My Review of Joomlart Joomla Products.

[coalition]

Hi Joomla Artists,

I have been a member here at Joomlart for only a very short time, but have experimented with almost all of Joomlart's Joomla products.

I find that Joomlart provides some of the finest looking templates and themes for Joomla available on the web. The graphics work is intense and not overkill, and the theme variations are really quite nice.

I find that for my own use, Joomlart is quite balanced on the graphics side, but not so much on varieties of functional component differences. Each template comes with nice modifications to the company's core components, modules and plugins. The number of configuration / layouts options are a bit limited.

Heavily detailed graphics work is wonderful, but I think sometimes, it goes a bit too far. I have noticed a trend lately in cyberspace where most cyber-junkies visit the simple and clean websites more often than they do sites that are graphical works of wonder. I've polled many people who almost live on the web, and was told that the graphic wonder sites are great, for awhile, but they get old fast. People who frequent the web more often than the average user tend to be more content quality based, but even they admit that sites can become boring after awhile.

As a website builder, and I use that with reservation because I always begin with quickstarts, I am wondering who will be the first to implement "dynamic layout technologies" where site layouts change either daily, weekly, monthly or annually, as an administrative option in the back-end. That type of technology may help reduce the "boring site layout" syndrome.

I do have criticisms about T3, in that it is a bit slower than a few of the other more user friendly frameworks, and I suspect that is an issue related to the cache-ing schema, or the compilation of customized settings as read by the server technology.

From my own personal opinion I think that Joomlart would do well to slow down on intensely graphical oriented presentations and look more toward functional differences, and especially, the automated dynamic layouts idea. I'd also suggest that joomlart's premium modules, components and plugins be expanded to include a wider array of layouts options from within themelves––wherever applicable.

The best part about Joomlart thus far, from personal experience, is they provide the highest level of stability than any club. I can honestly say that if Joomlart releases it, it WILL work and often has very nices surprises inside!

So far, the top 4 clubs I do business with are rated as follows:

#1 Joomlart.com
#2 Rockettheme.com
#3 Gavick.com
#4 joomlabamboo.com

Many thanks to Joomlart for making my learning experience with Joomla! a wonderful experience. I only hope that 2011 holds many surprises for members here. I couldn't live without Joomlart's high degree of quality and expertise for the #1 CMS in the world.

Walt.

[robert vining]

Wow Walt, that's a great vote of confidence for JoomlArt. I'm glad you find our products and service so useful.

As you can imagine, it's a tough line to follow when we are designing new templates to release each month. On one hand, we want to provide a great looking template, that functions really well right out of the box. Yet, with the power of the T3 framework, still offer enough 'oomph' under the hood that experienced site builders can tweak it to do the things you want. Also, we need to keep up with the stiff competition that the other template clubs in the Joomlasphere produce each month, or sadly we'll be left behind.

We do have some graphically rich templates, but also, there are a quite a few minimal designs, such as the JA Rave template that was released a few months ago, which I actually use myself on my personal blog at www.robertvining.com . And then the JA Portfolio template can be set to a minimal design as well, like this site uses www.sobiinspired.com .

One thing to keep in mind when you are looking at the demo site here, and the quickstart packages as well, those are designed to take advantage of most or all of the features of that month's template. So they are going to look busy, and have alot of graphics and layouts, and will be a bit slower to load with all that going on. Luckily, the gzip compression of the JS and CSS files, along with the T3 cache now available in the T3v2 Framework makes page load speeds competitive with just about anyone out there. And we also offer the JA Amazon S3 Component if you want to store your media on a Content Distribution Network (the Cloud) for even quicker page loads.

I'm not too sure about 'automatic dynamic layouts' being something that we would implement anytime soon. It would bring up a lot of discussion on Usability and User Experience Design. But on the other hand, I do like your suggestion about multiple layouts for extensions. That's something we did recently with the Teline IV Template and the JA Front Page and JA NewPro extensions that have multiple layouts.

As for 2011, our team is set to produce more products, services, training and fun than ever before for the JA Community members!

Thanks for your support! It means alot to everyone here.

[faliqulamin]

waht? what?

[TomC]

waht? what?

which parts didn't you understand?

[coalition]

SECOND REVIEW!

I have since spent some time with JA Teline IV, Droid and Community Plus.

