Thread

This is great. Yes, please. Will be nice to just have something start up straight away without having to manually plug it in at all times… 😊 (continues to wait patiently for 2.0 as she continues to plug away at her ongoing redesign…)

Exactly my thoughts today are, “the other templates”. I can’t help but think the wiki is totally under utilized, for such things as project management, community building, document libraries. So many times when you see a wiki or forum they are plain jane, default purple. There was a great article on wiki’s in this months, websiteMagazine just as an idea starter.

If it were easier for people to use the same design, like create once and populate all modules’s then it would be too simple not to have the look and design constant across an entire site.
Go T-ee-m Go!

Hey, good work on the 2.0 concept. Looks very sensible.😊

For the purposes of this discussion, I have all my templates saved as files (on the server outside the web tree) and then I work on them directly/remotely using the FTP plugin that you install after you’ve installed JEdit. JEdit has plugins for every other language including CSS and JS so it’s real nifty.

When I hit “save” in JEdit, it uploads the file to the server in the background. Once “save” is complete, I alt-tab to the web browser and hit refresh to see the changes. It’s refreshingly conventional.

I squeezed out a few quickies (websites) now and many of them are based on the same template so I am looking forward to making my own themes for quick/painless rollout.

Question: how long do we have to wait before 2.0 so we can use this new method?

depending on the answer, I may actually still benefit from investing in learning the 1.0 method.

cheers.

Any insight into what you all are working on is beneficial, encouraging, and exciting.  Thanks for a new morsel of EE2.0!

I’m a huge fan, but as for developing EE sites, the very first thing I do is create a template in the CP, check the “save to file” and never look back (while developing the site).

I use TextMate (and the ExpressionEnginge bundle) for all coding.  I’m still good with these theme changes, right?  Perhaps even better…

Thanks again!

these are going to be awesome! when is 2.0 coming out….

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are we there yet?

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can’t wait

😊

Possibly on my birthday (September 9th), ive been a really good boy 😊  lol.

The current templates library was one way to import a template was it not, upload it as a .tpl file and it’s a pretty good place to place a file, for reference and as a starter template. Kind of an overlooked feature, but also a means of importing templates or site sets to the db or then saving them as a flat file template…

most of you are designer superheroes and would never use a stock theme anyway.

This is a severe misconception. In my extensive research into solutions for an upcoming project, I have made an interesting discovery related to the rapidly growing Drupal services industry:

Companies that approach drupal services from a technological stanpoint (ie - offering mainly programming and support services) are prepared to start work on a project immediately or in the near future, while companies providing end to end design and development services are so swamped, some are not even accepting RFP’s at this point.

The lesson - the industry needs a good CMS AND good templates. While EE is one of the best CMS packages I have seen, it also has the worst set of default templates I have seen. This isn’t just my opinion either, I have read this in reviews as well.

What’s strange is that EE has such a great template for its own website and forum, yet offers such terrible templates with the EE package. Like Vbulletin, Drupal, and other CMS packages, I would like to see EE make the decision that if it’s good enough for their own website, it should be part of the package as well.

If EE came with the template that it uses on their own site, I’d replace the logo and get my project started tomorrow and worry about design changes later. As it is, I have to take on a complicated design project before I can even get to the real work of creating an Internet business.

And that in my mind is EE’s greatest weakness.

most of you are designer superheroes and would never use a stock theme anyway.

This is a severe misconception. In my extensive research into solutions for an upcoming project, I have made an interesting discovery related to the rapidly growing Drupal services industry:

Companies that approach drupal services from a technological stanpoint (ie - offering mainly programming and support services) are prepared to start work on a project immediately or in the near future, while companies providing end to end design and development services are so swamped, some are not even accepting RFP’s at this point.

The lesson - the industry needs a good CMS AND good templates. While EE is one of the best CMS packages I have seen, it also has the worst set of default templates I have seen. This isn’t just my opinion either, I have read this in reviews as well.

What’s strange is that EE has such a great template for its own website and forum, yet offers such terrible templates with the EE package. Like Vbulletin, Drupal, and other CMS packages, I would like to see EE make the decision that if it’s good enough for their own website, it should be part of the package as well.

If EE came with the template that it uses on their own site, I’d replace the logo and get my project started tomorrow and worry about design changes later. As it is, I have to take on a complicated design project before I can even get to the real work of creating an Internet business.

And that in my mind is EE’s greatest weakness.

With EE you can use any template you want from the 1000s of stock templates available. Though I agree that the current default themes aren’t appropriate anymore which is why there will be gone in the future.

There is certainly a business for templates, but its not one we want to engage in first party.

ExpressionEngine would be well-served by a template-packaging scheme like that found in WordPress. Designers should be able to package up a theme for distribution as a ZIP file which could be installed by a “one-click” import.

This need is why mean not-drunks like me are grousing about waiting and waiting and waiting for the arrival of ExpressionEngine 2.0.

ExpressionEngine would be well-served by a template-packaging scheme like that found in WordPress. Designers should be able to package up a theme for distribution as a ZIP file which could be installed by a “one-click” import.

Haven’t we had that discussion before? Like, a 100 or so times? It’s not going to fly, one-click theming requires a known site and data structure. This may work for WP (it works for our forum module, too), but it won’t for the majority of custom-built EE sites. The sample templates that currently ship with EE are a bit outdated, as we all know, so there will be new ones for EE 2 and that’s good, but that still won’t be WP-style one-click theming.

Except that one-click theming would know the site and data structure—for the very site that had been packaged. That seems pretty obvious.

Except that one-click theming would know the site and data structure—for the very site that had been packaged. That seems pretty obvious.

This is not a business we want to get into first party, but as I’ve mentioned elsewhere one of things we’re looking at in 2.x (not necessarily the initial launch) are making tools that help businesses who want to offer pre-packaged themes/sites. This isn’t a guarantee of such things but the idea is on the “radar” as it were.

again, the point of my post wasn’t that you should get into the business of creating themes. It was that your product should come with JUST ONE THEME that is at least usable at some basic level for small businesses to get started with EE quickly. Every other CMS does that.

again, the point of my post wasn’t that you should get into the business of creating themes. It was that your product should come with JUST ONE THEME that is at least usable at some basic level for small businesses to get started with EE quickly. Every other CMS does that.

Yup, that’s exactly the plan. And thanks for your response btw, I didn’t mean to jump in and get all defensive. Your points are well taken.