Written by Michael Lankton Thursday, 10 September 2009 13:25
I have to give credit where credit is due. I used to roll my own Wordpress themes, but early on I started to resent the Wordpress handcuffs and I moved to Joomla! and never looked back. Wordpress guys, no need to get all riled up. Wordpress themes have come a long way since then, and the Wordpress designer has a lot more freedom to create more complex, professional looking layouts.
I can't take all the credit for how great my sites look though, because while I have the skills to muck around with Wordpress themes, I don't think I'd be able to make much of a Joomla! template. There's a lot more going on under the hood in Joomla!, and when I first migrated from Wordpress two years ago I realized I would be a lot better going off with someone else'e template and modifying it to my needs.
When I first got to Joomla! I started looking around for templates. The problem was, there just wasn't the abundance of free designs for Joomla! like there was on the Wordpress side of the fence. I didn't know how much a one-off template would cost me, but I figured it would be too much.
Then I stumbled across Joomla! template clubs. Kind of a different idea, coming from the Wordpress world. There are quite a few Joomla! template designers that offer club memberships, in which you pay to become a club member for a set amount of time, during which you have access to their templates. I found RocketTheme early on and used one of their templates for my other site.
If there are better looking web designs, I haven't seen them. RocketTheme makes incredible looking and performing Joomla! templates. They also make really cool extensions for Joomla! and beautiful phpBB3 templates, which incidentally, perfectly match their Joomla! designs. Awesome stuff for those of you looking to integrate a forum into your site. I used to have a matching SMF forum for my other site, and I thought I was so cool. Too bad no one used the forum.
So, credit where credit is due. I fine tune my sites and make them what I want them to be, but most of the credit has to go to RocketTheme for the great designs. Everyone who is using Joomla! as a platform to bring content to the web should head over to RocketTheme to see where the bar currently is, because they are the guys who set the bar.
