Lookin' good in the neighborbood

This is a tale of empowerment. I promise. But first...

Am I the only one that is perpetually frustrated by the tradeoff between functionality and beauty that seems ubiquitous in the Drupal.org hellscape? Why is it that modules so often rife with visual promise and loud verbage end up being naught but vaporware? Why is it that the most powerful and useful tools lack any meaningful documentation and/or look like someone threw up all over themselves?

These are, of course, complicated questions that deserve a much larger and scientific investigation than the oversimplified answer which will soon be smote thusly and righteously upon your screen...

We build what we know.

Developers build for developers. Themers build for themers. And, historically, Players play. While this produces great solutions for specific subsets of the ecosystem, it also builds up walls that diminish new adoption, dissuade curious but virgin minds and discourage cross-pollination.

At Kalamuna we are activists, artists, rabble-rousers, former political consultants and mathematics majors. As a result, when we think about a contribution to the Drupal community we pool from a myriad of viewpoints and often ask the question:

"How can we empower the most people with the latest and greatest technologies?"

One of the answers to that question resulted in the Kalatheme project.

Technically speaking, Kalatheme leverages the Bootstrap 3 framework to provide out of the box, responsive, mobile first, cross browser, HTML5/CSS3 compliant subthemes built for Panels and Panopoly and optimized for ease of use through the Panels In Place Editor. But these days... BIG DEAL.

What makes Kalatheme different is that you can get things started like a pro using SASS/COMPASS or you can go from ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to having a customized, stylized and fully built responsive subtheme in less time than it takes to listen to that part of the William Tell overture that everyone actually knows. (see below)

You can easily start with any theme built using the Bootstrap customization tool  or you can start with default bootstrap and add your own custom panels layouts using a 4, 8, 12, 16, 96 or any number column grid (for a good math joke I would recommend using 17 as your grid size). You also can get really far with only basic knowledge of CSS and media queries by leveraging pane based style and responsive toggling. Or, of course, you can preprocess your CSS using our SASS Kalatheme project if that is how you roll instead.

Kickstart your new Kalatheme project in under 10 minutes or try out the demo. (user: kala, pass: kala, Appearances -> Actions -> Setup Kalatheme).

Powerful tools are now not only the purvey of Drupal veterans, but newcomers and novices alike. UNITE!