Free Joomla Templates and the art of Web Design...

So here's the problem folks. We know that free Joomla templates aren't the best quality. We're just looking for something that isn't the standard rhuk solarflare II template that you get by default with Joomla. We can't base our judgment of a good template on whether or not it looks good anymore, there are many more things at stake. Since there are quite a few different browsers out there and a handful of different Os's out there, getting your design to work on all of these various possibility combinations is a rather daunting task. This is essentially why we have web standards. The W3C has long been the most outspoken advocates for web standards. Most modern browsers have adopted the W3C standards but all at the same time this doesn't mean that your web standards complaint code will work the same on all browsers, and web standards mean nothing to legacy browsers and systems. The result has been a bunch of hacks to our css to reset a bunch of the main problems which mostly stem from default settings that are different in separate browsers and operating systems. For instance some browsers add a margin to the body of an HTML document, while others do not. What happens when you want to have a top menu bar flush with the top of your browser pane? Well it will work in firefox without any problem, but other browsers will give you up to a 14px white space.

This just stinks for web design. Which is why web designers have began building themselves css frameworks that enable a constant development environment. The framework acts as a sheriff, removing all the violations before the browser can come into town. One such frame work is Yahoo's YUI framework and another is the Blueprint framework which looks like the framework that we might adopt at Joomla Packages for our site face lift. The thing you should note from all of this is that free Joomla templates manufactures put out their templates at a quick pace, and this is defiantly seen in the quality of the template, but you can almost be assured that browser incompatibilities are not properly addressed nor tested with free Joomla templates. So beware.


Technorati Tags: free joomla templates, joomla tips, joomla tutorials, web design, css frameworks, css hacks

Joomla Templates and their PHP Hooks

In this post I'm going to list for you the PHP Hooks that you can use to insert content into your free Joomla templates, remember they're free because you're doing them, which is always the best! PHP Hooks are my word for the functions that Joomla has opened up to the template, kind of like an API but not. They just hook into the Joomla framework. You can find the code for these functions in includes/frontend.php.

The Hooks are as follows:

mosCountModules(position): this hook is useful when trying to figure out if there are any modules in a certain position. Using a conditional construct you can say that if there are no modules (returns 0) in a specific position then don't write the container that you would put the modules in. This is helpful when you are trying to remove any unnecessary output from Joomla.

mosShowHead(): this hook shows the header information. The header information includes META tags, JavaScripts, and CSS. All header information is dynamicly put together via publishing (mambots/plugins).

mosMainBody(): this hook prints the "option" component to the screen. This is specified in the URL. Theres not much to say about this one except if you don't put it in your template you won't see much!

mosLoadModules(position, style): I've already explained in a previous post about this hook, but basically it prints out a module position utilizing a certain type of HTML or XHTML compliant output. You'll need to use arguments to express this.

mosLoadComponent(name): This hook isn't used as much because you're already using mosMainBody, but this allows you to add a component to your template, albeit not dynamic like mosMainBody, but it can be an advantage if you want to keep a certain component always on the page. The name of the component needs to be added as an argument ("com_name" without "com_").

Hope this helps. Tell me what you think.


Technorati Tags: joomla templates, free joomla templates, joomla hooks, mosmainbody, mosloadmodules, joomla packages

Making Custom Joomla Templates Affordable!

So you realized that free Joomla templates aren't going to cut it quality wise, and professional Joomla templates look great but 50 people have the same one; you want something unique; you want a custom Joomla template. Let me stop right here and say, even though we can do custom templates for you at Joomla Packages, its not our business, we put together whole sites, and templates are just a small part of that. I want instead to iterate once something I know I'll be saying over and over to our customers: custom Joomla templates can be expensive. A custom template is unique, its exactly what you want, and it should express your brand better than any free Joomla templates, or even a quality pro template. So, when you're spending money on a custom Joomla template you should either not think about expense or you should learn how to minimize what you pay when you're dealing with a developer.

How do you minimize costs when dealing with a developer?

Well basically with honest developers you're just being charged the cost of the developers time. This may be an hourly rate or an estimate based on the task at hand (estimate = how we do things). With unscrupulous developers, watch out! They'll inflate their prices and pour honey in your ear, and at the end of your ordeal with them, you'll feel like you got robbed...you did. Let me put forth some wisdom for you so that you don't have to gamble when dealing with developers, because its hard to know whether they are honest or just filling you with the words you want to hear. Go about your custom template development in this manner:

Template Wisdom in 5 Easy Steps

1. Try to find free Joomla templates: Start here. If you can't find anything that works for you, thats perfectly OK, 90% of the time you wont find a fit.
2. Try to find Professional Joomla templates: The next step is to check with pro template manufactures, the cost is around $50 USD for a template club subscription, or maybe a little cheaper if you find a pay-per-template group. Sixty percent of the time you'll find something you can settle on, and you may want to settle because the next three steps may seem too steep for your budget.
3. Find a free XHTML compliant template: Step three in your quest for the perfect Joomla template is to go outside the sphere of Joomla templates and find a free standards compliant template, and then have a Joomla template developer insert the PHP hooks and ready the CSS and XML for a Joomla installation. You can find these templates all over the web, but the quality is hit or miss (but much better than free Joomla templates). The key here, is for you to do the work and find the template. This will minimize the developers time. You can probably get this kind of a template built for you at around $200 USD.
4. Find a pay web template: you've seen these shops all over the web, the big one is monstertemplates.com. She's the mother of all pay templates on the web. $50 USD will get you a PSD and some crappy non-standards compliant code that Adobe Image Ready pumps out. The good thing is that they make great looking templates and chop them up for the developer. All the developer has to do is throw the images into the template and standardize the typography. The back breaker here is the CSS file, this take the most time. You really have to massage the CSS into Joomla, and then you have to become friends with the big dumb angry kid on the block, Internet Explorer and its dynasty of crummy browsers. Once again, your “doing the work”, minimizes the developers time. You should bring the developer one template at this stage. You'll then be looking at $350-500 USD, depending on the complexity of the template.
5. Lastly, the custom Joomla Template. You're just too picky, aren't you. We'll, its your website. Actually this is the best part of the website, the design. I would suggest to you, so that you can minimize expense, to bring to the developer at least three sites that you like. You can find these sites of course on the web, or better yet from the resources we've already listed above. Bring these ideas to the plate and tell the developer, I like this part of this website because... and be as clear as you possibly can. Write bullet points or whatever. Get across what you are looking for. Spend your time preparing for your developer. This will minimize your costs and it will also help wrap your mind around what you really want.

