Joomla 1.5 reviews: Templates, components, modules

Forex template by mcF has a classic business look - straight-forward, sober and professional, if not a little dull.  However, a little color used sparingly might be a great call to action such as a box saying, "Join Now".  Although the template does not have a direct link to the designer, there is a text reference at the bottom.  The design utilizes the default Joomla positions.  Furthermore, the template looked the same in both Firefox and Internet Explorer. 

I like the many columns with clearly marked titles, however,  it seems that the columns might of been more distinct by using a few borders to seperate one from another.

Alpine Ski by Siteground has a great winter theme perfect for a ski resort or winter sports webpage.   The template utilizes the default Joomla positions.  After checking the template for cross browser compatibility, I found a bug  when viewing it in Firefox - a white line on the top left-hand header.  This line was not present in Internet Explorer and is noted in the second image of image gallery below.  Overall, I like the feel of this template, because of it's clean design and attention to detail such as the transparency.   In addition, the winter sports theme complemented by the mountain landscape, snow and skier made the design complete.  Good job!

The Blacky Template's decidedly dark aesthetic and cyberpunk presentation might be appropriate for a gothic website.  However, it is probably too dark for genearal use, and not just philosphically; the text is grey, orange, or dark blue against a dark background, making it difficult to read even with screen brightness set to maximum.  The length of the template makes scrolling a chore, especially since the naviation menu is located at the bottom-right of the page.  The search field did not function in Firefox.  In terms of customization, there are no parameters.

Another gray scale static width template by Istopan.  Istopan is a German based company specializing in business and local hosting, while at the same time offering free Joomla templates. This template keeps a clean front end for the user. Again, like in their last template it's fantastic for a company just wanting to keep a presence on the internet, however it doesn't offer much for customization without a little editing of code. One thing we noticed was the lack of real navigation of the site for page to page information. It installed very smoothly, and we found no immediate browser compatibility issues.

Istoselida is a gray scale static width template. It adds no extra parameters in the back end. It sports a navigation menu at the bottom of all site pages, however it tends to blend in, creating slight confusion for users accustomed to menu's at the left, right or top of the website. Install was extremely smooth and straight forward finding no errors upon installation we found no immediate cross browser compatibility. While the template does not offer much, it would be great for companies attempting to just keep an online presence for informational purposes.

Easy basic template set, we found some surprising yet nice features available to the back-end user giving the admin the ability to change the color theme of the template via parameters. Colors include orange, green, teal and blue. Allowing the admin a little ease of customization for those who want to quickly set up a site on the go. The template is nice for a simple set up, however it's extremely basic with not much to flaunt outside of the simple colors.

This simple 2 column layout with a collapsing header position and right hand log in area is clean and loads fast. It has a static width of 913 pixels which is a bit small for most of today's browsers but the gutters fill nicely with a brushed steel background. We like the transparent black borders around the main content area and the righ hand navigation. Unfortunately, this template has no additional parameters in the template control panel and does not incorporate Joomla Chrome, but it should make a good starting point for anyone wishing to have a dark, gritty feel to their website.

This templates demo on the developers site is much nicer than the result of a straight install on Joomla 1.5. There demo utilizes a number of special modules for displaying select content and menus, which we were looking forward to playing with. This is not bad, but the demo is a bit deceiving. That aside, the install went smoothly and utilizes Joomla chrome for a variety of content layouts and we found no immeadiate cross browser compatibility. Nice work.

*The template does contain a link to the designer site, xhtml validation and css validation. The CSS validation produces 23 results. If CSS validation is paramount to you, then you'll need to spend some time debugging.

ByJoomla.com offers 10 Joomla 1.5 templates free as well as a pro package which comes with their image slider (component / menu), news tabber and list menu modules. There is no phone number or address listed on the site. However, they do promote they are allied with DesignForJoomla.com which is a Joomla design company operating in Vietnam. They also have a forum which seems not be very active.

This simple 3 column template with a header and 2 footer rows incorporates multiple module positions and comes with a free version of BJ Image Slider. The template is static width and no additional template parameters and does not employ Joomla chrome. In the preview of this template, we were hopeful as the addition of the image slider looked promising. But, upon install to a Joomla 1.5.15 website, the BJ image slider showed three error messages (see below) at the configuration tab, so we gave up. Additionally, the documentation that comes with the template and component are really just advertisement for their paid component, which may be wonderful, but we find that if the promo / free give away is riddled with bugs, we are not inclined to purchase anything from the developer.

*BJ Slider Component - Error message at install /

Warning: set_time_limit() has been disabled for security reasons in /home/xx/public_html/tests/administrator/components/com_bjimageslider/classes/photos.php on line 17 Warning: include(/home/xx/public_html/xx/administrator/components/com_bjimageslider\configuration.php) [function.include]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/xx/public_html/tests/administrator/components/com_bjimageslider/admin.bjimageslider.html.php on line 414

Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening '/home/xx/public_html/tests/administrator/components/com_bjimageslider\configuration.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/xx/public_html/tests/administrator/components/com_bjimageslider/admin.bjimageslider.html.php on line 414

--- Note: We did not take the time to track down the cause of these errors. set_time_limit is obviously a server issue. The other items seem related to non-existent files. We have invited the designer, or anyone who has the time to debug, to leave comments here.