[john arran]

Anyone here have experience of designing or adapting Joomla! templates?
I would like to migrate our site http://www.chezarran.com/index.htm to Joomla! 1.6 and I'm looking for professional help in producing a template which looks as close to the existing site as can reasonably be achieved.
I got very close to achieving what I wanted a while ago when I adapted a Joomla! 1.5 template, but I then had fairly catastrophic computer issues and I've never since had the time to repeat the process with 1.6, which has features I definitely want to use.
If you know of anyone with experience doing this who would be interested in a bit of work, please contact me either through this site of directly on john[at]thefreeclimber[dot]com.
Thanks

[Drewski Rootbitch]

I'm very familiar with 1.5, but looked recently at 1.6 templates and sacked it off.
I normally use Artisteer, but for 1.6 the template would need some work to....work.
Loads of articles on how to edit it (1.5 template) to work on 1.6 the Artisteer forums.
I decided to stick with 1.5 but with K2 as this shares a lot of the functions you get as standard with 1.6.
Maybe a little short sighted, but it's working with something I know so a shedload easier (template wise).
Anything I can do John, just let me know.
Drew
P.S. If you do take this on yourself, I'd be interested to hear how it goes as it could help me too.

[john arran]

Thanks Drew.
It's time that's the problem.  The 1.5 conversion was just modifying CSS and graphic images, both of which I can find my way around but only with a lot of fumbling and inefficiency. I'm sure someone familiar with it could adapt something quite quickly and save me a week of aggro reinventing wheels. I might have to anyway though, depending on how easy it is to find someone else to help, in which case I'll try to remember to get back to you with feedback.

[Drewski Rootbitch]

You've inspired me to have another look.
I'm playing around on the local server with them now.
If I have any success I'll let you know.

[Duncan Disorderly]

Hi John,

I work as a web developer/designer and have spent a lot of time customizing Joomla templates in the past but tend to create custom templates these days by just creating an (X)HTML and CSS site and inserting the jdoc tags into the relevant places in the php files..

If you want to get an idea of how this works check http://www.zigzagclimbingwalls.com as this is what we did for them.

Looking at your existing site I think it would be pretty easy to convert this to a Joomla site using this method (rather than trying to get square pegs to fit round holes which is how I tend to view template customization).

PM me if your interested or email info@bluntstudios.co.uk

Cheers,

:D

[john arran]

Thanks Duncan. I've sent you an email.

[john arran]

Finally have our new Joomla! site up now. (www.chezArran.com) Thanks very much to Drew and to Duncan for your invaluable help.
In the end I bought Artisteer and created my own template so that I would be best placed to adapt it in future, and so that I can easily (!) build another template for my www.climbTIME.net site if ever I have time to do so. This worked extremely well and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone in a similar position, although I found the whole paradigm shift from old-skool web development to dynamic CMS to be a pretty tortuous process.
The depressing part is that after several weeks of sustained learning and head-bashing effort I now have a site that looks and performs almost identically to the old one! However, at least now I can add and change things in minutes rather than in hours or days!
Thanks again guys.

[john arran]

Thanks for that. My browser of choice is Chrome but I've checked it in IE8, as that's what I thought most people would be using. I deliberately decided not to move to IE9 for that reason  but installing multiple browser versions isn't easy and supporting them is a pain in the arse.
Talking of which, does anyone know of any site which enables you to virtually view a site in different browsers?

[slackline]

Thanks for that. My browser of choice is Chrome but I've checked it in IE8, as that's what I thought most people would be using.

A large number of organisations/companies are still on IE6, the NHS being one large example.

I deliberately decided not to move to IE9 for that reason  but installing multiple browser versions isn't easy and supporting them is a pain in the arse.
Talking of which, does anyone know of any site which enables you to virtually view a site in different browsers?

You could install a Virtual Machine like VirtualBox and have different OS installs with different IE versions to start with, and one of each version of say Chrome, Firefox, and Opera under each.

Worth bearing this in mind though, and sticking with your idea not to bother with older versions of browsers.

[john arran]

Thanks
I have just stumbled upon this site: http://ipinfo.info/netrenderer/index.php which is free and quick but only covers IE. At least it allows me to see the problem with IE7 though, which is very useful without messing with virtual machines or dual boot options, and it shows me that IE6 has the same issue too.

[douglas]

John, I have IE 8.0.6001 and see the same problem as 'the siger'

[john arran]

Thanks Douglas
Looks like I need to find time to look into it then   

[john arran]

Hopefully it's ok in IE back to IE6 now.
Thanks everyone for your help.