Though I still hold the opinion that Joomlart is #1 in Joomla Templates, I've discovered that the T3 Framework has some problems that should be addressed before JA's Joomla 1.6 Editions are developed much further. This is what I've found:

After installing Teline IV Quickstart, I added JomSocial, JA Voice, JA Comment, rpnx, Kunena, and Smart Flash Header by JoomPro, there is still a major problem with the caching system, in that, if I use JA's clean cache, only the t3 folder, and t3-assets folder "appear" to be cleaned, but, that's not always true. Sometimes, during site editing it becomes necessary to clear ALL the caches, as well as the expired cache (JA's clean cache does not do this well at all). What happens is that my logo and some other template specific graphics disappear, and does so on all platforms, i.e., Windows7, Mac Snowleopard and SuSe Linux Systems. I'm pretty sure that these issues are all cache related, but I could be wrong.

JomSocial slows systems down quite a bit (ZEND), as well as JA Voice. Kunena's just a crazy resource hog, so I cannot blame Joomlart for these issues. However, from a basic user's point of view the framework is still in need of revisions.

What concerns me is the t3 Framework's caching systemology. There have been times that I've been unable to clear caches, and I get the error message "JFolder cannot delete..."whatever." (Just after I've set all folder and file permissions to their default values, i.e., 755 and 644 respectively. So, I think that T3 needs to be revised with a better caching scheme. Why are there now two t3 related cache folders (t3 and t3-assets)?

From a Quickstart install, Teline IV, Droid and Community Plus work flawlessly. But as soon as other widely used Joomla technologies are introduced, things start to happen. By the way, that green color used in Community Plus is about as ugly as green can get. LOL. I wish there were a few more "standard" color themes available for that template, because those available are pretty ugly.

I still maintain that Joomlart's the best, and could be second to none with some slight revisions to caching.

Lastly, I ran into an elgg extension that looks promising as an alternative to JomSocial. It's called "JSocial" It's a plugin/component that integrates elgg into joomla, and the best part is that it also installs elgg at the same time in a folder named community in the root of your joomla. What's most appealing about this elgg social system is that it's blazing fast, and does't affect the speed of joomla whatsoever. So give it a shot if you're running a Social site.

Walt.

[jayatunge]

I've been a member of Joomlart for only a less than 10 days. I am currently, a member of other three clubs Rockettheme, Shape5 and Youjoomla. Unarguably, Joomlart carries the best business type templates. Eventhough it is premature to rate the JA support right now, during this very short period of my membership, my impression is that the JA’s support is not up to par. With RT, for any post I received an answer within range of few minutes to a maximum of one day. With JA, I have submitted a ticket on 09th of July, and still waiting to hear something from the staff. No respond at all! I am surprised.

My experience cannot be generalized for all the users at JA. Even though, I do not regret becoming a JA member, I am very disappointed about the respond method of support ticket system. I understand that some cases may take time, but it is good to let the member know that they are working on the issue and a resolution will be coming or what not, rather than keeping the member in a ‘Limbo’.

In short, if Joomlart make an effort to improve its overall support system, I believe you can be the no. 01 Joomla Club.

[Don Lee]

Hi jayatunge,

First off, thanks for becoming a member in JoomlArt community and your kind words when reviewing on JoomlArt templates.

I'm really sorry for any slow responses you've got from our staff on your tickets. I hope you will understand for our situation when our support members are mostly from Vietnam and have 12 different hours from US, so it's disadvantaged for us when being compared with customer service of other Joomla template clubs like RT which are nearly based in US at all :( so that's why sometimes you could not get answers from us immediately or even had to wait for couple of days...

Moreover, we JoomlArt have just had a 4-day-vacation last week, a half of support staff were on-duty to work normally but when we came back on Monday we still got a huge of tickets in list already, we have tried our best to touch all of those but unfortunately two guys left the team in the day and we again got back to understaffed state therefore there are some tickets still have not got responded properly, my apologies if there is any of yours in there, I will check and take my action shortly. Your patience and understanding are highly appreciated.

Anyways, we acknowledge that shortcoming in our Customer Service and will try to line it up in the time coming. I hope you will have a nice time when doing your business with us and joining JoomlArt community!

Thank you very much!

Don

[jayatunge]

Dear Don Lee,

I sincerely appreciate your reply. I understand the reason behind the delay now. And also thank you for being patient with us.