I'm going to stop it right here...dang I wrote much too much, and I barely scratched the surface...I hope this helped.

Technorati Tags: Free Joomla Templates, Professional Joomla templates, Custom Joomla templates, Joomla Packages, Affordable, Joomla developers

Out with the links to the free Joomla templates already!!!

Geeze...Some people are just hard to please! I'm a developer for Joomla Packages. We get a lot of custom jobs from the Joomla community, our clients want a bunch of the latest and greatest open source extensions installed for them but they don't want to spend the money on a quality template to show off their site. They'll spend money getting us to install, configure, and quality assure the extensions that they prefer, but then they'll slap free Joomla templates on top and ruin their whole venture. Some people just don't get it. The template has all the design information in it, while some free Joomla templates are decent, they can never out do the quality of professional Joomla templates. Slapping a free template on a site you just spent a couple hundred dollars in development is the worst thing you can do to your web business. Make your site look good. Either purchase a pro template or spend some time learning the basics in web design so you don't create an eyesore for your readers. In the end your readers are going to judge you on your content but they may never get there if you don't present it to them in an instantly understandable format. People have been reading books and newspapers all their lives...we'll some people. These texts are created in formats that have evolved through out time because people read in a certain way. Typography and grid layouts are what I'm talking about. Pro template manufactures develop (or should) develop with these things in mind, because they pay attention to detail. Free template producers, create quick free templates so that they can sell you their better looking pro templates, and these details are lost.

Why did I write all this? I'm trying to pursuade you from making the mistake that we at Joomla Packages find our customers making all the time, don't slap an ugly dress on a pretty girl! ... Not convinced. Ok....I tried to help... We've constructed a list of free joomla templates sites along with some videos on Joomla templates, all free, all the time, for your viewing pleasure. If you like the list then maybe you might consider digging the page, or bookmarking it so others can partake in the freeness...By the way we don't sell templates at Joomla Packages.

How do add modules to my templates?

Joomla templates seem to be a mystery because people don't understand where the Joomla output comes from, so they just buy some professional Joomla template or find some cheap free Joomla templates to some what fit their needs. The truth is you can easily make your own Joomla templates and modify them how ever you like. Once you make your own template the mystery of Joomla output is reavealed. What we need to wrap our minds around here is that Joomla templates are just like any other php web page, they import content from other areas. The only exception is instead of using an import declaration, you use a Joomla declaration. Now Joomla declarations, or as I like to call them "hooks", vary in name but have the same purpose, to import Joomla output. For instance to import the area that all Joomla components are displayed in you use the Joomla hook, mosMainBody(); .
Modules cause many people greif because they come in different forms. When the Joomla hook for modules was first created xhtml compliance really wasn't a burning desire in most people, but now people will stop traffic, and pull over to the side of the virtual super highway for xhtml compliance. So Joomla had to create another style for its module output. Joomla has listed all of these styles in their help section which you should go to get the number for the particular style output that you desire.

The php code for the Joomla modules hook is:

mosLoadModules('inset', -1);

Inset is the name of some module position specified in your Joomla administrator--site--template manager--module positions, there you'll find all the positions that are there by default; you can also add your own for your own purposes. The module positions manager in the administrator is your virtual reference for modules in your Joomla CMS. The number that followed "inset" in our example refers to the type of module style. Go to Joomla.org for this reference. Here's the link for that - Joomla.org module styles number code

Keep your eye out on JoomlaPackages.com for our latest video tutorial on how to make a Joomla Template, which will go over what we just learned here and more!

A video about Free Joomla Templates

We did this video at JoomlaPackages.com for our clientele. Many of whom have a hard time with the concept of Joomla templates. For some reason there is a great mystery involved with Joomla, so we at Joomla Packages have been trying to demyth or make less mysterious the Joomla CMS by offering these kinds of tutorials. This one is about Free Joomla templates, which explains what to look for in a template, outlining four themes. This video also explains what to look out for when searching for free Joomla templates.



We'll be going in to greater detail in later posts, until then, keep it sassy San Diego.

Introduction to Free Joomla Template Information

Joomla templates seem to be the most popular things in Joomla today especially the idea of Free Joomla Templates, but while I'll point to the newest and latest free Joomla template resource, this blog will be about Joomla templates as a whole, how to make them and what they are formed out of. Since this is a blog we'll have more than enough time to go through all the complexities of Joomla templates one day at a time.
Today is just an introduction to what we are going to be talking about. I'll also post a second, err, post to get our conversation started. As we go along we'll also be creating some templates from scratch and will be downloadable at JoomlaPackages.com my business website. Of course these downloads will be free and under an open source license, so nothing to worry about, no compulsion to purchase anything from me! ;)

Technorati Tags: open source, free Joomla packages, download