For Drupal 4.5 one of our action points was improving the Drupal.org site itself. As well as making information easier to find for users, we wanted to make the site friendlier for people who are new to Drupal. As part of this, a new look was designed for Drupal.org. The style, called Bluebeach, was inspired by the Bluemarine Xtemplate and was designed by me, Steven Wittens.

In order to keep Bluebeach as a unique style for Drupal.org, the theme will not be made available for download.

The theme itself is implemented as a template for the PHPTemplate theme engine. It is completely tableless, validates as XHTML 1.0 strict and has a fluid, variable-columns layout. It works mostly the same on IE6, Firefox, Opera and Konqueror/Safari. I first designed a graphical mock-up and then implemented it into XHTML as a Drupal theme, starting off with a basic front page and adding more stuff later on. Overall the theme is much more roomy and cheery than Bluemarine was.

Aside from the obvious change of looks, the most noticable content change is the 'mission statement' on the front page: it is no longer a short paragraph with some links, but a dedicated full-width space which attracts attention. It links to the Drupal brochure (designed by Kristjan Jansen for Drupal at LinuxTag), which is the easiest way for people to get an idea about what Drupal is. It also gives immediate access to the latest Drupal release and the associated downloads (modules, themes and translations).

Another important change was flattening the Drupal handbook so that less clicks are needed to find the information you need. Project.module was also updated, for example to take advantage of the tabs feature in Drupal 4.5.

We will still be tweaking the site in the near future, but in the meantime your comments and suggestions are welcome!