The thing is that when you say "24 hours Email support" in advertising for membership signup, members will trust and always expect answers in that stipulated time period. I think it is a reasonable expectation by them, right?

I strongly suggest that JA will publish a "working-day calendar" or "JA Staff Holiday Calendar" or something like that for members to see, clearly highlighting your main upcoming Staff Holidays that might affect member support, so that members know upfront whether to expect a delay in response to their trouble tickets from JA Staff. And, I believe, that would greatly reduce or eliminate lot of frustration at member side, and also ‘ customers’.

I wish the best for Joomlart team, and looking forward to more sleek and professional corporate & business designs/ templates. That’s what JA stands out from the rest of the clubs.

Sincerely,
Oswald

[Don Lee]

Good morning Oswald,

Thank you very much for your understanding. You are right, we need to publish holidays schedule to you customers each year, I will work with HR Department about this. Working-day calendar is Mon - Fri 8.00 am - 5.00 PM GMT that has been mentioned here

As said, our support guys are mostly from Vietnam, but we also have other guys from everywhere on the world such as US, UK, India.. so there are always support guys working on forums every time. And on holidays, we always arrange to have at least a half of staff to be on-duty rotatably. However, in the last holiday (last week) on-duty staff did not work like expected and also there were so many inquiries from users submitted, it went out of our estimate therefore we got stuck sometimes.

I'm sorry again, it's our badness when there is any pissed off customers in anyway. Your idea is appreciated and we will be taking it to our improvements list to bring a better service to you and all users here. Whenever there is any urgent support request, just feel free to leave me a PM or send an email to me then I will take my action right away to support you.

Thanks again and have a nice day!

Don Lee | CS Lead

[emiliaw]

Hi Joomla Artists,

I have been a member here at Joomlart for only a very short time, but have experimented with almost all of Joomlart's Joomla products.

I find that Joomlart provides some of the finest looking templates and themes for Joomla available on the web. The graphics work is intense and not overkill, and the theme variations are really quite nice.

I find that for my own use, Joomlart is quite balanced on the graphics side, but not so much on varieties of functional component differences. Each template comes with nice modifications to the company's core components, modules and plugins. The number of configuration / layouts options are a bit limited.

Heavily detailed graphics work is wonderful, but I think sometimes, it goes a bit too far. I have noticed a trend lately in cyberspace where most cyber-junkies visit the simple and clean websites more often than they do sites that are graphical works of wonder. I've polled many people who almost live on the web, and was told that the graphic wonder sites are great, for awhile, but they get old fast. People who frequent the web more often than the average user tend to be more content quality based, but even they admit that sites can become boring after awhile.

As a website builder, and I use that with reservation because I always begin with quickstarts, I am wondering who will be the first to implement "dynamic layout technologies" where site layouts change either daily, weekly, monthly or annually, as an administrative option in the back-end. That type of technology may help reduce the "boring site layout" syndrome.

I do have criticisms about T3, in that it is a bit slower than a few of the other more user friendly frameworks, and I suspect that is an issue related to the cache-ing schema, or the compilation of customized settings as read by the server technology.

From my own personal opinion I think that Joomlart would do well to slow down on intensely graphical oriented presentations and look more toward functional differences, and especially, the automated dynamic layouts idea. I'd also suggest that joomlart's premium modules, components and plugins be expanded to include a wider array of layouts options from within themelves––wherever applicable.

The best part about Joomlart thus far, from personal experience, is they provide the highest level of stability than any club. I can honestly say that if Joomlart releases it, it WILL work and often has very nices surprises inside!

So far, the top 4 clubs I do business with are rated as follows:

#1 Joomlart.com
#2 Rockettheme.com
#3 Gavick.com
#4 joomlabamboo.com

Many thanks to Joomlart for making my learning experience with Joomla! a wonderful experience. I only hope that 2011 holds many surprises for members here. I couldn't live without Joomlart's high degree of quality and expertise for the #1 CMS in the world.

Walt.

It is great to hear such great things about Joomlart. I am new to it myself, and must admit that I had my concerns about it, but all the great things that I am hearing about it, even in addition to what I have read on this forum, have effectively put my mind at ease. I am very excited about the joomla products, and am eager to start getting my hands dirty. I am getting started on a very ambitious online payroll project. I can really use some help on this project, so if anyone has any experience with this type of thing lets talk.