RocketTheme Blog

We're pleased to announce that RocketTheme is in the process of bringing many of its most popular Gantry 4 designs to the new Gantry 5 framework. This update will extend the life of templates and themes that our customers depend on while enabling us to focus our efforts on making Gantry 5 the best framework in the market for years to come.

What this Means

Over the next two years, our team will be rewriting our most popular templates and themes for Joomla and WordPress from the ground up to work with Gantry 5.

This also means that these designs will be available on Grav, the open source, flat-file CMS created and maintained by members of the RocketTheme team. Grav has grown in popularity by leaps and bounds over the past two years, and right now RocketTheme is the place to get premium themes.

Having more of our library available to Grav is good for Grav, and great for our members that have been wanting to migrate over from Joomla or WordPress.

For Joomla users, it means having the designs you've come to know and love available on not only the latest Gantry framework but on one that will be updated to be compliant with Joomla 4. See more on this below.

What this Doesn't Mean

This doesn't mean we're going to stop supporting our existing Gantry 4 versions of these designs. It simply gives our users another option.

This also doesn't mean that Gantry 4 is going to cease to exist. Joomla 3.x is expected to be supported for two years past the release of Joomla 3.9.0. We expect to continue to support Gantry 4 until that time.

Finally, this doesn't mean that RocketTheme is going to stop making new templates and themes. On the contrary, this project is going to enable us to focus on one framework for the Joomla 4 update, freeing us up to put additional resources towards new templates and themes. The migration will take some time, and is being largely handled by the Amazing Reggie (look for his Marvel comic coming out in 2099).

Joomla 4 Compatibility

The RocketTheme team has been working on a solution to the upcoming release of Joomla 4 and the lack of backward compatibility with templates designed for Joomla 2.5 and 3.x. This upcoming change will force major rewrites of most existing Joomla templates, including the frameworks on which they are made.

In acknowledgment of this and the ongoing demand for many of our existing Gantry 4 templates, we've decided that the best course of action is to recreate existing Gantry 4 designs in Gantry 5. This gives new life to our most popular designs, and allows us to focus on making Gantry 5 a fully compatible option for Joomla 4.

New Themes for Grav

This isn't just an update for Joomla. In fact, it also means that many of our most popular Gantry 4 designs will also be coming to Grav for the first time.

Classic favorites like Myriad, Anacron, Vermilion, and others will be coming to Grav thanks to this effort.

Choosing the Right Designs

We're going to focus our initial efforts on bringing over the templates and themes that are the most popular in terms of purchases and downloads to start. That way we ensure that the highest number of our users get access to the new Gantry 5 versions of their favorite themes first.

After that, we plan to conduct some polling in the member forums to ask you, the community, what designs you want to see on Gantry 5. We know we can't hit them all right away, so we are going to make this a community effort so priority goes to the themes that y'all want the most.

When is the First Release Happening?

Next week! We're pleased to announce that Myriad was selected to be the first candidate for the upgrade and development is just about finished. We expect to roll out the new Grav version of Myriad on Gantry 5 next week, with Joomla and WordPress versions to follow shortly.

Do I Have to Buy Them Again?

No! If you've already purchased a theme on Gantry 4, or have an existing (current) membership, the new Gantry 5 version will be available in the downloads page at no additional charge.

Please feel free to ask any questions you have about this announcement below, and we'll try to get them answered as quickly as possible.

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