Frequently Asked Questions

Our themes are tested in Firefox 3 (Mac/Win/Linux), Internet Explorer 6/7/8, Safari 4 (Mac), Chrome, and Opera 10. While nothing can ever promise to be bug-free, we’ve put the themes through their paces in these browsers and made sure to stick to standards-compliant coding techniques in order to ensure they are very cross-browser friendly.

Yes! Check them out here.

These free themes are supported through the Drupal community, and one-on-one support is not included unless you have a Fusion Pro membership. Any questions, bugs, or support requests should be posted to the theme’s issue queue, not by email.

Part of the reason we created TopNotchThemes is to provide an affordable way for organizations to get a quality Drupal theme without the expense of a custom design. And, we understand that sometimes the budget still doesn’t allow for even that – which is why we have free themes available as well with the same kinds of features and quality. Get more info and download here.

We currently offer themes for Drupal 6. One of Drupal’s core philosophies is that it does not guarantee backwards compatibility from one major release to the next. This is ultimately a good thing, as it keeps Drupal lean, versatile, and fast. The downside is that most modules and themes need to be upgraded from version to version. We do create all our themes with the next version of Drupal in mind though, using future-thinking techniques as much as possible. We’ll be starting on Drupal 7 development this spring.

Whenever an existing theme is upgraded to a new version of Drupal, any past purchasers of that theme will get the upgraded theme for free, for life!

All of our themes will work with essentially any module since the theme functionality is independent from the module functionality. The theme is simply a “skin” that overlays the particular modules you select and the content you create to build your site.

Unlike many other Drupal theme sites out there (we won’t name names), we have a very Drupal-centric approach, creating Fusion themes to be flexible with the way people actually build Drupal sites – not hard-coding to certain modules or content.

Generally, yes. However, we do sometimes use browser-specific techniques (which degrade gracefully) that will fail a validation test, such as opacity or border-radius.

Yes! All themes come with your own Fusion PowerSite, a fully hosted, configured copy of the theme’s demo site you see here on our site. There’s nothing to install, and you can use this demo site to build your real site from, or use it as an example.

Also, once you’ve purchased a theme, you can view a gallery of all the “styles” included with that theme so you can easily apply these to your content.

The Skinr module was created in collaboration with Gravitek Labs, in response to feedback from our customers and the thousands of people using our free Drupal themes. Instead of having us make a lot of assumptions about your site and your content, it gives you a huge range of options through Drupal’s user interface. This allows you to use all the styles in the theme where you need them most, and not be limited by one layout or set of design options.

The module reads the styles we create in the theme and provides the mechanism through which you can switch styles on blocks, nodes, views, panels, and more.

You’ll find several file types within your theme:

• .php files - these are the backbone of a Drupal theme, and tell your website what to display where
• .css files - these are style sheet files, which control the visual look and feel of your web site. This is where all the magic of beautiful designs happen.
• Image files - these will end in .gif, .jpg, or .png, depending on the type of image. They are optimized for a balance of fast load times and prettiness. Your theme may include additional icons or stock images.
• .js files - these are JavaScript, and will add some additional functionality and whiz-bang display features to your theme.
• .psd files - these are the Photoshop files, the original design mockups used to create the site. They may not be 100% identical to the theme, as sometimes small adjustments are made when converting these to a live website. When opened in Photoshop, these files allow you to completely customize any of the graphics, backgrounds, etc. used in the theme.

Yes, you can edit your theme. Your theme comes with a file called local-sample.css with instructions at the top. By putting your custom changes in this file, your changes will not be overwritten when upgrading to a new version of this theme.

The Fusion system currently supports RTL and we are currently working on updating our Fusion themes to support this.

You’ll need to alter both the graphics and CSS. The theme includes the Photoshop (.psd) file mockups, which are layered and can be edited to change the colors. You then also need to make changes in the CSS to alter the properties for the backgrounds, buttons, fonts, etc. Depending on your experience with editing graphics, some themes are simpler to change than others, since they have fewer images.

A custom local.css file is included so that you can make changes to colors or other customizations without editing the main theme files.

Yes! We take special care of SEO considerations in our Drupal themes. Header tags are used in an appropriate hierarchy, and we do not make the site name an <h1> tag like many other themes do – this means your keyword-rich page title will instead be the most dominant element on the page. Our code is clean, valid, and semantic, for better search engine spidering. Our themes are designed to play nicely with important SEO-enhancing Drupal modules.

