0
Welcome Guest! Login
0 items Join Now

A new template?

  • A new template?

    Posted 6 years 1 month ago
    • Today is 10 weeks since the last template was issued. You promised to issue templates every 4-6 weeks.
      If you have any delays, write about it.
      I am with you for 10 years. I miss the templates published every month.

      1. When do you plan to release a new template?
      2. When will the library of particles be?
    • The following users have thanked you: Hugo Avila, Klaus Deisenhofer, C-T-O, djSoft, Helal

    • MrT's Avatar
    • MrT
    • Preeminent Rocketeer
    • Posts: 101084
    • Thanks: 13481
    • Web Designer/Developer

    Re: A new template?

    Posted 6 years 1 month ago
    • 1. We didn't "promise" it's an aspirational target but we are doing our very best considering that we are only a small team.
      2. We are actively testing the template now. I can't give you an ETA for release as we don't yet know what testing will reveal and we'd rather release a quality product than rush something out without sufficient testing and bug fixing. Hopefully though it shouldn't be too much longer to wait.
      3. We have no ETA for a particle marketplace (assuming I understood you correctly).

      Regards, Mark.
    • Please search forums before posting. Please make sure your post includes the version of the CMS you are using and a link to the problem. Annotations on screenshots can also be helpful to explain problems/goals. Please use the "secure" tab for confidential information.
    • Ryan M Pierson's Avatar
    • Ryan M Pierson
    • Sr. Rocketeer
    • Posts: 243
    • Thanks: 164
    • Technical Writer

    Re: A new template?

    Posted 6 years 1 month ago
    • Grzegorz Wójcik wrote:
      Today is 10 weeks since the last template was issued. You promised to issue templates every 4-6 weeks.
      If you have any delays, write about it.

      We explained why the 4-6 weeks was being changed in numerous forum posts over the past year. 4-6 weeks was a blog post I put out several years ago and listed it as a goal. Our team has changed, and the types of templates we're creating has changed. We're working hard on the new template but we do not want to rush something out the door just to rush it.

      Many of our members were giving us the feedback that every template looked the same. Every template had the same features. Nothing new or different. So, we're making templates that are getting much more positive reviews, but it means we are taking more time in the design phase to send things back to the designer when it isn't perfect, and to come up with features and tools to add in the new template.

      I also gave an update last week about this, but you can't see the thread anymore. The reason is because that thread got hijacked by another member and names were called, threats were made, and the moderators closed and moved the thread to stop it from happening. That's the honest truth. I'll paste to you what I put in that thread, with my apologies.


      [quote="djSoft" post=1377838]Hello Ryan,
      I wanted to ask if there is any news about the new template.[/quote]
      
      Absolutely. We're wrapping up our sandbox build right now. That enables us to go in and add the text and images that make up the demo content, home page, etc. Once that is done, the template goes in for a bit of testing and we tackle and bugs that appear before ultimately releasing it.
      
      We do not ever give ETAs on new templates because we don't know how long different steps will take until we've reached them. But, most of the work is done and we're about to start with the fit and finish portion. It won't be released this week. Next is possible, but we don't know how many tickets we'll be working on once we get into testing until then.
      
      [quote]
      	2 months gone and the template is not out... Why do you offer subscriptions?
      [/quote]
      
      Subscriptions give you access to support forums, like these. As well as updates and patches as they become available for our entire library of templates. All at once.
      
      What you might not have noticed is that we released several big updates to templates in our catalog in the time since Fluent was released. Including:
      
      [ul]
      	[li]Supra[/li]
      	[li]Ambrosia[/li]
      	[li]Callisto[/li]
      	[li]Remnant[/li]
      	[li]Protean[/li]
      	[li]Versla[/li]
      	[li]Topaz[/li]
      	[li]Gemini[/li]
      	[li]Acronym[/li]
      	[li]Ethereal[/li]
      	[li]Kraken[/li]
      	[li]Isotope[/li]
      	[li]Several others...[/li]
      [/ul]
      
      These are updates you wouldn't receive without a subscription. Many of them included updates and changes that were requested by our users.
      
      [quote]
      	how dare you to ask for a "self-imposed, that is becoming longer and longer, and no one can question even if you paid a membership" time frame, poor fool, go ahead and give yourself some spanking
      [/quote]
      
      We have never, ever, under any circumstances told anyone they can't question our release schedule. We have revised it, and explained in countless threads why this happened.
      
      Fluent was well received. It didn't get that way by rushing it out the door. It came about because we turned down the first few design concepts and refined it before going with one we were all comfortable with. If you prefer that we go back to 4-week turnarounds and push out templates that "all look the same" or "don't do anything different" we're open to having that discussion, but we believe that it's more important we focus on creating a good template than a fast one.
      
      We've leveled with you before, several times. We have a smaller team now than we used to have. That's a fact, and we're working harder with that smaller team than ever before. While other Joomla template providers are closing, we're still producing Joomla templates as a priority - despite its collapse in market share year-over-year for the past five years.
      
