Template Clubs vs Custom Joomla Templates

Comment by Peter Russell on February 1, 2010 at 4:41pm

I use a mixture of template clubs, custom and my own. Even the club templates I use generally end up highly customised. I've been impressed with the ability of Artsteer (Mac version available as Release Candidate) to create quick, simple styles tool.

Comment by Herman Peeren on February 1, 2010 at 5:09pm

Hi Robert,

We also only do custom templates. But I'm aware that we are a rare kind; most Joomla!-companies I know are subscripted to some template suppliers. And they make more money than we do. We are not so clever: we have an urge to reinvent the wheel and make our own things... But we learn: we started to use Joomla! and that is a first move forward (before, I also wrote the CMS myself). In the mean time: creating is what really makes us happy.

At Yepr we work together in a very small team: me as a developer and my partner (in life and work) as a designer. When designing we mainly look at the client's clients. Often, mostly with small, starting companies, we do a corporate style, some printed stuff and the website. We always look for the uniqueness of that client and try to capture that in the style. The sequence we follow is from a marketing point of view to an artistic point of view (with usability as constraints); technical considerations are only made at the very last stage ("OMG, that is a nice idea, but how to realise it???"). Such an approach can give some fresh insights; we try to surprise ourselves. I'm preparing a presentation about the way we make our templates for this spring.

At the moment I'm also working on Flash templates (with a Joomla! backend). We'll share some results soon on joomlaflash.eu (getting permission from OSM to use that name is another story).

Comment by Robert Vining on February 1, 2010 at 5:20pm

@Peter Barrie North suggested the same about highly customized club templates on my blog. I mentioned to him that I'm currently using a Joomla Bamboo template on a project for a client. This is my first 'club' theme in over 3 years of development!

@Herman You are so right on so many levels about why we do it Herman. I think it's the satisfaction of doing it myself that drives me to develop websites this way. Although I believe you are correct in the money making side as well.

I'm finding more and more I can't charge the amount of time it truly takes me to build templates from scratch and am looking into alternative methods of selling my services. More to the point, I'm working on becoming more of a product based business versus a service based business to supplement my income.

I recently (3 months ago) started tracking my time to the minute each day, and I was really amazed at how far off my estimates were for my work. I was literally underbidding myself by almost half in every instance. I've since corrected this problem with my proposals now, and I have to say the number of 'yes' answers from proposals has dropped off.

I never knew I was giving away so much free work for all those clients! I hardly ever had anyone say no to my pricing, and now I know why.

Comment by Amy Stephen on February 1, 2010 at 5:57pm

Yikes, Robert. That's a good idea to track that time and compare it to the bids.

Arno wrote a Joomla! Community Magazine Article entitled Joomla! 1.5 and the Million Dollar Wedding and explained his standard approach to custom templates. He also included a downloadable starter Template that is very helpful.

Using an approach like Arno's can be a quicker since you are know an approach often used and start with a simplified and solid basis. Some purchased template can be very tricky to change. If you are simply using predefined parameters, then, yes, that's easy, though, and can be used for decent results.

Good topic!

Comment by Jeremy Wilken on February 1, 2010 at 6:35pm

Good topic Robert, I have also been watching my time since I started full time and found that probably 40% of my time ends up lost to email, twitter, this site, etc. Now some of that is an investment in time, and some is a waste - but thats besides the point.

A full custom design is often cost prohibitive for smaller projects, especially if they want a lot of the features that the clubs offer. Most of the major clubs do write quality templates that work very well, but once you start to dig in an customize, you often find they do things differently than you would. This doesn't mean its wrong, its just different and might take longer to work through. Many will stick with one club, and get to know those designs. I think a development firm that only uses one club's designs is a little bit of highway robbery, since they can crank them out fast with minor modifications and only end up paying a small yearly fee (but clubs allow it so its fair use).

I know that a good designer will likely charge at least $1,000 for a full design (probably without full rights to it), and while I can design, I'm not a designer. So for a client with a real desire to have a certain kind of feel, they often are drawn to the clubs. Many people hope to make their whole website for a 1/10th of that cost, and thats just the design. A lot of people turn to Joomla because they think it can be cheaper, and it can.

