Joomla business templates, August 2011

Yootheme: Shelf

YooTheme has created a nice looking theme this month, with an innovative shelf feature. This shelf is a good way to showcase products or services. It uses the Widgetkit Slideset extension to achieve the effect. It is a sleek way to show multiple sets of items and uses smooth effects while looping through them. Looks really nice! Of course, using the YooTheme icons gives the slide set an even better look. As always, the look of your site will depend largely on the quality and consistency of your images. If you mix images of different styles, dimensions and unmatching colors, the result will less than desirable. So, for a feature like this to work well, you need to invest some time into producing good images to display.

The shelf template also enables you to choose from 8 style variations with high resolution background images and combine them with 5 different colors to create your own custom website look.

As with all YooTheme templates it has built-in support for YooTheme's own CCK, Zoo.

Yootheme Shelf features

• Available for Joomla 1.5, 1.7 and Wordpress
• 8 style variations available
• Choose from 5 colors and 10 fonts
• 3 module styles combinable with 4 badges and 7 icons
• Custom style for Widgetkit Slideset and Slideshow
• Flexible template and column widths
• All Warp framework features are available

More info about Shelf

RocketTheme: Camber

Camber, the August 2011 template release from RocketTheme, features Color Chooser stylistic controls, allowing you to easily and swiftly modify the color scheme of the template in just a few steps. Select from an assortment of 15 presets with varying colors, overlays and patterns.

The template looks more stylish and clean than many of the previous RocketTheme templates. I have always felt that most of RocketTheme's templates have a really heavy looking design. This time around, the designers have designed a template with a lighter feel to it. Elements are more subtle and the design can work for many types of businesses. I like how elegantly the RocketTheme extensions have been integrated into the template.

The template has support for the new RokGallery extension, with matching styling included. It also supports several other popular RocketTheme Extensions such as RokTabs and RokNewsPager. Additionally, the standard selection of features in RocketTheme templates, such as the Gantry Framework and mobile support, are also there.

RocketTheme Camber features

• Joomla 1.5/1.7 versions
• RokGallery Extension Integration
• Gantry Framework
• 15 Preset Styles
• Loading Transitions
• RocketTheme Extensions Styling
• Custom Content Typography
• Fusion with MegaMenu
• Triple Level Splitmenu
• 78 Module Positions
• 29 Module Variations
• FF, Safari, Chrome, Opera, IE7+ Compatible
• W3C XHTML 1.0 / CSS Valid

More info about Camber

Joomla Bamboo: Meridian

This month's template from Joomla Bamboo is a grunge-looking template with subtle details and earthy colors. Personally, I think it is a nice looking template. Perhaps a bit simple, but with good images and content it can make a really nice site. The power of this template is really the huge amount of variation you can get in colors by adjusting the template framework. That makes it easy to create a unique combination that fits your own or your client's branding. This is the template to use if you don't want the design to compete with the content.

Joomla Bamboo Meridian features

• Subtle textures, minimal grunge elements and sharp lines combine to create a clean and dirty grunge Joomla template
• Combine four elements to create your own colour scheme
• Unique K2 Joomla template
• Built on the Zen Grid Framework
• Joomla 1.5, Joomla 1.7 template and quickstart available.
• Source PSD and PNG included

More info about Meridian

JoomlArt: JA Ironis

JA Ironis from JoomlArt is a great template for an event. I really like the fresh, modern look and bright colors. There are boxes, but the lines are broken by text bubbles intersecting the content boxes. I think the template looks clean and fresh. Also, it comes with styling for K2, which is really nicely done. 

JoomlArt JA Ironis features

• Running on T3 Framework Version 2
• 7 color options
• 4 Menu options: JA Split, JA Css, JA Dropline & JA Mega menu
• Inbuilt Google Fonts configuration
• Inbuilt CSS and Javascript Compression
• Joomla 1.5.x & Joomla 1.7.x (coming up soon) compatible
• Cross Browser Support: IE7+, Firefox 2+, Safari 3+, Chrome 8+, Opera 9+ and other Standards-Supporting Browsers.
• XHTML 1.0 Transitional
• CSS Validates
• Valid 508 Accessibility
• Well-commented template_css.css and index.php file for flexible customization

More info about JA Ironis

JoomlaShack: Halcyon

This month's template from JoomlaShack is well designed and well coded. I really like the subtle use of colors and the use of Google Fonts in the H1-H6 and module titles. 

