How to Select Joomla Website Templates

One of the most common remarks we hear people make after looking at various Joomla website templates is "Joomla looks so cluttered". First all of all, do not confuse Joomla! with the templates you can upload onto it. Joomla is a very powerful web content management platform. It is like Windows or Linux. So you can upload different kinds of website templates into it. Simple, clean, cluttered - whatever your heart desires. You can even upload an empty page with just your name on it. In other words, the look and feel of the website template you use has nothing to do with Joomla's functionality as a CMS.

Then, when you analyze website templates designed by Joomlart or Rockettheme or Yootheme or other website template providers, you would notice that all these template power houses offer a large number of module positions on their templates: 17 module positions, 27 module positions, 40 module positions on a home page! When they showcase their templates, they fill all those module slots with some demo content, and as a result, the templates look very busy. But that does not mean you would need to use all those slots. Those module slots are there by design, but you don't have to use them, especially not all at once! All you have to do is "uncheck" the unnecessary modules inside your Joomla management panel, and the template layout will adjust automagically. You can decide to have only your main menu and one body column and nothing else, if you wish.

However, if in the future you would want to showcase different things on your home page and add something, you can use one of the available module slots by "checking" them back. No additional design work will be required. So, the more modular the template, the more efficient it is. You will never need a re-design. So, when you look at a website template, the busier it looks, the better it is. It is very easy to disable module positions, adding them is not as easy, it would require some additional redesign work.

Also pay attention to the type of modules available by default with a given template. Sure, it is not difficult to add and install various modules and components, but if you are building a new website by yourself, it is best to find a website template that would have 70% of your desired features by default (such as search, login, newsletter sign up, etc etc). Every new module and new component requires some degree of tweaking and testing. For a web designer, adding new modules and components is not difficult; for a person new to Joomla, it can cause some learning pains and unnecessary frustration.

To summarize, the more module slots you see on the template's home page, the better it is. And if those module slots display the type of features you need - fantastic!

Things NOT to pay attention to when selecting a website template

What you don't need to worry about are various visual elements of the website template:

• fonts type, size and colors
• color scheme of the menu
• shading, gradient effects, reflections
• background image
• ornaments or other stylistic details around boxes
• images, borders
• image galleries and their appearance
• graphical elements on individual modules

All these elements are very easy to change and customize. Joomla uses CSS files to control the look and feel of its website templates. There are dozens of image gallery components, so if you don't like the one you see in your base template, you can get another one installed instead of, but you would install it into the same module slot. Check out various Joomla extensions, there are thousands of free and commercial extensions from which you can select what you need. Free and commercials, there is an extension for every function you can possibly think of. But you do need to have a pre-designed slot in your template's layout where you'd display these extensions - and that's why the more modular the template is by default, the easier it will be for you to decide where and how to present various features on your site.