XDV

XDV is a new theming method that we are considering using on some future Plone sites.

XDV uses rules defined in a rules.xml file to apply a static theme to some dynamic piece of web content. The advantage of this is that a designer can create a theme with static html, css, and images, and then apply that theme, using custom rules files, to almost any web application.

You can use the XDV package to compile your theme and rules file into an XSLT transform and then apply that transform through a web server, for example, nginx (unfortunately, the XSLT transform module for Apache does not work very well, and is not recommended). An advantage of this method is that you can apply the theme to any application proxied through your webserver.

Or you can use the Plone add-on collective.xdv to apply an XDV theme to your Plone site. An advantage of using collective.xdv is that you can store the static theme in your Plone site and edit the files through the ZMI. Thus, you can edit your theme live through the web. 

One problem that you might run into with collective.xdv is that it caches the theme/rules files unless your site is in debug/development mode. To force it to clear the cache you can go to @@xdv-settings and disable and then re-enable XDV. (NOTE: I've created a branch that adds a setting allowing you to temporarily disable caching to make live editing easier.)

A tool that I created to use with collective.xdv is uwosh.xdvchooser it allows you to easily install and manage .zip files containing XDV themes in a Plone site. The idea being that it would be easy for users to install new themes because they would just need a url to the zip file.