Template devs should sponsor Extension devs

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Stian Didriksen on October 13, 2009 at 9:27am

Go for it!

Permalink Reply by Kyle Ledbetter on October 13, 2009 at 9:32am

Thanks for the support Stian. We already discuss layout best practices with you, and I think this is exactly the type of back&forth other template/extension devs need. In return, we learn a lot about what extension programmers like to see. It's really a 2 way street and works well, plus it's just fun to coop

Permalink Reply by Tess Neale on October 15, 2009 at 4:25am

It's an amazing way of learning - both for template devs and extension devs. At the end of the day, the customer/user is the winner here and that's what it's all about! We're working with a lot of you guys and just started working with Alejandro from JReviews as well.

Big THANK YOU to everybody being so open-minded and seeing the potential in this kind of collaboration! :)

Permalink Reply by Kendall Cabe on October 19, 2009 at 11:20am

I don't do either template or extension development, but I do use both quite often. :) For many end users, they don't care too much what comes out of an extension as far as "under the covers". They just care that it produces the right information on the screen. Frustration does set in when it doesn't work with a template they bought or with any template in some cases.

I think a template designer can easily help "clean up" the output of many extensions in development. They can also show them the best practices of how output SHOULD be done. Table output has its place as you can't beat it for tabular data yet, as far as I'm aware (harder to do "table output" in css with div's). In some cases, extension devs have looked at other extensions as their model and those use tables for everything.

The extra added benefit for both the template designer and extension developer is that they can both say they KNOW their products work well with each others products. Its an extra selling point for both sides. I do still feel that extension developers should test with as many pre-built template clubs / frameworks as they have access to. Setting up relationships with other devs, template designers, or end users that have access to the templates is a good idea as well since these clubs can be quite expensive to join all of them yourself when your cash flow goes to development.

Just my 2 cents.

Permalink Reply by John Coonen on October 22, 2009 at 7:26pm

Great idea. Mentoring and cross-pollination = great.

Permalink Reply by Rick Blalock on October 22, 2009 at 8:25pm

Cross-polli....what? Watch your mouth young man.

Permalink Reply by David Hurley on October 27, 2009 at 8:55pm

Often it's quite frustrating that the enormous amount of time and effort that is spent in coding an extension with top-notch beautiful code is so quickly ignored if the design is not immediately appealing. As a primary developer I'm often struggling to achieve a beautiful look to match the beautiful code that unfortunately very few people care about.

So, I suppose I would say that template dev's should sponsor extension devs. That being said, what incentives could there be to the template companies and how could this be achieved in a mutually beneficial way?

Permalink Reply by Kyle Ledbetter on October 28, 2009 at 8:44am

The first benefit for template devs like us would be that we don't have to do a ton of work to make a component we feature in one of our templates look good.

For extension devs the benefit is obvious.

Beyond that, depending on the relationship that grows, there's all types of beneficial possibilities like being featured on each others' sites, and the type of collaboration with do at JoomlaPraise

Permalink Reply by Kyle Ledbetter on October 28, 2009 at 8:46am

The end user would perhaps be the one who gains the most here :)
One of the biggest gripes with Joomla is that when you install a bunch of 3rd party extensions, the User Interface and usability goes down bc everything looks totally different like patchwork. If everyone were using best practices, the user experience would be unified like that of CMS's like Drupal