      Add to that the fact that we're working to make our library compatible with Joomla 4, which is a big undertaking because Joomla 4 breaks a lot of backwards compatibility with J 3.x templates. This is no easy task, especially when you consider how many Joomla templates we support, in addition to two frameworks and a host of extensions.
      
      We are dedicated to maintaining our product quality and keeping the doors open for our customers. This isn't a time to cut corners and push out templates just to meet an arbitrary deadline that we have long since explained was hurting more than helping.
      
      We apologize greatly for any inconvenience this brings about, and we certainly value your feedback.
      I am with you for 10 years. I miss the templates published every month.

      We are right there with you. We definitely miss it, too. Here's the reality we're dealing with. Our team is smaller than it used to be. It's not something we like talking about, but it's a reality you can see on our team page. Joomla has lost its new user market share by 50% year-over-year for the last 5 years. That has a huge impact on our business because Joomla is our bread and butter. WordPress and Grav are great, and Grav is growing, but Joomla is not. Maybe Joomla 4 will change this...

      Over the past two years, you've seen many if not most of the big Joomla template houses close. Friends we've known at conferences are no longer attending because they gave up on Joomla and moved on to other things. The Joomla houses that are staying open aren't releasing new templates every month. There may be one or two out there, but the ones that have been around as long as we have are either closed or doing 2-3 month turnarounds like us for the same reason we are.

      Meanwhile, we're still publishing and developing on Joomla first. We're still striving to make great templates and keep our members happy. That includes updating our themes to work with Joomla 4 when it comes out, and that takes a lot of time and effort on our side. Time and effort that, you're right, doesn't equate to the same turnaround on new templates we had 4-5 years ago when our team was three times the size it is now.
      1. When do you plan to release a new template?

      We put the sandbox out to our moderators and other team members for testing yesterday. I'm writing demo content text today, and the dev team is fixing any bugs that get found. We do not know what day it will come out, but we are working around the clock on it.

      2. When will the library of particles be?

      Right now we have a host of priorities ahead of that. To be honest, we're more focused right now on rewriting our theme library for J4. As you know, J4 breaks backward compatibility considerably, so we have to update our existing themes to work with it. We also have an issue of Gantry 4 being written for J 1 and 2.5 and 3 and adding even more compatibility fixes would make it a big, bogged-down mess. So we're examining ways to deal with that. We will have something to announce on this (Joomla 4) next month.
    • Last Edit: 6 years 1 month ago by Ryan M Pierson.
    • The following users have thanked you: Stephen Cassidy

    • Ryan Matthew Pierson / Technical Writer / Buda, TX USA
  • Re: A new template?

    Posted 6 years 1 month ago
    • Hello Ryan,
      i really liked Rocket Theme for years. But since Grav everything is different. I have a shop myself. I can not afford to say 4 weeks, or 6 weeks, or 10 weeks to my customers. That certainly can not be the way from my personal point of view.
      Best regards
    • Ryan M Pierson's Avatar
    • Ryan M Pierson
    • Sr. Rocketeer
    • Posts: 243
    • Thanks: 164
    • Technical Writer

    Re: A new template?

    Posted 6 years 1 month ago
    • Klaus Deisenhofer wrote:
      Hello Ryan,
      i really liked Rocket Theme for years. But since Grav everything is different. I have a shop myself. I can not afford to say 4 weeks, or 6 weeks, or 10 weeks to my customers. That certainly can not be the way from my personal point of view.
      Best regards

      I understand and apologize greatly for any inconvenience.

      So I can understand your situation better, are you customer waiting for our next design because our current ones don't meet their needs? It's hard to gauge if the new one will when you haven't seen it, yet. I'd like to see if we can make this experience better for you.
    • Ryan Matthew Pierson / Technical Writer / Buda, TX USA
  • Re: A new template?

    Posted 6 years 1 month ago
    • Thank you for being honest. But there is no need to defend your position. At least if you look on your last templates. They are superior. They are really good, and you have obviously listened to our feedback.

      Just like Grzegorz I would like a monthly release as well, but realistically I prefer quality over quantity. I wish Joomla had a stronger position, but as stated, things have changed. Still I believe Joomla to be a great framework and publishing system, and I am sticking with it. I am also sticking with RocketTheme.

      I need the staff at RocketTheme to keep up the good work in making even better themes.

      Thank you for your effort, you guys rockettheme!
    • Last Edit: 6 years 1 month ago by Martin Hansen.
    • The following users have thanked you: David Goode, Kat05, djSoft, MrT, Ryan M Pierson

  • Re: A new template?

