Premium themes based on Omega?

Posted by chiebert on October 17, 2011 at 6:35pm

Being more of a site builder/solutions architect than a themer, I often find it cost-effective to purchase a 'premium' theme for clients (mostly non-profits) who can't afford a full-on design process. However, I haven't found many sources offering responsive themes.

Is anyone aware of anyone selling relatively low-cost (sub $100) themes based on Omega?

Comments

soon....

Posted by himerus on October 18, 2011 at 4:21pm

Soon, my friend, soon....

However, the average cost (for non-unique themes) would be in the neighborhood of $300, which is fairly accurate with industry standards right now...

http://themegeeks.com

Jake Strawn (@himerus)
ThemeGeeks | Development Geeks
Omega - 960.gs

Fair 'nuf...

Posted by chiebert on October 18, 2011 at 4:40pm

Thanks, Jake - Looking forward to the themegeeks.com launch.

Although to be fair, I'd place your $300 rate in the second tier (like 'prosumer' cameras), 'cause I'm seeing lots of sub-$100 out there (like 'point-and-shoot' cameras) - admittedly mostly garbage and not well-supported and none of them responsive, but with some acceptable keepers amid the dross. That said, I'd certainly consider $300 on behalf of clients for quality, responsiveness, accessibility and longevity were all there. :)

Either way, $300 for a mobile

Posted by bhosmer on October 18, 2011 at 4:57pm

Either way, $300 for a mobile ready omega-based theme is still a tremendous bargain. The going rate for most custom theming is in the $2000 to $3000 range.

Agreed

Posted by chiebert on October 18, 2011 at 6:56pm

Don't get me wrong - I'm sure I'll be a regular customer at $3c when clients can't afford the $3k!

Agree:-)

Posted by mazze on February 24, 2012 at 9:21am

Agree:-)

patience = masochism

Posted by plasticfrank on February 22, 2012 at 8:43am

I doubt I'm the only one chomping at the bit to see what you're cooking up. Any chance you could give us an eta? I might be building a site in a few weeks/months. I suspect that my life would be made much easier with a premium Omega theme.

patience is a virtue... :)

Posted by himerus on February 22, 2012 at 2:22pm

Well...

As it has been known to myself, my inner circle, and now even the majority of the Drupal Community for quite some time, I have been working on ThemeGeeks, both in theory and in development for the better part of the last 2 years.

I think as with any startup with little to no funding (in my case my development work funds the project) it is a time consuming process to get a project/product/platform out the door that will be exactly what you want it to be, and not turn out to be a flop of some sort, or become irrelevant in a matter of 6-12 months after launch.

That being said, I AM working on the project, the last month or so has been slow on writing code specifically for the project, but a client project or two of late has been indirectly funding the project, both in theory and in practice.

I can't give any definitive timeline as that seems to fail every time I attempt it. I've had a goal of launching at each of the last 2 DrupalCons if I remember right, and even Denver upcoming was another goal that will be sorely missed. However, I feel that based on the current workflow, the current project status, and the goals to hit prior to a launch that saying ThemeGeeks will be live, selling themes, and growing a community at DrupalCon Munich seems like a reasonable timeline...

All in all, it will be ready when it's ready, much like Drupal, and I'll stick to that whenever possible as I truly do not want to launch a project that is not ready, or not up to my own high standards in any way. And much like the most valued company in the world (Apple) I don't think a little bit of anticipation building for a while (hint: iPhone releases) has ever hurt the bottom line when a product went to market. :)

I as well as many of you Omega faithful am very excited by this project, and am ready to have it up and running!!

Stay Tuned for More!!!

Jake Strawn (@himerus)
ThemeGeeks | Development Geeks
Omega - 960.gs

Looking forward to the new

Posted by Steven_NC on February 22, 2012 at 10:44pm

Looking forward to the new themes

Does this mean that you have

Posted by alexmc on March 10, 2012 at 2:20pm

Does this mean that you have a bunch of Omega3 themes ready to sell - but not the means of selling them?

Might it be possible to see your themes and buy them some old fashioned way?

In any case I'd like to be kept informed of your progress.

Thanks!

