Looks nice 🙂
And my wellmeant compliments for the new site, looks awesome!!
I have to agree that template designs are very much alike. But this is the same for most clubs. For example, most clubs will tend to always put a slideshow header at the top and remain from then on predictable to the bottom, where there is the same old dark colored bar for some lists. Somewhere some tabbed column and some articles in a list like overview. In that respect this design is the same like most other designs. I am referring here to designs like this new one. It’s not the content, but the way it is presented.
There are some designs from clubs like for example templateplazza (magz plazza) or joomlabamboo (Grid2) that are introducing a very different design. These designs are often not just the different placement of content, but are backed up by specific code, jquery for example, to create nice effects.
I would think that JA should be able to have more different designs in that sense, even though I will not say that they are bad or always “the same”. The designs are okay, but not outstanding. The upcoming june design (in a week tops) for Gavick Pro (Postnote) is an example of a template where the design is well done, subtle and different from most of the designs that are available.
What I see happening with other clubs is that different designers are being hired to offer different designs that not only really make a difference, but also take time to see what creative effects/uses can be implemented into the template, like the above mentioned.
The same problem goes for RT, where the designs may seen different, but that is only because of the immense design overkill, which make modifications a lot harder instead of easier. They have put too much time into their framework, making it easy to use, yet make it impossible to adjust template and column widths. Basic things that aren’t possible anymore, unless you can really find your way, which has become very difficult for most.
What I would suggest is that JA starts to hire designers that are not connected to the eastern view, but are used to western design style, which is different. From the designs I can see that this type of creativity is missing. No offense meant here.
Finally, I know for a fact that the many members Joomlaxtc have, come from the effort they put into the extensions that they code for. K2, Kunena, Eventlist, Jcomments, Seyret, etc. This, together with the designs that are really different/distinct, make them interesting to many. It’s not that their templates are that bug free or compatible at all; they have many bugs and stuff. But these are taken for granted for those reasons.
There’s another thing I don’t understand from JA. While JA does do a great job integrating their comments component, for example, when I look at an article page, it scrolls down after it loads the comment part, forcing me to have to scroll up to the top each page. At least on a Mac. It’s these small things that actually make a component difficult to use. I would not force my viewers to scroll up each article page because the comment component scrolls it down when loading. I don’t understand these things are fixed even before the component is launched, because this is a huge problem for any site builder. However, after several templates, it’s still doing that. I dare say that this means that responsible site builders will skip that component and move to Jcomments instead. Or won’t want a template as it has this strange behavior. In an indirect way this will affect JA in the long run, which is a shame.
The first serious template clubs that were there when Joomla came up after Mambo were JA and RT. Both grew incredibly and probably still do, but as many other clubs are there today, working very hard to get a piece of the action, both cannot rely on their reputation only. They have to maintain that and improve it. Not by expanding to other platforms only, but by making sure that the creativity remains in both designs and effects. These are the things that most developers and site owners miss. Anyone can put a module somewhere. But there are but a few that can come up with a different look, where there’s not that same old boring slideshow at the top. It has to go. It is boring and predictable and best becomes a thing of the past. 🙂
Some things to consider, hope this helps JA in some way 🙂
Tom
