When many people hear the word “theming,” they think of design. While theming is a key process for integrating a design into a CMS-based website, the power of theming extends beyond look and feel. Careful theming practices can make a site more flexible, more extensible, and easier to maintain over time.

Description:
By identifying the potential benefits of strong theming practices and sorting the various roles involved in a CMS-based web project, we can better understand the effect each role can have on the process. We can then create better communication patterns and relationships between these roles to maximize the value each brings to the process.

The session will start with a discussion of what theming is, and how it affects the long term health and effectiveness of a website. We will then move on to discuss a three-tier theming methodology, key project roles, and how these roles fit in the structure of the methodology. Finally, we will address each role and identify skills, challenges, and opportunities for each in the theming process.

Examples and principles are platform-agnostic, and strive to illustrate applicability across today’s popular CMS platforms.