I would even go so far as to say that most people turn to Joomla because they can do so much themselves, and often don't have much of a budget. We need to do better to show that Joomla can be a strong platform for larger sites and that will help the custom template market improve. Heck, all themes on Drupal are custom to some degree because of the platform, but Joomla is so powerful that one template can easily be adapted without ANY knowledge of coding when its coded to allow user preferences. It really does cater to the DIY type.

I think the real issue comes down to the clients you are attracting, and if they have the budget (or realize the scale of work involved) for custom templates.

Comment by Robert Vining on February 1, 2010 at 6:52pm

Your pretty much dead on for time lost Jeremy.... I can only book 25 hours a week, and am lucky to get that done. I answer or delete (60/40) over 100 emails a day! Of course some of those are notifications for support forums, or here, but others are replies to my blog posts or clients with questions.

My assessment of time spent was meaning of the 25 hours booked for productive work (that which I can bill a client for) I was only estimating 12.5 hours of it to a client before I started timing myself.

I have built sites for $1200 with a custom joomla template and custom sobi2 templates that I should have charged over $3000 for when I go back and realize how much time it really took me. Now when I bid a job, it's the $3500 proposal the client sees instead of the $1500 one, and that tends to turn away the 'hobbyist' website client.

As I mentioned in the comments of my blogpost, I already have a framework I start from and build on it, so that cuts about 4 to 6 hours of coding time off my estimate... but still, every site is unique and that framework has evolved over 3 years of coding to where it is today.

I think the thing I really enjoy is, the design part of it more than anything these days... I only wish the sites I design looked like the site the day it was launched and not after the client gets ahold of it and totally 'rethinks' the modules, typography and yellow highlighter behind their phone number.

Comment by Mark Law on February 1, 2010 at 10:44pm

Very interesting read everyone, glad I'm in the same boat!

Of course designing a Joomla template from scratch is 1 million times more fun and interesting then modifying a template club template. In the real world though only larger companies can afford to do it from scratch.

Think of the price difference between a car designed and built from scratch (using the Joomla chassis and engine) and one off the production line.

I've been modifying template club templates for years now but sometimes I do one from scratch by charging half my normal rate. Now I have 2 kids it's not really an option any more.

I've noticed a new trend though recently among the template clubs. Some are starting to use their own template frameworks which of course makes things a lot more tricky.

I may do a detailed review of the top template clubs if anyone is interested.

Meanwhile I'll look into my own 'base' template...

Comment by Jo Snow on February 2, 2010 at 12:31am

Yes this framework question is interesting - certainly it ups the ante as far as learning curve is concerned - so the question becomes more than - Which template should I use? - to - which set of templates should I use?

For all the hype - so far my deepest impression is that clubs are spreading there development costs over 5/6 very similar templates.

Though I do love some of the menu systems that some of these clubs have bought out.

In fact Ive been looking for one that is easily transferable across custom/templates for someone with my low technical skills

Comment by Rene Kreijveld on February 2, 2010 at 1:27am

Hi all,

This is a great discussion. I've been away for some time, but here I'd like to jump in.
In 95% of the cases we do custom templating. We very very rarely use a Joomla club template.
The reasons my clients decide for custom work is mainly because the are "afraid" that they choose a template that someone else is also using. Also most our clients want a design that matches the general look and feel of the company. What happens then is that a designer is hired either by our client or by us who creates a website design. We convert that into a Joomla template.

Joomla club templates generally look great in my opinion. But, they have so many options and bells and whistles that it scares off our clients. Also modifying a club template later in the process is usually a tricky task. They often exist of many compless CSS/Javascript files that in the end, you end up using just as much time to tweak a club template to the clients' needs as I would have used by starting from scratch.

We do use a framework, but our own special one. Actually it is not a framework, but a (by me) pre-built template that is highly source-ordered and SEO optimised. I have set this up in a way that it can be easily modified (heights, widths, colors, backgrounds etc.). On top of that I am now setting up a library of navigation systems that we can easily incorporate into our "mother template".

What we do on a more regular bases is have a client choose a ready-made HTML/CSS design. We convert that then into a source-order seo optimised Joomla template using our "framework".

Comment by Jo Snow on February 2, 2010 at 1:37am

@Rene - so in effect are your clients really buying "Rene Club" templates?

(sincere question)

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