it as a parent theme! The basic idea is to use this theme before other “theme systemes” (zen, basic, studio, 960). The only thing this theme does is to clean up and remove html & classes that I dont think is necessary, and by that creating a cleaner html code.

Bonus

Starter Themes - A round up of themes that identify themselves as starter themes for Drupal.