What to consider while choosing a Joomla template club?
Because of Joomla’s user oriented and flexible templating system, you will find a mass number of Joomla template clubs offering variety of Joomla templates available. A Joomla template club is, we can say hundreds in one show of Joomla templates under the same roof offering versatility and flexibility in a single subscription.
So, you must be wondering why look for Joomla template clubs, why not spend time to look for a suitable single Joomla template. Whether small or big, a template’s layout will be the bony structure of your project. But this will not bring results of your desire in the long run when you have to go beyond the template. And this is where the template clubs come to your rescue offering myriad of templates containing different features and functionalities.
A Joomla template club can be suitable for all and perfect for freelancers and developers. But all the clubs are not always furnished to serve you the best and the way you desire. That’s why you have to consider some factors before choosing the right template club to go with. To ease your work, today we are going to discuss what are the things that you should consider first before choosing a Joomla template club.
Club’s versatility
The template club you are considering must be able to offer you templates of all tastes, from all the focus points and versatility in designs and standard. Only then you will be able to cope with the changes of your project aspects and needs.
Product release consistency
To get the maximum out of any Joomla template club, you need to check the product release consistency of that template club. That represents the sheer will and sincerity of that club.
Product features
Product features should be the first thing to look at while you are focusing on the products that are in the offering of a template club. You should look into the product packages for what things are included, does it have the desired features etc. First, you have to make a comparison what features are mandatory for your projects and what features the product has. If everything matches, you should definitely shortlist it and move on to the other things to consider.
Company stability
It doesn’t matter the club is old or new in the market, you need to check in terms of their product regularity, product quality, and quantity. Are they a stable company and will be at your service the way you need?
Market review
Market reviews are a good way to see how the template club’s products are performing on real-world websites also what are the good things about this template club and what are the glitches the users are facing while using these products. You will find so many paid reviews in the market and it is your job to find the actual ones.
Support strategy
It is very natural that you may face many difficulties while using the products and reassembling the elements of the products in your desired way. That's why it’s crucial to check the support strategy of the club, the platforms they are using for providing the service and the efficiency of the support staff of the template maker.
Pre-sale support
You have every right to know about the products of any template club along with the availability of your required features in their products. That’s why pre-sale support has the utter importance. This will answer your queries.
Refund policy
If a purchased product doesn’t work on your website or doesn’t get along with your design context, then you have the very right to get the refund. So it is a good practice to see the refund policy, terms and conditions of the template club you are going to choose.
Plan & pricing
Checking and re-checking the plan and pricing of your chosen template club is very important. Few template clubs offer exciting plans at affordable prices with conditional accesses to the products. So, you need to analyze and compare every plan and choose the best one for you to get the most benefits out of it.
Social presence
A template club with broad social presence is very important. This will let you know how your chosen template club is evolving and improving day by day. This also reduces the barriers between the company and the customer to let you participate in the growth of the company.
Contact channels
Contact channels can be the Contact us form, private messaging, email contact, chat messenger, support forums etc. While choosing a template club, you should consider its contact channel availability as it’s always to be connected with the providers to be on the confident side.
Integrated site builder
An integrated site builder is a cool thing to have in the basket. The most trendy technology that is changing the overall site building experience is the visual site building with a page builder. Having surrounded by latest of advancements will surely give you a step up.
Update consistency
The world is continuously evolving and you wouldn’t want to lack behind the latest web technologies that are coming fast and matured every day. That is why you need to make sure that the template club you are choosing gives regular updates to its products. Not only product updates but updates with latest technological improvements.
Documentation
Documentation will give you a clear roadmap on how you will go along with the products. Also, documentation of the products will be a good source of information while customizing these for your website uses. So, it is a good practice to check the availability and the strength of the documentations of the template club products.
Resourceful blog
To develop a better relationship with the company and to know the company's product promotions, it is always important to check whether the club possesses a resourceful blog or not and how frequently they update that blog.
Cloaking up
A Joomla template club can give you a headstart in the market and give you a dynamic, smart development experience. But it is your job to find the right one for your projects. To get the total benefit, you can follow our above described checklist. And if we missed something, please don’t forget to share that with us using the comment section below.
It is also good to know that it's a team of developers that is behind the club/extension developer bcs if "one-man-show" in most cases that persons runs out of battery and it's too much for one person to run a business i f he also should care about the customers need & support etc
I have seen that too much in Joomla world where extension developers just develop things bcs it's fun, they can do it but the business model doesn't work long term for them bcs they think everything is about code.
I have some comments about what people looking for too as I do.
[b]1. Who is behind the template club and what is their long term commitment?[/b]
[b]2. Do they have focus on what they are doing or are they also doing other project/focus that take their time?[/b] ie develop for Wordpress, Drupal, Magento or other projects and to many extensions that is just working 90% and with bad code quality.
For me I only focus on extensions developers that put their effort on Joomla extensions & templates. If they are not good enough to build a business model that work for them in the Joomla world and do more for Joomla users then they are not skilled enough for serving you long term in general too and they are out of new innovative ideas of new Joomla extension improvements where Joomla users are willing to pay for that extended value.
[b]3. Do they communicate with their end users and a l s o fix the outstanding bugs, future requests and listening to the customers need and requirements?[/b]
[b]4. Are they open for certain customisations and are they open flexible to help or have subcontractors that they can recommend?[/b]
At the moment - when you release a new template - I have to make a new joomla site and load up the quickstart package to view the back end and to see how you have made the demo site.
This can take some time.
Is it possible to create a version on-line - where all registered users can log in the to the back end - just to see how the pages and site is built. This will just be read only - so that users can not change the settings ...
It would be good if rows in page builder can be copy / pasted ?
Thanks
We strive to release our monthly template on the 1st day of each month. So, we hope you will get next month’s template on the 1st day of the month as well.
For testing the backend, you can try SP Page Builder from here:
[url="https://try.sppagebuilder.com/"]https://try.sppagebuilder.com/[/url]
- Thanks
One important thing to consider is the version of components that are released by the company.
Since the SP Page Builder is first released years ago, it has passed so many problems, incompatiblity issues and bug fixes that have made it so mature.
:)