Looking for Nice Simple Joomla Template for a Community Organization.

rpacdn

We are looking for a simple Joomla template for a Community Organization. We are looking for the following sections in the template, but could not find one that meets those requirements.

Home page with Latest News and Updates, Upcoming Events, an Image Slider, Main menu
A Newsletter section with archived Newsletters also. We use MailChimp. So we like to post the PDF copies of old NLs and the html version of the current newsletter
A Gallery with login access restriction after the first 5 or 10 pictures.
A Contact Form, About us etc.

That's it... Simple... We also use the RSForm! Pro for online form processing, which would simply appear as a page on the site.

We could not find any such simple Blog type template for Joomla that can be easily managed.

Can anyone please point us to a nice template. If the template has few additional features, that's okay as long as we can customize to turn them off.

Thank you.

supergran

rpacdn I'll second this. I've been looking for similar for a while.

saguaros

supergran

Could you pls check out our template collection with Jomsocial component?

supergran

saguaros Hi - yes I've looked at that but it does look more complex than I need really. I'm currently using the JB Corporation template which I like the look of but I'm finding I've added so many extensions it's getting cumbersome. I'd certainly like to be able to use a suite of extensions that works well together. I guess I need to download Jom Social and play around with it to see what I can turn off. Thanks for the response - Are there any plans in the pipeline for a new news template?
Jan

rpacdn

What I noticed with templates like JomSocial is that is more for creating a social network among Community members. That allows all Users to post, to some extent like the Facebook.

The idea of the website that we are looking for is just an information website with the regular Joomla login, not a full fledge profile for each User. Because our audience is mostly elderly folks and they would not be comfortable with those features.

Simple website with the following features:
1. Home page with Latest News and Updates, Upcoming Events, an Image Slider, Main menu - something like what K2 offers
2. A Newsletter section with archived Newsletters also. We use MailChimp. So we like to post the PDF copies of old NLs and the html version of the current newsletter.
3. A newsletter signup page (that updates the MailChimp - API call)
4. A page for "Meet the Team" which could be a static page of Committee members, 6 boxes in two rows or something with their images of current and previous, perhaps the previous ones in an accordion.
5. A Gallery with login access restriction after the first 5 or 10 pictures.
6. A Contact Form, About us etc.

I am sure if you make one, there will be lot of demand for such a simple template.

Also we noticed that, as @supergran mentioned, when we add extensions from different vendors, they don't all work well together. I have tried Image slider, plus K2 and another plugin for upcoming events. But then the menu scroll down won't appear on top of the new image slider, the K2 contents can not placed on the home page, the upcoming events can not placed on the front page, but only on other pages... etc...etc... so many problems!

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

supergran

Yes, same here. That really is as good a requirements definition as I've seen in a while @rpacdn ! Our users can upload pictures to facebook so that type of gallery element would be good but they'll not be giving up facebook and I don't want to recreate it. Like your users most are of a certain age. They also find Joomla difficult to edit so I'm just looking for them to be able to add a few of their pictures to the various galleries. As you say, I think it would be a popular choice.

rpacdn

Hope someone will be able to help us find one. And if I find one I will post it here and hope you @supergran would do the same. :-)

supergran

rpacdn
Hi rpacdn, I've been looking into a new template more now that joomla 4 is on the horizon as I know I'm going to have to make a shift and my current site is fit to break with far too many add on extensions. Joomlarts Teline V / Magz2 look pretty close in terms of functionality. News / magazine templates but what differentiates it is the dual menu systems - a mega menu and an additional sectional menu allowing structure to events, galleries, videos and blog which, I think may be good from an SEO markup standpoint with rich cards etc. Magz2 is a little more modern looking. If you didn't need both menus then losing one shouldn't be too difficult. There's a few changes to update the styling but that's just css (the latest Gavick news template has some nicer looks for slightly larger news items but, for me hasn't got the oomph of Teline / Magz2. I like the subscription and Mail sign up elements although JA don't have a Mailchimp component that may be an extension you need. My questions before going this route is do they work on Joomla 4? Are they being updated for T4? The main issue I've had with galleries is that users struggle to understand how to use them so I'm looking for galleries that work in the same way facebook works.... log in and am able to post to a gallery that is authorised to that user group in the same way and as simply as that user is familiar with in Facebook. I'll have a play around with it and see which works best with my content. Let me know if you find anything better.

rpacdn

supergran Thanks for that information Supergran. Both templates look good. Yes, as you said the fact that Joomla v4 is coming out soon is going to be an issue for some of the plugins and templates that we are using too. And of course the question is where these templates will be supported.

That aside, it would've been good if we could get these templates for a trial period to see if we these templates work for us. Because there are still lot of features that we wouldn't need.

The templates look like News templates.

All this almost makes me feel like creating our own template from scratch, but I just couldn't find enough examples or tutorials on line to help us in that direction.