But perhaps most importantly, our themes give you something for SEO that no other theme can match – flexibility. SEO isn’t just about getting the technical things on your site correct, but being able to adapt and react to new trends and visitor feedback. What good is a Drupal site if you have to edit your theme’s code every time you want to add a new landing page layout or A/B test, or apply the same style to another promo block? Fusion’s UI-based layout and styles give you that flexibility so you can focus on your content and marketing.

You need to purchase an additional license for each live website you use the theme on. Please see our full licensing terms for more details. Also you may be interested in a Fusion PRO membership if you need more than three copies of a theme.

What counts as a separate website? It’s probably easier to explain what isn’t a separate website. These situations do not require an additional license: a site that runs in multiple languages, using subdomains for different sections but that are conceptually the same site, or a site that uses different domains with redirects. If the sites are for the same organization or different organizations and have different content, domains, etc. then these require an additional license.

Our Fusion PRO membership gives you double licenses for free when using a theme on multiple websites, a 50% discount. This membership is designed to pass on big discounts for developers or Drupal shops building websites for clients, and pays for itself if you need more than around three copies of a theme.

The template files and Javascript of our themes are licensed under the GPL - General Public License, Version 2, as stated in the software license and as accepted within the Open Source Software community as the controlling software license for Open Source Software. Other files (graphics/CSS) are copyright TopNotchThemes. Please review our EULA for full details.

Possibly. We have appropriately licensed stock graphics/photos as seen in our previews so that you may use them on your website via your theme purchase. Some may be public domain, but most are commercially licensed. You cannot use these commercial stock images for any other purpose—such as a banner ad or brochure—without purchasing an additional license for this.

No we don’t. As a small business, we just don’t have the infrastructure to handle purchase orders.

No, we accept credit card payments only, via our site or through PayPal.

As quickly as your internet connection allows! Your theme is downloadable immediately after purchase. If you have your Drupal site already set up, you can have your new theme up and running in minutes.

Yep. Once you’ve purchased a theme, you can always come back and download it later from your dashboard. Your theme does not expire. You can download it as many times as you need. We’ll keep all your previous purchases in your account for you. You’ll be notified by email and Drupal’s “Available Updates” report if your theme is upgraded on our site with a new version available for download.

Our site includes extensive documentation, helping you through the process of uploading and configuring your theme. It also includes help for customizing parts of a theme to your liking. 

Purchasing a Fusion Drupal theme gets you email support and lifetime bug fixes and upgrades, directly from the expert team who created the theme. It does not include any kind of customizations (modifications or enhancements specifically for your site or additional modules), but you may get assistance for this from the community in the forums or through purchasing a Fusion Pro membership.

Please report any issues or bugs through your dashboard to ensure a prompt reply from our support team.

Note: our free Drupal themes are supported through the Drupal community, and one-on-one support is not included unless you have a Fusion Pro membership. Any questions, bugs, or support requests should be posted to the theme’s issue queue on drupal.org, not by email.

Drupal is flexible and fluid, and it is inevitable that occasional issues will arise with implementing your theme.

Please report the issue through your dashboard, with as much detail as possible, including:

• Your web browser and operating system
• Additional modules you are using
• A description of the behavior you are experiencing
• Ideally: upload a screenshot and/or link to the issue

We’ll get back to you ASAP! Please note that your purchase does not include any customization, installation assistance, or troubleshooting of problems that are occurring outside of a default configuration of Drupal and any modules explicitly supported by your theme.

Yes, our plan is to port any themes that have sold at least a few copies to the next version of Drupal. When a new version of your theme is released, we’ll send you an email. You can then download the updated version on your dashboard.

Download and unpack the files as you did when you first installed the theme. Simply upload the new theme files over top of your old files. If you made any changes to the theme that aren’t in the local.css file, please make a note of these before you overwrite your previous files. Then clear cached data at yoursite.com/admin/settings/performance.

If you are already a current TopNotchThemes customer, you will receive an automatic, free upgrade to the Fusion version of your theme if it is released. Over the coming months, we will be adding only our most popular TNT themes to the Fusion site. Here’s how it works:

You will need to register an account on the Fusion site.

Then visit our contact page and send us an email indicating your username or email address that you placed your original order with on the TNT site, and your new Fusion site username.

We will then add the appropriate Fusion theme file to your Fusion account and send you a notification email. That’s it - you’re ready to go!