    Posted 6 years 1 month ago
    • I'm doing a complete redesign of our company's website based on Gantry5 and once you understand the system behind it, Gantry5 is quite simple.
      Joomla is a great CMS and updating over the last few years has become quite easy if your plugins / components are up to date.
      I started with 1.0.12 and went through the nightmares of updating to 1.5 and then to 1.7 - this was the time, when I could just smash some of the Joomla developers for having no upgrade path.
      Fortunately since 1.7 upgrading has become quite easy (at least if you wait a few weeks for the first fixes) and from all I have seen Joomla4 will be a great piece of software.
      For me the compatibility of Gantry5 with Joomla4 and PHP 7.2 is more important than a new template (which will be more or less the same besides one or two particles).
      I doubt that Joomla4 will be a game changer and take market shares from WP, so I fully understand that Rockettheme must stand on several feet. Just look how many mods RT had 7-8 years ago and is now having. Quite a change.

      Regarding the forum here: what I sometimes miss are an overview of the Gantry5 classes.
      If you look through the forum and the threads there are often classes mentioned I have never read about (not template specific!).
      And if you look at the questions: 70% or even more are always the same like how can I change that, which class changes that etc.
      There is no extensive FAQ where you can look up things (the Gantry5 documentation is no help).
      I know making a FAQ is hell of work, but life becomes much easier afterwards.
      Just look how many threads regard changing something in the menues - always the same questions (and no doubt the menue system in Gantry5 is - let's say - suboptimal...).
      Instead of developing the next slider particle (which is more or less like the last one) why not invest the time in getting the backend options in Gantry5 better? You can layout the menue in the backend but why not the design (colours etc.).
      Your customers have to to do it via custom.css - and the next questions show up because they don't know where to put the custom.css, they forget to recompile etcpp and hundreds of new but redundant threats are created.

      One thing more: the responsive classes are nice but what I'm missing are a few tutorials here.
      It's like take a particle and look at the html code what it produces.
      Explain it and the classes. So people will read it, understand it and over time the questions here in the forum will decrease.
      Or make a blog post how easy it is with JCE and its templates to put in the necessary grid code.

      Why am I writing this? Because I've done it that way. I'm only an enduser with an interest in Joomla and taught myself what I need to know.
      I looked at the particle html code, looked up on w3schools what it did and learned. No fun and quite time consuming.
      Since we use really a lot of images on our website I made myself JCE html templates like
      <div class="g-grid">
      	<div class="g-block inhalt-links size-50">
      		<div class="g-content">
      			<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem. Nulla consequat massa quis enim. Donec pede justo, fringilla vel, aliquet nec, vulputate eget, arcu. In enim justo, rhoncus ut, imperdiet a, venenatis vitae, justo. Nullam dictum felis eu pede mollis pretium. Integer tincidunt. Cras dapibus.</p>
      			
      		</div>
      	</div>
      	<div class="g-block center inhalt-rechts size-50">
      		<div class="g-content">
      			<figure class="figure-bild-artikel"><img src="http://placehold.it/400x300" alt="" />
      				<figcaption>Bildunterschrift</figcaption>
      			</figure>
      		</div>
      	</div>
      </div>

      for writing articles fast.
      I find the image placeholders very useful to get a nice overview and change them via JCE and the lightcase popup (btw with the last Gantry5 update the size of the opened images in lightcase is still HARDCODED in the js - please change that, absolutely no need for that in a responsive popup!).

      Sometimes I think less is more and sometimes I wished I have had some tutorials like JCE and its templates etc.
      I think whith that a lot of your customers would have something time saving because 90% won't be able to write the necessary html code by hand.

      I hope Joomla4 will regain some of its former reputation.
    • Ryan M Pierson's Avatar
    • Ryan M Pierson
    • Sr. Rocketeer
    • Posts: 243
    • Thanks: 164
    • Technical Writer

    Re: A new template?

    Posted 6 years 4 weeks ago
    • Thank you for your feedback on this.

      More tutorials are on the way! We're also always looking for new ways to improve on Gantry 5. Have you submitted any suggestions or headaches you've come across as issues on the Gantry 5 project on GitHub?
    • Ryan Matthew Pierson / Technical Writer / Buda, TX USA
  • Re: A new template?

    Posted 6 years 4 weeks ago
    • I create many pages for my clients. Only one template is enough for me. I can customize it in CSS. I need a particle library.

      I have recently used Ivo templates. They have a more elaborate template layout. There is also a library of particles.

      I would like to use the particles you have designed. However, this is problematic.
      It is not a problem to move a particle. The problem is its later update.
      It would be useful to list the particles with information on which template to look for their updates.

      I apologize if not very understandable. Google translate :)
  • Re: A new template?

    Posted 6 years 4 weeks ago
    • This is also the reason why I use Ivos particles. Easy to update and to download.

      @Ryan: the hardcoded opening within lightcase is already a topic in Github.

      And customizing the menu in the backend: in my opinion this is an absolute basic.
      You can customize the background, the fonts, colours in Gantry5 but all you can do with menues is how it openes the menu items.
      There is no way of customizing hovering, the active menue point and so on and after three years of Gantry 5 I can't really understand why it is not implemented.
      Everything has to be done via custom.css which is almost impossible for a beginner.

Time to create page: 0.061 seconds