Template Deisgner

[inspireme]

Hi, I purhased indexu a week ago and have been hanging around on the forums a little. I was wondering if people ever needed well designed templates for indexU, I have been thinking about setting up 3-4 different layouts and graphics and selling them for around $20.

Would people be intrested in this? Is it worth me putting my time and effort into designs?

I have no example indexU site yet (still working on it) but have been designing websites for the last 3 years, and am currently employed as a greetigns card designer so hopefully the templates would be of a good standard

Lastly, I have noticed whispers about smarty templates... any time soon!? I love smarty

[brickholius]

I bet you could sell them for more than that. Its such a pain in the ass to change the zillionz of files....a template for $20 sounds pretty good. Changing the layout/template is so not intuitive. The lack of one standard CSS template is the major weakness of this script.

brickholius

[esm]

Would people be intrested in this? Is it worth me putting my time and effort into designs?

no and no.
there is just not enough activity with INDEXU. I do it because I have this insatiable desire to learn more PHP.

there are a handful of diehard INDEXU veterans. Once in a blue moon, someone comes along and gets involved for a short while until they lose interest or get frustrated. Until dody decides to become involved again, I don't see much changing in that area.

and as brickholius correctly points out, the lack of single CSS for formatting is a huge problem. And has been for some time.

Lastly, I have noticed whispers about smarty templates... any time soon!? I love smarty

I confess to never having used SMARTY. but I have used a number of template parsers over the years with my links sites. Since v3.1 used a very simple template parser, I originally thought SMARTY was a good idea. But I no longer think that. Take a look at the thread when dody announced SMARTY for v4 ( on 5-11-2003 ).

see http://www.nicecoder.com/community/s...ead.php?p=4501
in that post I referenced http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/show...threadid=67849

I do think that an enhanced template parser would be nice but I not sure that SMARTY will be well received by most of the INDEXU folks. I see a lot of snarling and gnashing of teeth over SMARTY. For those EXTREMELY few INDEXU users into "programming" they will love SMARTY.

BTW, take a look at the three talking points at the bottom dody's first post and compare them to the enhanced template parser of v3.2E. see http://www.indexuhelp.com/forum/inde...t=msg&goto=509. The enhanced template parser of v3.2E has LOOPS and IF-THEN-ELSE conditional statements. BUT, and this is a BIG but, it lets you use <% and %> which are used v3.2 and earlier. Or it also allows you to use SMARTY type tags.

Anyway, I digress. I didn't mean to be negative. Hopefully, what I have said is more fact than fiction.

I do encourage you to create the templates if for no other reason than you will certainly benefit from the knowledge gained from the the experience.

[Frank71]

Hm, I'm searching for a well done template set at minimum for 3.2, better 3.2E.
Simple but fine should it be, white background and some colors, blue or something similar. No dark sites and not to small letters.
Small header, site block, places for adsense (best in my opinion is left).
Possibilitiy to add some additional siteblocks.
Less graphics as possible and good css
Problem is to do a good shop with some more own templates so there is no need to change 15 files if you want to change some text lines or a table.

Regards
Frank

[inspireme]

Im going through the version of indexu I want to use for my site and editing all the code. If i was selling them I would make a design that worked from .css so people could change the colours from the admin section by typing the colour value.

I would sell various designs based around the .css

Its a massive amount of work which I wouldnt do for my own site as its quicker to "hack" it together. But if i was selling 10-15 at around $20 it would be worth doing for myself and for the use of others. If dody is going to release smarty template version in the next 6 months then its not worth it... Dody?

[Frank71]

For me design edit in admin is not important.

And <b>never</b> new stable version will come in 6 months...

Frank

[esm]

if i was selling 10-15 at around $20...

I suggest getting committments or least a show of interest.

[brickholius]

I might be intrested but i have no idea what your design capabilities are. Havent even seen your site. As for indexu4, im sure it will come out 1 day after my 1 year purchase date making an upgrade cost $.