We believe in our themes and stand behind our work. If you aren’t happy with the theme you’ve purchased from us, let us know within 120 days and we’ll give you a refund. Please tell us if there’s anything we can do to keep your business. If there is an issue with a theme, we’ll fix it asap!

We call it a PowerSite because it’s much more than just a demo site. With any theme purchase, you get an exact copy of the live theme demo – along with a full, hosted development environment with a web interface for managing Drupal. Or, you can export the site and use it locally or with any web host.

Your PowerSite includes:

• Your own custom hosted copy of the demo site
• A web interface to invite team members and manage access control
• Secure SVN hosting (version control), including per-user permissions
• Web based SVN repository browser
• 256MB of hosting space
• SSH, SFTP, SCP, and phpMyAdmin
• Cron and clean URLs pre-configured
• Web interface to install and upgrade Drupal core and contributed modules
• One-click backup of database and files
• Optionally password-protect your site
• Publish your entire site to any web host - just fill out your (S)FTP and MySQL database details and the web deploy tool will do the rest!

In addition to being configured for your theme, your site also includes our recommended modules and configuration.

This means that out of the box, your Drupal site has:

• Sample content, including content types, nodes, comments, menus (including dropdowns), taxonomy, and blocks
• Image uploading pre-configured with several ImageCache presets, with a button to easily place resized images in your content
• Skinr installed with styles applied to blocks or other content
• SEO enhancements, including configuration of modules such as Pathauto and Meta Tags
• Modules to improve site administration, including Administration Menu, Better Formats, Submit Again, and more
• Additional modules to enhance the functionality and user experience of your site
• Mollom for spam protection (you’ll need to register a free account with Mollom)
• Sample Views to help get you started, with different types of content display
• CSS Injector module for making small theme overrides right from your browser
• WYSIWYG editor pre-configured (CKEditor)

Ubercart optimized themes only:

• Two product types, regular shippable products plus a membership product for selling premium site access via roles
• Sample product attributes
• Catalog with grid display and subcategories
• Product Views configured with filtering options, using the UC Views module
• UC Upsell for cross-promotion of related products

Note: Ubercart configuration is not complete – you will need to set up any shipping, tax, or credit card processing specific to your store. The provided configuration is for demonstration purposes only.

Each site usually has additional features that are geared towards that theme, such as a webform, slideshow, forum, product ratings, and so on.

Currently this process is manual, so we have to actually invite you to the demo site. When you purchase your theme, check the box to request your demo site and you’ll receive an email shortly with the invite link. You’ll get this email within 24 hours, but usually much faster, especially during standard business hours.

If you didn’t request a demo site during checkout but would like one now, just send us a message through your dashboard.

Read documentation on how to set up your PowerSite.

No. The web hosting provided with your Fusion PowerSite is intended to be your staging environment, that is, the web hosting for your site while it is under construction. It will reside at a domain like myappname.dev3.webenabled.net, and resources (disk space/bandwidth) are limited to a level appropriate for a development server. You can upgrade your free WebEnabled account to a paid plan if you need additional resources.

You can also purchase VPS hosting from WebEnabled if you would like to host your production website with them, or set up your account to deploy to any web host.

Once you have configured your PowerSite, we do not provide ongoing updates to this site. You are responsible for upgrading Drupal and any modules used (which only takes a few clicks with the Drush interface), and for updating your theme if a new version is released.

If you have any questions about using the functionality provided by WebEnabled, please contact their support department. We are happy to answer any questions regarding the theme or Drupal configuration/content of the demo sites, but contact WebEnabled for any issues with hosting, server access, SVN, deploying your site, etc.

Fusion PRO is our subscription-based service designed for Drupal shops, independent developers, themers, and anyone looking for more support with Drupal theming in general.

In addition to accessing our exclusive consulting forum, you also get 2-for-1 copies of any themes you purchase.

In the consulting forum, Fusion PRO members get one-on-one answers to their theming-related questions, and members have the option to ask questions privately if they involve confidential or sensitive information. More information and link to subscribe can be found on the Join Fusion PRO page.

No. It is billed once, giving you an active subscription for a year from the time of purchase. You’ll get an email when it is about to expire. You can also extend your membership at any time – just add an additional Fusion PRO membership to your shopping cart, and the subscription period will be added on to the end of your current membership.

Yes, the discount on extra copies of a theme is applied to any theme(s) you purchase during the same checkout as your Fusion PRO membership. So if you purchase a Fusion PRO membership and two copies of a theme at the same time, you would be charged for the membership and one copy of the theme.

