I’m not sure how many people were following the Hemingway Request thread, so I figured this would be the right place to stick this post. Feel free to yell at me and move it if I stuck it in the wrong area…
I finally (damn hockey) got around to putting all the finishing touches on the Hemingway port for ExpressionEngine, and its now available for everyone over at my site: Hemingway Theme Preview. Feel free to download it and customize it to your heart’s content!
I’ll be adding a link to the Wiki shortly, so this way Lisa doesn’t yell at me like usual…
I’m in favor of more themes. I know all the issues and considerations, adnauseum, but it seems that newer EE users could benefit from a healthy set of professional Starting Blocks.
I do have a couple of more themes planned for porting. The infamous K2, Subtle and possibly Rin are in on the plate for consideration. If anyone has any suggestions/requests for themes, feel free to let me know and I’ll be happy to port them.
Tell me about it. The plumber always has leaky pipes.
I do have a couple of more themes planned for porting. The infamous K2, Subtle and possibly Rin are in on the plate for consideration. If anyone has any suggestions/requests for themes, feel free to let me know and I’ll be happy to port them.
The current stable of EE templates is just a little tired, though plenty competent. I’ve been tempted to do a few template sets complete with database set up, as well as configurations for categories, multiple pages, and so on; just like a fully operational site.
Then I see my leaky pipes… then the phone rings. More work.
You know I think that, subconsciously, I work on porting other themes just so I don’t have to actually look at my own messy code. Some parts of my website absolutely terrify me. I just have to sit down and tear it apart one of these days… in the near distant future… sometime soon…
All kidding aside, this is actually more fun for me. It’s also just my little way of learning more about EE, saying thanks and giving back to a community that’s already given me so much. Leaks be damned!
I find that we build more generic components within templates which can be used again in other sites, hence a desire to have a template starting point. Gawd, I love cut and paste.
I have a giant (well, not real giant, but fairly big) text file of all the code that gets copied and pasted from template to template. It just makes life so much easier to build the skeleton and fill it with pre-written code since not much gets changed. Maybe a parameter here and there, but that’s no biggie.
If only that could be done with all areas of life…
I’m in favor of more themes. I know all the issues and considerations, adnauseum, but it seems that newer EE users could benefit from a healthy set of professional Starting Blocks.
yes, Yes, YES! Ronnie I agree whole-heartedly! Despite my undying love for EE the lack of “professional theme starters” is frustrating.
IMPIO there is no middle ground between “basic” free themes and spending lots of money and or time on “rolling your own”.
Again, IMPIO it seems that other CMS’s, while lacking in other regards in comparison to EE, have whole “ecosystems” of “pre-rolled” and “professional” themes, ready for minor customization for reasonable prices or for free?
From my POV I need a Rockettheme.com for EE.
Ronnie . . . do you have any detailed comments on the difficulties and / or “gotchas” of trying to convert Rockettheme sourced Joomla themes to EE?
Is it simply “remove Joomla code” and “replace with EE code”?
BTW - the effort on Hemingway (and Ocean Mist) is much appreciated regardless CM! In my case they just don’t happen to suit needs.
OMG, you so frigging rock. I was looking to do something really similar with my site, and that just gave me a hell of a starting point…yes you rock so much, thank you:)
Ronnie . . . do you have any detailed comments on the difficulties and / or “gotchas” of trying to convert Rockettheme sourced Joomla themes to EE?
Is it simply “remove Joomla code” and “replace with EE code”?
BTW - the effort on Hemingway (and Ocean Mist) is much appreciated regardless CM! In my case they just don’t happen to suit needs.
I know this wasn’t directed at me, but I figured I might be able to answer (albeit limitedly, since I have no real experience with Joomla).
I just want to start by saying thanks to everyone for all the great things said about Hemingway and Ocean Mist. It’s appreciated and keeps me wanting to do more conversions.
In regards to converting a Joomla theme, unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be as easy as just replacing code (like with WordPress themes). I just downloaded the RokWebify theme and had a peek at the source (index.php in the archive) and while an EE theme could be constructed using it, it would take a fair bit of work.
I just want to start by saying thanks to everyone for all the great things said about Hemingway and Ocean Mist. It’s appreciated and keeps me wanting to do more conversions.
In regards to converting a Joomla theme, unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be as easy as just replacing code (like with WordPress themes). I just downloaded the RokWebify theme and had a peek at the source (index.php in the archive) and while an EE theme could be constructed using it, it would take a fair bit of work.
Thanks for the reply CD and thanks for your efforts on porting templates to EE. They are very valuable to the community.
As a “jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none-hacker” I wasn’t sure if the differences betweeh how Joomla and EE handle markup would make it very hard to convert J templates to EE?
I appreciate your bit of effort and comments that also point to “J2EE” conversions being “hard”.
I wouldn’t call them hard, per se; just very time consuming.
The templates handle markup similarly, where you have your HTML, and joomla tags (for lack of a better word) in plain php spattered through. With that one index.php template, you could certainly build the container. However (and this is where I fail due to my lack of familiarity with Joomla), it then seems that you would have to visit individual pages and check out the rendered source to replicate everything due to the nature of components/modules in Joomla adding their own markup.
So if you would want to see how comments would display, you’d need to first install the comment module, then write a few comments, then check the rendered source to pull the relevant HTML. Of course, I could be going about it all wrong, but that’s my take.
The EE community could definitely benefit from more themes. I’ve been playing with it nonstop for the past couple of days. I am noticing a periodical performance lag compared to the default EE template I’ve been using on a test site. Not sure if it’s just my issue though.
I did my best to optimize all the EE tags in the templates, but there’s a chance that I missed a few here and there. Might want to double check them to be sure. I’ll do the same this evening (after dinner some time) and report back, with updates if necessary!
I’ll get started on it tonight, danielrae. I have a nice long weekend off from school, so this will fill the time perfectly. One thing, though. Could you do me a favor and check your PMs when you have the chance? That’ll help me figure out how to best approach this theme.
Crimson, if you’d like to do this for the community, I’d be more than happy. The more releases, the better. If I improve my skills on this, I’d like to release a few myself!
