No knowledgable Joomla practicioner can deny that a custom-designed theme can convey your branding well and match your needs perfectly. However, if you don't have the funds or time to pay for the required design work (not to mention thousands of lines of CSS, PHP, and JavaScript), you will be much better off going with a Professional theme. Bookmark this quick guide to selecting a professional theme for your Joomla website.
Goal: Get a good design at a great price
Professional Joomla template suppliers are just that: professionals. They are the best at what they do. You will be able to benefit from the company's extensive experience as well as the fact that the design cost is being spread over a large number of fellow buyers. The fact is that a well-selected theme will do 90% of what you need. If your Joomla developer knows how to customize the template to meet your specific needs you will be most of the way there for less cost than most designers charge per hour.
Step 1: Going with the correct Joomla template suppliers
There are numerous suppliers that specialize in Joomla template development and offer a new template each month. All offer sites that demonstrate their templates with sample data so you can browse around and look at the options with content and imagery supplied. My top choices are:
- Rockettheme - Great designs, excellent added functionality with custom extensions, and tons of options. Not really the best choice for a traditional corporate site because they tend to be very "design centric", but awesome for most other applications. See the demo site at demo.rockettheme.com
- Yootheme - Also has great designs, a cleaner look than Rockettheme, and a ton of custom extensions. Bridges the gap between corporate and design centric (JomDoc.com is built on Yoo Flux). See the demo site at demo.yootheme.com.
- Joomlart - Clean designs great for ecommerce, content, and corporate sites. These really let the design feature your content instead of taking over. See the demo site at joomlart.com/templates_demo.php.
Step 2: What to look for on a template demo site
You'll want to know how to navigate a template demo site to really see all of the options. The first thing to look for is the template switcher, a dropdown list usually sorted by month and name of the template. On Rockettheme and Yootheme, this is at the top of the demo site; on Joomlart it is on the bottom. Each template also comes with a number of "preset styles".
Each template company has the style switcher in a different place. For Rockettheme you can usually get to it from the "Preset Styles" link in the "Features" dropdown on the main menu. For Yootheme there is a separate style switcher up top next to the template switcher. For Joomlart there is usually a main menu dropdown called "Colors" or "Styles". Play around with the color styles to get a feel for how much you can change a template just by changing the colors.
Step 3: Envisioning your content in the demo template
Every template demo comes with a number of modules and layout options that you certainly will not need for your purposes. Keep in mind that a proper Joomla template uses conditional PHP statements that "collapse" every design area if you don't publish content to them.
You will want to browse around the site and look at the layouts on various pages. A good page to go to if you want to see what a single article may look like is the "Typography" page.
Step 4: Selecting the template
First take a cursory look through as many templates on each site as possible. Then pick out your top ten or so and take a thorough look at all of the options, JavaScript animations and popups, and preset styles. Finally, take your top three to your Joomla developer and other stakeholders to get feedback on design, utility, and compatibility with the extensions you will be using on your Joomla site. You will then be able to pick out the best option and tell your developer exactly how to implement the template with your content and extensions (or do it yourself).
Doctor's Orders
If you want to save money, time, and get exceptional results, check out one of the three template providers above or run a google search for "professional Joomla themes" or "joomla templates". Search through the template demos thoroughly and keep in mind that the goal is to get as close as possible and customize from there.
Jesse Dundon is a founding partner at Hathway Tech, where he is responsible for project management, training, and overall business strategy. He is a graduate of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, avid rugby player, and a true scholar of Joomla! and web development in general.
