Template Monster: Public Service Announcement

While I am new to the ZC project, I am very excited about it and feel that I have a lot of skills and knowledge that I can add to the community. In addition to having a thirst for knowledge I also have a passion for sharing what I know and helping others.

As someone new to this project I find it curious that first no one has answered my questions about TM marking templates that have issues with ZC and what they are going to do about it. I mean its cool that they are fixing one with the assistance of a couple of ZC experts but what about the other ones?

And once this one gets added for the community's use for free, does that create a perception that all of their templates work well out of the box for ZC?

Secondly what is the goal of helping a commercial company in this manner. The fact that you are doing so in a public forum indicates to me that you want public input to this process yet you appear to be ignoring it.

I bought the book, I've been doing the research all with the intent to dedicating a lot of time to this community. But before I move any further I sure would like to know are you really going to let TM off this easily? The very template that has been identified as in the "alpha" stage, they were selling until they pulled it today. Does no one see anything wrong with that?

If I were an average user and not a coder familiar with open source software, and tried to use the template that my partner purchased from TM, I would have bagged ZC and gone back to oSC or one of the other commercial options.

stage

The TM representatives have asked for help and already stated in this thread that they intend to redo the existing templates with the knowledge they've gained from this experiment and help those who have already purchased them.

Is there not an expectation, I mean do a search on "Zen cart templates" and see what you get. Is it unreasonable that of the first 100 results that most should be compatible with ZC out of the box?

The truth is they are not because the majority point back to TM. And thus I feel is doing a disservice to the ZC community. I feel that some explanation needs to be given for that. That is all I am asking for. TM and their affiliates are using every trick in the book to come up first in the search engine results when one does a search for zen cart templates, they are now participating with a couple of ZC experts to learn how to do their templates correctly. I feel the ZC community deserves some explanation as to what is the current situation and I think that TM needs to provide some compensation to their customers who previously purchased their ZC "compatible" templates.

stage

Stage, if you read through this thread you will see that they have explained ( or tried to ) and for compensation, they have stated that they will offer the updates to those that have already purchased the exsisting templates ( once they are all braught up to snuff )

Stage

You've put your finger very firmly on the problem here. Template Monster have done an excellent job of marketing their products and are very well-established in the search engine rankings. But their Zen Cart templates don't work - causing huge grief and frustration for many would-be store owners.

The Zen Cart community is a strong one and we feel a great deal of sympathy for these store owners many of whom have come to us (and continue to come) to ask for help. Just look at the venom directed at Template Monster in the early part of this thread from the pros who have tried to help pick up the pieces for their customers.

As we have little influence over the search engine rankings, this problem isn't going to disappear. So if Template Monster are still going to be dominating the rankings, then the only route open to us to protect current and future Zen Cart users who may be tempted to buy a flashy looking template, is to put pressure on Template Monster to try to make sure that those templates at least work.

Personally, I'm conflicted about donating time and offering advice via the forum to help a commercial company who in some sense are a competitor. Other posts have expressed the same view more forcefully. But I rationalise this by telling myself that although TM benefit, it's the wider Zen Cart community that I'm helping.

And it is working. You asked for an explanation from TM about the disservice they were doing to this community, and earlier in the thread fellis did make attempts to justify their position. Of course it was indefensible, and over the course of the thread that stance has been replaced with a far more conciliatory tone.

That doesn't mean that all is perfect. Progress on their template is slow, and even if all the bugs were ironed out, I would personally rate it as being of poor quality technically. Despite their willingness to contribute it to the community, I'm unconvinced that informed and experienced members will actually welcome it. But at least it will (provided TM test and debug it properly) not break stores, not turn off legitimate Zen Cart functions and be easier to customize, maintain and upgrade, making it a better place from which to roll out new templates and to upgrade existing ones.

That's a long, long way from being a validation of Template Monster, but at least they're taking a big step in right direction.

Kim is a nasty little thing isn't she.

I have long given up on ZC. Last visit was on the 9th. It is people like kim that make me know that ZC is not for me.

Joomla templates are not perfect right out of the box either, no template is, so whoever said they are earlier, is wrong. As soon as a buyer uploads any template, a % will fail, while others will work, it is just the nature of all these parts working together.

For everyone bitching at TM for not seeing some errors, everyone navigates differently.

I have never bought a TM template, though I know I uploaded a hacked one and it failed.

Any template that relies on anothers cart, is doomed. So, TM should just rename ZC, call it TMC. It is GNU and in reallity, it can be packaged and sold, though I would not recommend any trying to sell ZC otherwise because you will need to outsource your customer service to India because it would be too expensive in the US.

So, no more updates to the carts unless TM decided to update their TMC cart.

Close the thread, and some should get anger management.

Kim: co-founded Zen Cart 2003. Four years plus donated to developing and supporting Zen Cart including a smidgen under 25,000 posts in the support forum.

