Are Gantry and RT Templates bloatware, what is the future?
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- Patrick Toulze
- Elite Rocketeer
- Posts: 1810
- Thanks: 18
- Marketing - Web Designer
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This discussion on Linkedin is an example of what people say in the matter of producing Joomla web sites today, giving their impression on all the different approach templates makers take by adding their own framework (Gantry, Warp.....) or templating system to achieve their goals in selling templates or building web sites.
www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&gid=474...919490&trk=view_disc
This is not to criticize but to start a discussion on the subject.
What people says in this discussion :
Gantry: As mentioned earlier, too heavy for a web agency, great start but not enough for a fast and flexible approach.Gantry is by far the most bloated, script heavy bloatware of them all. When a template consumes as many resources as Gantry does it does not leave much left for anything else and that is providing there are no conflicts. Which many advanced extensions stand a very good chance of conflicting with it, I know this from personal and painful experience to which another template had to be chosen.
I give RocketTheme another year and at the rate this behemoth is growing it wont even need Joomla to run because it will be its own CMS! T3 is following a similar path of becoming a script overloaded beast!Gantry is a powerful templating framework for Joomla that makes building websites easier.
Personally, I think that those 3 statements are somewhat true and false at the same time. I think the Rockettheme is trying to adapt to a growing up Joomla, the new responsive matters and evolving languages and are pretty good at it.
They obviously aware of the demand and importance to keep site fast and simple. This is the holy grail of web development to produce interesting design and powerful functionalities and keep all that responsive (in the fast definition of the term) for the users
I like to see Rocket develop a minimal framework and templates that will keep the power of Gantry and permit more advanced web developers to keep the obvious advantages of the quality and support you can get here, without the “bloated” part of the equation to produce mean and lean web sites.
I really like to have the impressions of the Rocket management and users on that ?
If you have time? - Graphic Designer - Marketing -Web Sites — Trying to become a decent human being.
www.grafcomm.ca
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- Gene Page
- Hero Rocketeer
- Posts: 289
- Thanks: 0
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That's some mighty fine hyperbole.
I wouldn't call Gantry bloatware. It's big, but that's because it's feature-rich beyond most template frameworks - and believe me, I've used a lot of them.
RT templates don't run at all slow on my server, and, I don't believe they take up any more space than, say, Gavern.
After reading the first dozen or so comments, it seems the big hang up is with frameworks in general post J!2.5 <- which I still use on most new sites. Max, the naysayer from the get go, is going on about how you don't need a framework. I don't know who his clients are, but I know mine, and in every conceivable way Gantry is the answer to their needs - it's fast, cheap, easy to pass on - and best of all, the template customizations look damn good..
I think these people need to keep some things in mind. Many of us aren't competing with other Web Design Freelancers or Firms... We're competing with "AS SEEN ON TV" websites ~ Weebly, GoDaddy, VistaPrint. Time is money, and some of our clients see these $9.95 a month websites and think - oh, that's how much a website costs (design and features don't even enter their mind). - Show Support for These Requests...
Automatic K2 Tags for RokSprocket ->
www.rockettheme.com/forum/index.php?f=16...86380&rb_v=viewtopic
Option for K2 Video instead of Image for RokSprocket (like JoomlaBamboo's ZenTools) ->...
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- Andy Miller
- Preeminent Rocketeer
- Posts: 9919
- Thanks: 96
- Web Kahuna
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I replied to the Linkedin post already but here's my response again:
I'm writing this to set the record straight about Gantry:
We created Gantry in order to make it easier for us to create our own custom themes without having to constantly rewrite the same code over and over. As Joomla templates became more powerful, the underlying functionality increased in complexity. This meant we were writing lots of code and copying this code between each of our templates. This became a nightmare as we added more functionality, as well as problematic when we needed to update or bugfix code. This was because each template had its own very minor modifications and it was never as easy as just copying and pasting between templates.
Enter Gantry, an flexible framework of template functionality that can be easily extended and modified by a template while keeping the underlying framework itself untouched, allowing for easy updating and a unified location for important features and bug fixes.
In programming, frameworks are: "... application agnostic, algorithm agnostic and platform agnostic (they help you Program efficiently)". Gantry was designed from the ground up as a framework that could be extended and modified to provide as much, or as little, functionality as needed. It also has a very powerful UI that allows a lot of configuration and customization, but even that UI is fully controlled by a configurable XML file.