Symphony Themes

Posted by zoon_unit on February 22, 2012 at 5:34pm

All the Drupal 7 themes here: http://www.symphonythemes.com/ are based on Omega 3. Pretty decent designs.

Take a look at the free Alphorn and Conch themes for an idea on how these themes are structured.

Hi zoon_unit, Checked out the

Posted by samwillc on February 22, 2012 at 8:30pm

Hi zoon_unit,

Checked out the free themes because I was wondering what the point of pre made subthemes was, still wondering. What do the subthemes do that you can't make yourself from a starterkit? Or is it just about saving time?

I think I would actually give up designing websites if all that was available was pre made subthemes, it would be so uninspiring.

Sam.

Couple of reasons

Posted by zoon_unit on February 23, 2012 at 3:32pm

1) Premades are good teaching tools. Alphorn and Conch helped me learn my way around Omega 3

2) Good for non-themers. I'm not really a themer. (although I imitate one) If there's a theme close to what you need, the flexibility of Omega makes it very easy to tweak existing sub-themes in a hurry. Symphony has some good Commerce compatible themes that can save a lot of theming time.

Ok thanks. I agree with you

Posted by samwillc on February 23, 2012 at 5:41pm

Ok thanks. I agree with you can break them apart to learn new things but not convinced of using one to save theming time, you could always build your own generic one and use that as a base to tweak. Then you'd be very familiar with it and know what css does what etc. as you named everything yourself. Commerce compatible could be a winner though :)

Sam.

awesome

Posted by plasticfrank on February 23, 2012 at 11:23pm

Thanks for the update Jake! Good things are worth the wait. I'm just happy Themegeeks is in the pipeline. But I'm glad you chose to reply because sometimes for people who aren't in the know, anticipation is indiscernible from abandonment. Good luck with it!

As to the questions samwillc asked about the usefulness of a subtheme... Not everyone in the Drupal community wants to be Drupal god. I myself am an illustrator. Advanced web design is outside my skill-set and it would be counter productive for me to invest heavily in acquiring a high level of Drupal expertise. I see Drupal as a platform that I can (somewhat) easily leverage to build a better integrated, and more feature-rich web presence than I could normally achieve on my own and do so economically. Simply put, I think with a functional knowledge of the basics of Drupal, a few good modules and a strong theme I can put together a good website.

I expressed interest in Omega Premium themes because I see it as a chance to put money in the hands of one of the most important contributors to the Drupal community while getting a product that is sure to be smart, flexible and well designed.

What's more is that I'm confident that using Drupal and a premium theme to make a simple site now will allow me easily scale up the website in the future. As my budget grows I can hire a designer make a custom website that builds on what I already have, instead of eviscerating all my content and starting from scratch. Technically I could build my simple site using WordPress and a couple plugins but that would mean that eventually I'll have to either abandon that site or transfer everything to a new system when I start scaling up. I would rather just start in Drupal and stay in Drupal.

The sentiment that everyone in the Drupal community is or intends to become a Drupal Wizard is one of things that is stopping Drupal from exploding and becoming reigned king of open source cms. Drupal would be so close to being useful to both experts and non-experts if not for this sentiment. The Drupal learing curve is a myth. The problem is that the documentation is written with the belief that everyone interested in Drupal wants to know everything. The truth is that if you simply told a any reasonably computer literate person get Drupal, get Omega, get Views and get all the supporting modules that Drupal tells you to get, that person could have a cool little, completely custom Drupal site up and running by the end of the week. But people are so overwhelmed by all the unnecessary information they are assaulted with when they try to read the documentation that it keeps a lot of intermediate users from joining the ranks.

For some people Drupal is just a tool. You don't need to understand a hammer inside and out to use it. Yes there are professionals who are more accurate and effective with a hammer and get payed accordingly, but most people just do what they see everyone else doing with a hammer: bang it on things without much concern with the details.

Count me in

Posted by LiveWire on March 17, 2012 at 5:52pm

I am a themer / developer by trade and would certainly pay for the time savings on a "prosumer" theme if I only had to change out some basic CSS and images.

Omega is simply perfect for everything I do but it takes TIME to program. $3k is about right or even cheap for a quality Omega theme.