Perhaps the most eagerly awaited lately by the users of Drupal is the Drupal 7 RC1. If Drupal 7 has reached RC version, then:

• The API is frozen.
• All markup is frozen.
• The UI is frozen.
• The theme system is frozen.
• All strings are frozen.
• Drupal 7.0's release is imminent.

I really waited for Drupal 7 RC1, because with the release of RC version, so I do not need to change some of my themes system every new version released since the theme system is frozen.

And finally the Drupal 7 RC1 released!. You can download it here.

There are many ways that we can do to attract attention of the reader or visitor, one of which is to create an attractive appearance on our website. Of course, the content of our website is the most important thing, attractive appearance but is not balanced with useful content for our readers is also a vain thing.

One of the things you can do to enhance the appearance of your website is to add a slideshow, can include articles, images or videos. In Drupal website, you do not need to add it manually using jQuery plugins like Cycle because there is a module that provides this slideshow feature, you just download and install it.

There are many modules are available at Drupal.org that you can use, you simply select and customize to your needs. Here are some module that is intended to create a slideshow:

• Slideshow. The Slideshow module transforms images attached to an article into a JavaScript enabled slideshow. Any article can have a slideshow. This slideshow can be placed above, below or within the content of the page.
• Views Slideshow. Views Slideshow can be used to create a slideshow of any content that can appear in a Views. The possibilities are really endless, as the more ways you can think of to categorize and add to views, the more you can rotate.
• Ajax Slideshow. This Ajax Slideshow can show a series of content items as slides using transition effect. And Allow the user to navigate across slides using tabs and/or navigational buttons.

Slideshow is a feature that could be considered severe, a lot of resources to be taken when we use this feature, you must use it wisely. If you want to create an image slideshow, first compress the image you want to use for faster loading.

The needs for Drupal developers and Drupal theme makers seem to continue to increase from year to year. This is in line with the growing popularity of Drupal among site owners and companies.

As we already know in advance if free themes for Drupal is still very limited, whereas demand for the Drupal themes are very much. In fact, many vendors popping up and give an offer to create a custom themes for Drupal.

The price of custom themes for Drupal is very varied, from the price of 150 dollars to 3000 dollars or even more expensive. Here I will try to give an illustration how approximately the price of this custom theme when viewed from the quality of the resulting themes.

Price 150 - 450 USD

This is low end custom Drupal theme. You can find custom themes at a price between 100 to 450 USD, but do not expect at this price will match completely with your website.

Price 800 - 1400 USD

This is a mid range custom Drupal theme. At this scale you are hiring a bonafide theme makers, and we can be sure that the themes generated will be fully able to meet your needs.

Price more than 2000 USD

At a price of 2000 USD or more, you will get a theme that is truly unique, big price usually indicates a lot of theme work to be done, such as for sites with many sections that need unique designs. It is highly recommended if you want to make your Drupal theme as well as the brand of your business. If it was for the development of your company then big cost is not a matter.

The point is that the more you pay for a given design, the greater the attention to detail, not only in the look of the theme, but in the quality of the code.

Select a custom Drupal themes carefully, thoroughly well before hiring a theme maker. At least check first what he contributed to Drupal.

To facilitate the development of a theme, sometimes we need a starter theme for accelerating the development process, especially if we have a limited time. With a starter theme, the development will be much easier because of existing frameworks.

There are several starter themes that are available at Drupal.org and all are worthy to try. Here are those themes:

Zen

Zen starter theme is a very widely used, and has great online documentation so it is very helpful if we want to study it more deeply. It very flexible, standards-compliant and semantically correct XHTML theme.

Zen is very simple and clean, and the HTML source order has content placed before sidebars or the navbar for increased accessibility and SEO. Zen also has a lot to get the award, which is clear evidence of efficacy from this starter theme.

Framework

Framework is developed by Andre Griffin, very user friendly starting point to help facilitate theme development.

Framework has general placement and formatting to basic Drupal elements, and supports one, two, and three-column layouts. The CSS file is highly organized, very clean and simplified code.

Genesis

Genesis is easy to theme and extremely flexible, giving themer endless theming possibilities. Genesis makes building a standards compliant accessible theme lot easier than starting from scratch.

Genesis has no complex logic in templates, included conditional styles module, and the content source ordered for SEO.

Prior to select the module or theme, there is much to consider. One who deserves to consider is the amount of usage of the module or theme we want to use, more and more users the more visible the quality of the modules or themes we wish to use, but you have to remember, many users it has not been definitely better than those that have fewer users.

In Drupal, there is a module in its development objective is to examine the module or theme installed on a website, this module name is the Update Status module. But the Update Status module does not know the status of any module or theme that was not installed via a tarball produced by Drupal.org.

The module is already included in the core of Drupal 6.x, and for earlier versions of Drupal, you must install it manually. The results shown give an idea of how popular the different projects are and may help you choose modules and themes for your own site.

To assess the popularity of a module or theme by simply watching from the amount reported by this module is not 100% valid, because new data obtained can be reported to the Drupal.org if the website has turned on or installing the Update Status module, but this is enough to give an idea of what is used on others sites.

You can find out, how popular modules and themes you're using by visiting Usage statistics for all projects page at Drupal.org.