Thread

Hi all,
I like to know where some good EE themes are available (Free or Paid).

I have already seen the themes at:
http://expressionengine.com/templates/

I need something better.

Hi Suri,

You can find more themes at the community run EEDesign.org.

However, ExpressionEngine doesn’t have “themes” in the way you are liking thinking of themes. There is no “one click” switching for example. EE’s template engine is designed so that you can use just about any HTML based template available on the web and then you can adapt to it EE in a way that is specific to your site. Instead of looking for an EE specific theme I’d encourage you to find any website template that you can legally use and then learn how to implement it into EE. Ultimately this is the best way to get a site that is suited to your specific needs. Once you use EE a bit this approach will make a lot more sense.

I’d encourage you to find any website template that you can legally use and then learn how to implement it into EE.

That’s great. So if I like a WordPress template very much, I can create an EE template that looks exactly similar. Right ?

Is there any specific tutorial that guides on how to do that ?

I’d encourage you to find any website template that you can legally use and then learn how to implement it into EE.

That’s great. So if I like a WordPress template very much, I can create an EE template that looks exactly similar. Right ?

Is there any specific tutorial that guides on how to do that ?

You certainly can. In fact, I did that very thing for a personal site.

I’d recommend starting with the Overview section of the User Guide, then the Quick Start Tutorial as a way to familiarize yourself with the basics. At that point if you can dive in. You might also review Lisa’s blog article series Dissecting the Default Templates.

There is also a wiki article on integrating a WordPress 1.2 theme into EE.  Link

Michael Boyink also has a great walk-through where he does exactly that - take a free template and implements it into EE. Check it out:

Building an Expressionengine site

Also, you can have a design converted into an ExpressionEngine template. While searching for companies to convert a Photoshop design into a working XHTML file, I found that some of the companies that do this work will also convert into certain CMS themes/templates. Some of them will convert into EE.  They are:

http://cssrockstars.com/
http://www.slicerus.com/
http://psdchopstick.com/

Another site says they will convert into any app, so you could inquire about EE:

http://w3-markup.com/

My idea is to buy a template from a site like templatemonster.com then give it to one of the above companies to convert the design into a format I can actually use on a website.

Curious - what makes it an “ExpressionEngine template” to those businesses?

Certainly they aren’t putting in the EE tags for you….as that’s dependent on what you’ve created for an ExpressionEngine architecture.

Don’t know.  I haven’t actually used any of them.

Could they be providing a basic template to replace the one that comes with EE?

Suri.CMS - have you gotten your answer in this thread?

Curious - what makes it an “ExpressionEngine template” to those businesses?

Certainly they aren’t putting in the EE tags for you….as that’s dependent on what you’ve created for an ExpressionEngine architecture.

I was curious about this as well—so I shot one of those companies a quick email.  They set it up like the stock EE templates, much like the ones available in the Downloads section.  They also said they would customize it to a certain EE install at a per-hour rate.

Suri.CMS - have you gotten your answer in this thread?

Yes ! But please keep this thread OPEN for some more days.
The members here are contributing valuable information on EE themes.
It will be useful for many people like me who want to buy EE but hesitate a bit if we have to build own templates.  😊

And I thank all members who replied !! Your info is really valuable in making up my decision.

Suri.CMS - here’s a worked example.

Hope this helps.

Interesting.  Hadn’t seen those before- the ones setting it up w/the basic tags along the lines of the stock templates.  Though in truth- unless it’s a super-simple site, most of my time goes into figure out the core architecture and then tweaking those things that- er, need tweaking!

Michael Boyink also has a great walk-through where he does exactly that - take a free template and implements it into EE. Check it out:

Building an Expressionengine site

Thanks for the mention.

I’ll throw out that it was so much fun the first time around that I’m doing it again - this time building a church site, but there will be a number of features covered in this series that weren’t in the last one, so it should be of interest to those not building a church site as well.