Hi all,
Jonathon is correct, I am not a Magento user or publisher - just a Rocketheme Member who would like to learn more about Magento.
From my perspective, a lower introductory price point would allow me (and perhaps many other existing members) to invest say $50 (like the Wordpress Club 90 day option) to try it out. If we like it and are successful in creating a useable store front, we would be more likely renew at the full price.
I do not know the full potential of the templates - for example in Jonathon's post he mentions MageBridge, but this is not listed as a feature on the Magento page, and in an earlier post Ben indicated it was not supported at this time.
Also Sam Mahoney recently indicated in a post - that integration with Joomla is not supported -
http://www.rockettheme.com/forum/index.php?f=2&t=122328&p=613175&hilit=magebridge&rb_v=viewtopic#p613175
I'm sure that for certain people that need some of the functionality that Joomla offers integrated into a Magento store, then something like MageBridge would be the way to go. But for those that just need an online store, and are happy with the simple CMS pages (and possibly the addition of the AW BLog extension, which we added support for in our templates) then a standalone Magento store is the best option. Hence the reason that we decided to develop Magento standalone, as opposed to bridging it with Joomla.
I am still a happy Rocketheme member, and enjoy learning from each month's releases. It is more of a hobby, as I find it very informative to explore the tempates and experiment with the new features, etc.
I belong to the Joomla Club (just renewed again yesterday), Wordpress and PHP3, even though I am not what you would call a "publisher" in any of those platforms. Maybe there should be a just learning option :cheesy:
Allan