Template Monster: Public Service Announcement

lib99:

So the template should function without the need to learn programming. Most people that buy a car are not mechanics. :wink:

You'd be sold a lemon every time if there wasn't Carfax! :frusty:

Have never been a customer or implied that in anyway.

Well I felt that I would try and give them the benefit of the doubt too, I felt that way as I wrote my last post. If they are indeed taking the approach that Testuser outlined then TM is simply being unethical.

If they want to present themselves as the generic template mega store then fine, I have no issues with that. But do a seach on "Zen Cart templates" and out of the first 100 results how many point back to TM affiliate sites? They are clearly not only promoting themselves as selling "Zen Cart" templates, and doing so in a way that in my opinion almost becomes spam.

I've purchased multiple Joomla! templates from multiple vendors, the most expensive of these cost me $35. In each case all worked perfectly with Joomla! in all browsers without my having to make any coding changes. The only changes I've made to any of those templates had to do with my own personal preferences and not trying to fix code.

TM is charging $150 per template and saying that it is a Zen Cart template. Yes the one that we purchased did have the ZC files but they did not all work correctly without some coding changes. For $150 that should not be the case. And how does the template look on a MAC with Safari? I have no way of knowing because I don't own a MAC, but based on the differences between IE and Firefox I have justified concerns about that. Something I shouldn't have to worry about given the price.

To give an example of the things I'm talking about; I found table headers with a background the same color as the text. The text on the account history page and download page was misaligned and ran together to the point of being unreadable. The "buy now" button on the products listing ran over the text below it. The text on the footer was misaligned, etc etc.

Because I am a developer, these were not difficult to fix, but that leads to the question, if it were not difficult for me, why did TM not fix the problems before selling the template? For someone who is not a coder, they are paying $150 for a template that is going to be ugly and end up having to pay even more money to get it fixed.

That's just wrong!

stage

I was stating my opinion please don't take make that a basis of you judge TM ... please make your own assumptions.

Assumptions tend to make an a:censored: outta anyone!

testuser:

I was stating my opinion please don't take make that a basis of you judge TM ... please make your own assumptions.

The trouble is that in the past you've said things like

testuser:

In the next week, new templates will be being released compliant with v1.3.7. It would take me personally a day to to do each template, fellis says the same as well. To knock them all out would take a full month, just the two of us.
and
testuser:

We talk pretty much on a daily basis [to Fellis]
So you clearly have inside knowledge and experience and that's why we are particularly interested in your perceptions, and curious that Template Monster have gone very quiet and you seem to have gone rather negative about them (unless you're trying to say that selling lemons is OK).

kuroi:

The trouble is that in the past you've said things like

and

So you clearly have inside knowledge and experience and that's why we are particularly interested in your perceptions, and curious that Template Monster have gone very quiet and you seem to have gone rather negative about them (unless you're trying to say that selling lemons is OK).

Definitely not, I thought they're practices to begin with weren't on the up and up which is why I assisted them in the process. I felt bad for the ones that didn't know any better.

The templates should clearly state what version of Zen Cart they are compatible with, which is now the case on TM's site ... but still not specific enough. I believe most of their templates are compatible with 1.2.5 but Zen went through significant changes with the 1.3 series and without working with those changes, some of the stuff looks ancient.

Anyone can clearly see they're marketing over quality, they have no specialist in the Zen area ... minor changes take hours. Clearly a case of using the name of Zen Cart to make money, ZC should jump on the bandwagon with them or blow em outta the water :cool:

Hi all, we were solving "The theme instructions" issue. Now I think we found a solution, please download again http://osc.template-help.com/zen_new.zip you will see there ZENCART_SHORT.SQL - that contains configuration values and our EZ-pages menu, but the buttons are off.

and there you will also see instructions.txt that will help customers finish theme set up.

It's very interesting to see your opinion here.

Close, but no cigar.

You still have not accounted for users turning on the things you have disabled or turning off the things you are using.

Point 1 - Turning the BreadCrumbs back on. Usuability studies show that breadcrumbs are needed. When you reactivate them they are inside the border of the center column and have no styling at all.

Point 2 - This one is really ugly. If you disable the Banner position 2 using the Layout Settings> Banner 2 (delete the banner group tm_banner) the TagLine also disappears and the page background changes from white to gray ... WHOOPS!

Point 3 - The written instructions are a step in the right direction, but you left out a crucial step - setting the Sort Order of the EZ Pages links -- no sort = no show :(

Three strikes - You're out as they say in American Baseball ...

fellis

Can I ask about the status of this "release". There are some fairly obvious errors in it, such as the logic error in the header template leading to Kim's point 2 about. So what is the intended purpose of releasing it at this time? And what are you hoping for from this community by doing so?

fellis:

Hi all, we were solving "The theme instructions" issue. Now I think we found a solution, please download again http://osc.template-help.com/zen_new.zip you will see there ZENCART_SHORT.SQL - that contains configuration values and our EZ-pages menu, but the buttons are off.

and there you will also see instructions.txt that will help customers finish theme set up.

