Drupal Starter Themes Comparison

There are a couple Drupal starter themes. Zen, Sky, Fusion, and Framework are the four most widely used starter themes. 

Zen
Zen is the most widely used starter theme for Drupal. It has lots of good quality documentation and won the "Best Drupal Theme" title. Zen has a lot of flexibility built in which means you can build off of it to create even better themes. Other starter themes such as Zen NineSixty and Basic, were originally highly modified versions of Zen.

• Reported Installs: 45,001
• Versions Supported: 5,6,7
• Layout Types: 1, 2, and 3 column layouts

 

Fusions

Fusion is a theme used for creating advanced Drupal themes such as Acquia Prosper and Mix and Match. This theme can be based on a grid and has all the defaults already set. Fusion also has lots of support and can also skinnr for easy block style editing.

• Reported Installs: 18,438
• Versions Supported: 6,7
• Layout Types: 1, 2, and 3 column layouts

 

Sky

Sky is a center aligned theme, which is almost completely css based. It has many configurable colour options and supports some of the more popular contributed modules. Although there is no Drupal 7 support yet, the development team is hoping to have a compatible release ready by the time Drupal 7 is released.

• Reported Installs: 4,315
• Versions Supported: 5,6
• Layout Types: 1, 2, and 3 column layouts

 

Framework

Framework is a grid based theme, and is almost completely blank as well. It is very clean and simple, and works nicely in mobile browsers. Framework is good for general placements and basic theme designs.

• Reported Installs: 3,285
• Versions Supported: 5,6
• Layout Types: 1, 2, and 3 column layouts

Note: Statistics last updated: 07/12/2010

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Source: http://drupal.org/node/991278