I think Gantry gets a bad-rap for being bloated. This is really just a case of not understanding how Gantry works. We demo our RocketTheme templates with as many features as possible to show everything that it can do. However, if you don't need these features you can remove them from the configuration. We've built extremely fast and optimized templates on Gantry, and frankly the thought of creating a website without Gantry (or some other framework) under the covers seems crazy at this point, there would be simply so much extra work involved that you get for free with a solid framework.
Gantry is not slow: demo.gantry-framework.org/
Gantry is designed to benefit both developers AND users.
I feel that Gantry provides the power that developers need to build extensible templates, and in turn, sites. It provides the ability to create simple 'features' without having to resort to the complexities of modules and plugins. It enhances the Joomla layouts and built-in functionality of managing different styles because it adds inheritance, and much much more.
Check out the documentation for a full list of features that Gantry offers:
www.gantry-framework.org/documentation/joomla
For users, it makes it simpler to customize the functionality provided by the developer, because the UI is completely customizable via XML. The provided widgets include things like color pickers and image pickers, so yes, its easy to customize and configure a design.
I am of course very biased here, but we keep tabs on other frameworks, and frankly nothing comes close to the power and flexibility of Gantry. Of course a framework is going to add 'some' overhead, but with smart hosting decisions, intelligent use of caching and other extensions to combine CSS files, and compress output, performance can still be good. A framework's benefit far outweigh the negatives.
Gantry is GPL and free, we have a "RocketLauncher" that lets you install Joomla+Gantry+Base Gantry Template+Sample content in one shot. Check it out and see for yourself.
www.gantry-framework.org
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- Patrick Toulze
- Elite Rocketeer
- Posts: 1810
- Thanks: 18
- Marketing - Web Designer
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This is my own post on Linkedin.
(I edit it slightly to make sens when taking out of context)
Most of Us compete with the Do It Yourself Web Site Era. Nothing wrong with it. The reality for web developers and real numbers for the cost of a web site today is — Under $2000/done in 2 weeks. This is exactly what I live on (Quebec, Canada (close to Montréal).
On top of that in the same 2 weeks, I need to do many other smaller jobs, do the customer services, maintain the books, answer the phone, keep aware of new trends and technology and learning them and more...
I’m always doubtful of those so call “professionals” that prone purity were they pretend be able to build, by themselves everything; Templates, modules, plugins and next full CMS. This is ridiculous and have nothing to do with what CMS are. More, they pretend that they are better that big team like the RocketTheme, renown module and component makers or even the Joomla CMS community itself and they can master all that, maintain all this custom code in time and live on. Well, if you can do that, great.
I feel sorry for those site owners that become entrapped with those custom CMS,framework and component that are absolutely impossible to maintain without an heavy cost compare to the Open Source ideology that bring us fantastic tools like Joomla, WordPress and all the components, templates, add-ons small and big company out there that work everyday to better their products. Try to beat that.
For five Years, I build my small business by using the Rockettheme template as base for my site customers. The fact is that they always deliver problems free templates and fantastic support (because I’m not a genius). I’m extremely difficult and demanding in the quality, performance and design of what I deliver to my customer.
I learn to use those template wisely and never backdown in the degree of customization and optimization I apply to them to achieve whatever is needed, but always in that two to three weeks windows. - Graphic Designer - Marketing -Web Sites — Trying to become a decent human being.
www.grafcomm.ca
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- Andy Miller
- Preeminent Rocketeer
- Posts: 9919
- Thanks: 96
- Web Kahuna
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BTW, anyone concerned about Gantry performance, bloat, etc, should take a look at AfterBurner2:
www.rockettheme.com/joomla-templates/afterburner2
and demo:
demo.rockettheme.com/joomla/afterburner2/
YSlow Score of 98/100
Google PageSpeed Score of 93/100
This is not some stripped-down performance only template. It's Responsive, Bootstrap powered, multiple styles, and of course all the capabilities of Gantry. More information in the form of a blog post to follow this week.
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- Patrick Toulze
- Elite Rocketeer
- Posts: 1810
- Thanks: 18
- Marketing - Web Designer
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Great news, I will follow that blog. It’s interesting that you put it as a free template. Good work, as always.
- Graphic Designer - Marketing -Web Sites — Trying to become a decent human being.
www.grafcomm.ca
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