atomsite.net

The development team is discussing themes in BlogSvc.  I'm really interested in pushing towards using stylesheets as the primary method of altering a theme.  As demonstrated by the success of the CSS Zen Garden, designers are comfortable working with CSS.  I also believe it is safe to say that as browser technology continues to mature, designers will gain additional flexibility through CSS improvements.

The end-user scenario is very important to me and I want to target the whole range of users.  Lets start with a non-technical user like my lovely wife.  After talking with her, the ideal workflow for her would be:

1. Click a link on her blog that takes her to a website like http://www.freewpthemes.net/
   

1. Browse through the themes until she finds one she likes.
    
2. Click a link (on either the listing or preview screen) that says Apply to my site
   
3. Her site opens with the option of applying the theme to a whole workspace or a single collection (based on authorization)
   
4. She clicks apply and the theme is applied to the chosen area.

As mentioned before, the designer scenario would follow a Zen Garden workflow where the designer could create their own CSS and images and either upload manually through FTP or using a zip file.  The more technical users could alter both the CSS and markup of the site.

Update: With the move to MVC, it is much easier to support various other methods of theming by switching out the view engine.