It's very interesting to see your opinion here.

So what you are saying is you are releasing beta software and charging a premium price for it.

stage

stage:

So what you are saying is you are releasing beta software and charging a premium price for it.At this stage there's no charge for this template (though you can purchase the old template with this look - obviously not recommended), it seems to be being freely distributed for comment and feedback. But, personally, I wouldn't rate it as beta yet. A beta should have undergone extensive internal testing before being made available to an informed user group to verify that it works in the real world.

It's because this doesn't yet seem to be at beta stage that I have asked fellis for some confirmation of where he believes it's at, and what he's expecting from this community.

hello

2 kim:
I will correct number 1 and number 2 asap. As for the number 3 I have a concern here. What if the user already has his own SortOrder settings? If so, then our installation will brake his own setting and rewrite it completelly. I don't think that there should be two different packages for existing ZC stores users and new ones, there should be a universal solution, please suggest.

2Kuroi
I would name this release as alpha, after we agree about all things that need to be included in the package (i.e. SQL file) along with other issues such as Sort order etc - after that - we should do an intensive internal testing and release the beta to the community. After the community approves the beta - we will release it as contribution as promised and will start converting all existing stores to fit new specs.

kuroi:

At this stage there's no charge for this template (though you can purchase the old template with this look - obviously not recommended), it seems to be being freely distributed for comment and feedback. But, personally, I wouldn't rate it as beta yet. A beta should have undergone extensive internal testing before being made available to an informed user group to verify that it works in the real world.

The template has been removed from our database http://templatemonster.com/show.php?templ=14208 and is not going to be published for sale anymore since it is going to be donated to the community once its completed.

kuroi:

At this stage there's no charge for this template (though you can purchase the old template with this look - obviously not recommended), it seems to be being freely distributed for comment and feedback. But, personally, I wouldn't rate it as beta yet. A beta should have undergone extensive internal testing before being made available to an informed user group to verify that it works in the real world.

It's because this doesn't yet seem to be at beta stage that I have asked fellis for some confirmation of where he believes it's at, and what he's expecting from this community.

Even though my reply was to you talking about a specific template, I really mean all of TM's Zen Cart "compatible" templates. It just seems rather clear to me from the discussion on this one specific template and the one from TM that I've been working with that they haven't figured it out yet.

Yet they are spamming the search results to the point where its difficult to find any non-TM templates and they are promoting theirs as ZC compatible. That's my issue and one that the representatives from TM seem to avoid addressing.

I think its great that they are going to donate this one template to the community once you help them get it right, but what about all the other templates that were purchased by people who thought they were getting a plug and play template only to find out it still needed a lot of work?

stage

fellis -

On the top EZ Pages menu - In the template's SQL you have already added the buttons you felt were needed instead of letting the user choose the links they want to put in there. My point is that you only did it half way - your instructions tell them everything they need to know except the fact that there must be a sort order chosen for the links to show in the menu bar. You don't have to tell them what order to put them in, just don't assume that they know about the sort. :blink:

BTW- Just a bit of warning. Zen Cart is a developing program and as it evolves the templates change too - as you have seen with the changes from the 1.2 series to the 1.3. If you will fit the templates to Zen instead of trying to make Zen fit the templates, your lives will be easier as the program evolves.

Kim:

If you will fit the templates to Zen instead of trying to make Zen fit the templates, your lives will be easier as the program evolves.

Just clearly state something like this:

Zen Cart current version: 1.3.7.1

The following Zen Cart templates are compatible with version 1.2.x and below. If your in need of templates compatible with Zen Cart version 1.3.x and above, try looking here.

Then you could sell your templates, build them how you want to -> clients would know exactly what version of Zen Cart is available, and what version the template is compatible with.

Oh and Link out, ZC links back from partner page ... yes :smile:?

NO test, they shouldnt take that little slick shortcut,

they should follow the course of action they are on and do them right,

and I applaud fellis and TM for stepping up and listening to what these folks have to say,

I mean they are the formost experts on zen cart templates.....

Oh and Link out, ZC links back from partner page ... yes ?

Any business/referral arrangements we do or do not make with TM are NONE of your concern.

fellis-

I am seeing multiple browser incompatibilities - In IE7 the text is all centered vs being aligned left.

Kim:

Any business/referral arrangements we do or do not make with TM are NONE or your concern.

:rolleyes:

Kim:

Any business/referral arrangements we do or do not make with TM are NONE of your concern.

But a valid opinion ... and yes, none of my concern.