How to create a new theme from the Acquia Commons theme

One way to create a new theme for Commons using the "Acuia Commons" theme as a starting point.

This has the advantage of inheriting a bit of customization that exists in template.php and panels.

I am working on the premise that it will be easier to maintain through updates by using it from the Drupal default
sites/default/themes/

A new Commons install will not have a typical Drupal default theme directory

thinking from [document root] and using "website" as the new theme name

mkdir sites/default/themes

copy the Commons acquia_commons
rsync -a profiles/drupal_commons/themes/acquia_commons sites/default/themes/

cd sites/default/themes/
mv acquia_commons website

set the file permissions if needed
chown --ref . * -R

cd website
mv acquia_commons.info website.info

edit website.info
and change 3 lines

from:
name = Acquia Commons
description = Fusion Starter sub-theme. Requires <a href="http://drupal.org/project/fusion">Fusion Core</a> and th
stylesheets[all][] = css/acquia_commons-style.css

to:
name = website
description = website brief description
stylesheets[all][] = css/website-style.css

edit template.php
and change all the function names

from:
function acquia_commons_breadcrumb($breadcrumb) {
function acquia_commons_preprocess_comment(&$vars) {
function acquia_commons_preprocess_user_profile_item(&$vars) {
function acquia_commons_shoutbox_post($shout, $links = array(), $alter_row_color=TRUE) {
function acquia_commons_item_list($items = array(), $title = NULL, $type = 'ul', $attributes = NULL) {
function acquia_commons_preprocess_block ($variables) {

to:
function website_breadcrumb($breadcrumb) {
function website_preprocess_comment(&$vars) {
function website_preprocess_user_profile_item(&$vars) {
function website_shoutbox_post($shout, $links = array(), $alter_row_color=TRUE) {
function website_item_list($items = array(), $title = NULL, $type = 'ul', $attributes = NULL) {
function website_preprocess_block ($variables) {

rename two files in css directory

mv css/acquia_commons-style-rtl.css css/website-style-rtl.css
mv css/acquia_commons-style.css css/website-style.css

and finally change the name of two functions in ./panels

in these:
panels/twocol_30_70.inc
panels/twocol_70_30.inc

rename the functions:
panels/twocol_30_70.inc:function acquia_commons_twocol_30_70_panels_layouts() {
panels/twocol_70_30.inc:function acquia_commons_twocol_70_30_panels_layouts() {

to:
panels/twocol_30_70.inc:function website_twocol_30_70_panels_layouts() {
panels/twocol_70_30.inc:function website_twocol_70_30_panels_layouts() {

Now, with any luck, you can change now go to themes and enable this new one [website].

A minor tip might be:
I have used fusion base for many websites and have been making all of my CSS additions and overrides in
local.css (example local.css for 1.4 at http://commons.acquia.com/wiki/example-localcss-dc-14)

mv css/local-sample.css css/local.css

This is a special css file that is not consolidated with all the other css files
/admin/settings/performance
Optimize CSS files
which would have a performance hit, but is very easy to develop a new theme because changes take affect with page refreshes. Otherwise the cache would have to be cleared to rebuild the consolidated css file.

Personally, I have found it helpful to remove all the comments at the top of the file and change the first line to
/* website (the theme name) */
so that I can tell one local.css from another if I have more than one open in an editor.

I hope this is useful for someone.