The main menu is the only thing I think is a bit off. For me, it doesn't really fit the style of the backgrounds and overall template design. Other than that, I think Halcyon is a really good template. The JoomlShack guys know how to build SEO-friendly templates, and this is no exception.

Another great thing about this template, and products from JoomlaShack in general, is the documentation. Everything you would want to do with the template is well documented. There are tutorials on how to change the logo, how to change the background color and lots more.

JoomlaShack Halcyon features

• 5 Template themes
• 9 custom module styles
• 12 collapsible module positions
• Elegant typography
• One Zip file for 1.5/1.6
• Progressive enhancements
• Custom module chrome
• 5 Background Textures
• 3 Container Borders

More info about Halcyon

Joomla8: YJ Youwinner

This is not a template I would use myself, but I'm not running a poker site. If you're into that kind of business, it might be something for you. I guess it can be used for other types of other sites as well. Still, it is a very dark template. The three included styles only change the color of highlights (module headers, links etc) to red, blue or green. There is a tutorial on how to change this to another color (adding a new style), but if you want another background etc you will have to do some CSS tweaking.

Joomla8 YJ Youwinner features

• YjSimpleGrid powered
• 51 collapsible module positions
• PSD files included
• Joomla 1.5 template
• Joomla 1.6/17 template
• Joomla 1.5/1.6/1.7 demo
• CSS dropdown menu
• SMooth dropdown menu
• Split menu
• SMooth Dropline Menu
• Dropline menu
• 3 CSS styles combos
• Flexible frontpage layout
• Native RTL Support
• Server side Compression
• Demo Starter

More info about YJ Youwinner

Shape5: Callie Rush

 Callie Rush is a template by Shape5. The design is nice enough, even though the rounded corners with shadow is a bit over-used. The template has a lot of different possibilities and implements things like Google fonts, a large frontpage slideshow and a mobile template. It also has a mega menu (like many templates today have) with options for descriptive subtitles for links and images in the menu. I think the small body text looks a bit odd (a Google font). In my world, body text should be larger and highly legible. 

Shape5 Callie Rush features

• S5 Vertex framework platform
• 94 collapsible core template positions plus 4 mobile positions
• 5 custom module suffixes
• Dynamic module titles
• Custom highliight color
• S5 Flex Menu integrated
• Choose fluid or fixed template widths
• Custom column, page and row widths
• Mobile device support
• Designed with CSS3 - Limited support for IE7 and IE8 through PIE
• RTL language support
• Drop down panel
• 3rd Party Stylings for Tienda, Virtuemart, and K2
• Google Fonts
• SEO optimized
• Fixed tabs
• Menu scroll to section
• Site shaper available (Joomla install that includes demo data)
• SQL dump available
• Sliced PSDs included
• Multibox enabled
• Lazy Load enabled
• Tool tips enabled
• 100% tableless CSS
• Validates with XHTML 1.0 Transitional
• Validates with CSS Level 3 with browser specific calls
• Compatible with the following browsers: IE7+, Firefox 1.5+, Opera 9+, Safari, Advant and Chrome

More info about Callie Rush

 Cloud Access: Cloudbase 2.0

CloudBase 2.0 is a template created by CloudAccess.net. It's based on Gantry Framework developed by RocketTheme. The design itself is very boxy. Everything is in boxes, and there are only two module variation available. I like to have a few options for the modules, to style content in different ways. In this template, the options are limited. There are 11 color variations available, though. And with 60 module positions, you should be able to build a flexible site (do we really need that many module positions?).

CloudAccess Cloudbase 2.0 features

• 11 template presets (color variations),
• 10 background patterns,
• One of the most advanced system of picking colors for each template element
• Improved "Scroll to top" feature,
• Equal height for modules,
• 60 module positions.
• Based on the Gantry framework

More info about Cloudbase 2.0