RocketTheme Blog

RocketTheme is turning 10! What started as a one-person ad-hoc template design company has since grown to become one of the most recognized and trusted brands for templates and extensions on Joomla, WordPress, phpBB, and Magento.

RocketTheme actively supports over 90 unique designs and 250 different templates, themes, and styles across four major CMS platforms. This is in addition to an array of extensions and plugins for Joomla, WordPress, and Magento which all receive regular updates by its dedicated team of developers.

RocketTheme’s core vision has always been to make it possible for anyone to create a site with quality design and functionality with ease. Its dedication to this concept has been the driving motivation behind some of its most ambitious projects.

In this two-part series, we will take a look at some of the key components that make up RocketTheme's service, and how it works to provide a great experience to its customers. The second part of this series will feature an interview with RocketTheme’s founder and CEO, Andy Miller. He will talk about RocketTheme’s past, current design philosophy, and what’s ahead in the near future.

Don’t forget that you can also take advantage of RocketTheme’s Decade of Design sale, celebrating 10 years of original designs and products from the RocketTheme team. Club memberships, as well as individual templates, themes, and styles are discounted by 30%, with existing members being able to shave up to 50% from their renewal costs when combined with their loyalty discount.

Gantry Framework

One of RocketTheme’s most important contributions to the web development space came in the form of a templating framework called Gantry. The open source Gantry Framework has been used by hundreds of developers around the world to quickly create unique, powerful sites for Joomla and WordPress.

The team is in the process of rewriting Gantry from scratch to take full advantage of not only the latest in Web technology, but to enable it to exist on a variety of platforms beyond WordPress and Joomla. This upcoming edition, Gantry5, is set to be available in early 2015.

Templates, Themes, and Styles

At the heart of RocketTheme is its wide variety of designs for WordPress, Joomla, phpBB, and Magento. Each month, RocketTheme releases a unique template inspired by suggestions from the community and the latest trends in Web design.

Its templates aren't just for looks, either. Each template features a powerful set of features that empowers users to get the most out of their experience without having to access a single line of code to do so.

Features such as built-in support for FontAwesome icons, chart support via Chart.js (Joomla and WordPress), and an abundance of integrated CSS styling options puts RocketTheme's current generation of templates and themes among the most powerful and full-featured you can find today.

WordPress Plugins and Joomla Extensions

RocketTheme puts a lot of effort into creating powerful, easy-to-use extensions that add time-saving functionality to Joomla and WordPress.

One of these extensions is RokSprocket. RokSprocket is a powerful extension designed to give you an incredible level of control over how you present your content.

Its sophisticated content filters, robust layout modes and options, integration with multiple content providers, and streamlined no-nonsense interface all contribute to making it one of the most popular extensions for both Joomla and WordPress.

RokSprocket has evolved considerably over the past several years, adding features and functionality that enable it to draw information from multiple content providers, as well as support for custom content.

This and all of RocketTheme’s Joomla extensions and WordPress plugins are available for free, with no membership or purchase necessary.

Support

RocketTheme’s support philosophy is one of the key components to its success. Whenever you subscribe to a Club membership or purchase an individual template or theme, your experience does not end there.

RocketTheme has an entire team of experienced moderators at the ready to provide assistance with any issues or questions regarding its products through its support forum. There, you can not only take advantage of the moderators' insight, but of the community as a whole.

Whatever you hope to accomplish, there is a good chance that someone will have a solution for you.

If you need more direct, one-on-one assistance with an issue, RocketTheme provides Premier Support at a low rate giving you the ability to receive help with configuration, setup, running, and minor tweaking of RocketTheme templates, themes, and extensions.

Documentation is also an important part of RocketTheme’s support effort. Hundreds of pages of documentation and guides are freely available, offering users information on how our product demos are created, as well as offering step-by-step instruction for installing, updating, and using RocketTheme products.

Grav

Grav started as a side project by its founder, Andy Miller. After looking in to the growing trend of creating small, simple websites in lieu of more complex solutions using platforms like Joomla and WordPress, the need for a small-yet-powerful platform became apparent.

After looking at a lot of the current flat-file options out there, many of the solutions out there either came at a price, or sacrificed core functionality that made them useful for a larger variety of sites.

The solution appeared to be to create a new flat-file CMS that included an abundance of features, but remained extraordinarily easy to work with.

After some initial development, a handful of members of the RocketTheme team joined the project, contributing to its core development and growing library of themes and plugins. As its popularity has grown, its community of supporters has contributed to the project in the form of plugin development, and by providing critical feedback to help the project come together.

Grav is currently in beta, and its core development team is working on an ambitious graphical admin panel to make it easy to use for anyone, regardless of their technical experience.

Celebrating a Decade of Design with a Sale

Throughout the month of December, RocketTheme is offering a 30% across-the-board discount on its entire library of templates, themes, and styles for Joomla, WordPress, Magento, and phpBB.

Existing members have the opportunity to save up to 50% on renewals when this discount combines with their Loyalty Discount, making this RocketTheme’s biggest sale to date.

It’s RocketTheme’s way to say thank you for helping to make its first 10 years possible.

Do you have a favorite RocketTheme template or extension? Let us know in the comments section below, and at the end of December you may be selected (at random) to receive a coupon code for a free template.

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