Sorry, no. You only receive extra copies of a theme during or after your purchase of a Fusion PRO membership.

As a Fusion PRO member, you have access to the private section of our forums. This can be accessed via the Support menu above, or go straight to the Fusion PRO forum.

When you create a forum post, there will be a “Make this post private” checkbox. Check this box and your question will only show up to our theming staff and yourself.

Purchasing a theme on our site gives you a license to use that theme on one site. If you would like to use the theme to build more than one website, you need to purchase an additional license (i.e. quantity of 2 for that theme). Fusion PRO is a great option if you will be building multiple sites, such as a developer creating Drupal sites for clients.

The Fusion PRO membership gives you buy-one-get-one-free on any theme purchased. This means that when you buy a theme as a Fusion PRO member, change the quantity to 2 in your cart, and you’ll get one of those for free! If you add a total quantity of 4 to your cart, you’ll get two for free, and so on.

If you think you’re likely to purchase more than two extra copies of any theme, then a Fusion PRO membership would pay for itself with this benefit alone!

Within 48 hours, often much quicker, especially during weekday business hours.

To ensure a quick response, please provide as many details as possible, including screenshots and/or code or a live link where feasible.

Purchasing any of our themes will get you awesome email support from our team if you run into any issues with installing or configuring your theme, or encounter a bug in the theme.

However, questions that cover modifying a theme or using additional modules are not supported and you may be directed to our public forums for these kinds of questions.

For Fusion PRO members, support includes these types of questions as well. For example, you may have questions about how to theme a View a certain way, change the color scheme of your theme, create a custom block style, or add a feature from a third-party module. You might even be creating your own custom Fusion sub-theme and aren’t sure where to start.

These kinds of questions will be answered by our expert theming team through the Fusion PRO forum. You also get access to all the past Q&As by other Fusion PRO members!

Questions that are not covered under Fusion PRO support include:

• Working with our theme mockups in software other than Photoshop – the layered PSD files may be usable in applications such as Fireworks or The GIMP, but this is unsupported
• Theming for non-Fusion-based themes
• Most non-theme questions related to performance, Drupal installation, content migration, security, module development, etc.

You can cancel your Fusion PRO membership within the first 15 days and receive a full refund. Beyond this period, refunds are not provided. The subscription does not re-bill automatically so there is nothing to cancel if you do not wish to continue your membership after the first year.

No. The 2-for-1 discount for Fusion PRO members is for purchasing multiple copies of the same theme. You cannot buy Theme A and get Theme B for free.

TopNotchThemes was founded by dynamic Drupal theming duo, Chris Fassnacht and Stephanie Pakrul. We have been involved with Drupal since 2006, and launched Drupal’s first dedicated premium theme store in April 2008. Previously with CivicActions, we created the Drupal themes for Amnesty International and the Emmy-award winning organization, WITNESS.

We specialize in standards compliant, Drupal-smart, cross-browser themes. We are also experienced with multilingual sites and themes for Ubercart-based e-commerce stores. We build themes that are beautiful, flexible, and intelligent.

Yep. In addition to our premium Drupal themes, we can create a custom Drupal theme from design mockups or from an existing site, or we can create both the design and the theme; however, we do not provide site setup, development, migration, etc. Our lead time is usually 2-3 weeks, but please contact us for updated availability.

Theming from provided mockups is generally in the $3,000-7,000 range, and graphic design plus theming is generally in the $5,000-12,000 range. We can also provide referrals to recommended themers or developers.

Please contact us with as much information as possible about your project so we can discuss the details!

Depending on your requirements, we may be available for hire to do custom Drupal theme development and enhancements of Drupal themes purchased here. Please contact us for further details. We are pros who do nothing but Drupal theming, and have wide experience in creating themes for both small businesses and large, international organizations.

Check out the press release from August, 2008 about our partnership with Acquia.

Acquia is a commercial open source software company providing products, services, and technical support for the open source Drupal social publishing system.

With over two million downloads since inception, Drupal is used by web developers worldwide to build sophisticated community websites. Diverse organizations use Drupal as their core social publishing system for external facing websites and internal collaboration applications.

As a member of the global Drupal community, Acquia helps accelerate Drupal usage by contributing to the advancement of the core technology and offering products, services and technical support to simplify the deployment and management of Drupal websites.