WoosterOh: joined Zen Cart forum earlier this month. just 3 posts at time of writing, in support of a company whose inadequate products have brought misery to dozens (we know off) and most likely hundreds of Zen Cart users, despite claiming no knowledge of their products (other than a pirated copy which didn't work).

I'll leave the rest of the community to decide for themselves who has the most credibility here.

2WoosterOh

I do not know who are you, your profile does not show any information, but please do not interrupt this discussion. Your comments are not relevant at all. We are not going to produce our own e-commerce software because it is not our business. Our mission is to help people to get their professional look in the Web with low budget and we will continue to develop this niche.
We have started to produce ZC templates because ZC is popular. Millions people have selected this system to power their online stores. Maybe there are others on market, but they are not that popular. Since TM serves mass market - we will stay with mass players only.
In addition, you compare Joomla and ZC which are completelly different systems with completelly different purposes.

2stage
As Kuroi said before, we already expressed our willing to recreate all existing ZC stores to comply with a nes standard. We will offer free upgrade to our customers, once we complete the re-creation process.

As for your comments about spamming search engines - I would disagree about that. SE spam is strongly prohibited and we are not involved into this activity. We have pretty good organic rankings as well, as some our affiliates do - I do not think it is so bad, because there is very limited number of commercial ZC templates providers on the market at all.

2Kuroi

I would like personally to thank you for your fair opinion and feedback.
You are totally right and I completelly understand all concerns you've expressed here. I think we did a lot of things incorrectly, but it is not too late to step into the right way.

2 TMonster

I agree that you're not spamming. What you have is a very successful affiliate programme. We're in the e-commerce business here and I'm certainly not going to criticize you for being successful at it.

The concerns about product quality and support have been well-aired and don't need repeating, but I appreciate that you have taken them on board, and that these things can't be fixed overnight. Though you still have a long way to go, you are heading in the right direction.

I think that this thread has changed an morphed into something, more then a bitching about TM thread. As far as we (as a community) can tell, TM is doing their best to correct a bad situation. Yes maybe they are only motivated by bad press, but they are a company not looking to give things away. They are talking advantage of this forum just like every other for profit business that is on this forum.
My reason for making a post is this. IF you are just here to gripe and complaining about TM or make claims against TM that is unrelated to the development of the template that is being worked on here, then perhaps this is not the thread for you.
maybe the Choosing Designers, Hosts, and Programmers, would be a good place for a TM related thread, for complaining. it would be easier for people looking for a template to see reports in the future.
I dont want to take any more non helpful posts up on this thread so please PM me w/ you disagreement or start a separate thread to disagree w/ me, and let me know where it is.

If I were an average user and not a coder familiar with open source software, and tried to use the template that my partner purchased from TM, I would have bagged ZC and gone back to oSC or one of the other commercial options.

Exactly the problem we have at this moment. Zen Cart is losing because the templates do not work as they should right out of the box. It isn't our fault and we have warned folks over and over and over.

TM saw the opportunity to make money and jumped into the market. Nobody can blame them for that. But, by doing so without learning the Zen Cart system they have created a nightmare for their customers, for us and for themselves.

Now everyone can continue to snipe at me, each other and at TM or you can shut up so that we can get this problem resolved.

Unless you have something constructive to say or have found a fault in the template in question that needs correcting I do not expect to see any further posts. If there are we will close the thread and the work on the template will go private.

Any further personal attacks on me, the team or anyone else will result in banning from the forum. (how's that for nasty, eh?)

Kim:

Exactly the problem we have at this moment. Zen Cart is losing because the templates do not work as they should right out of the box.

Quote from their site:

Template Monster is pleased to present to you our newly updated product line of Zen Cart Templates. We have added newly designed Zen Templates to meet with the improved abilities and standards of the new Zen version just released.

As the great and the good from the ZC community are aiding Template Monster I think TM should show willing and add a warning that their templates are not fully compatible at present but they will be in the future.

They need to point out that unless you are happy to get your hands dirty you may be better waiting for the updated versions. Also fine to say anyone purchasing now will get a free upgrade as and when it is available.

This would then avoid any nasty surprises for unsuspecting purchasers.

hello All

2 kim: big thank you for spending some time to test our theme.
I uploaded tm_theme .alpha version again at http://osc.template-help.com/zen_new.zip

I corrected 4 things:

"Point 1 - Turning the BreadCrumbs back on. Usability 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."

-FIXED

"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!"
-FIXED

"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 file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/fellis.LOC/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image001.gif"

-FIXED

point 4 - incapability issues with IE and centered content -

-FIXED

Moderator Note: 6 posts not directly related to building the template moved to: http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=71083

*** quote of first post deleted***

Thank You VERY much for this information!

I bought a template from template monster. I knew I was going to run into problems. I didn't expect to buy a template and BAM!, everything is done for you. I bought a template well aware that I had to edit many options and images and change the setup to my preference. I had a few support issues which were resolved in sufficient time. Their templates are not expensive and they are worth the money. To have one custom built it's $300+ and would take time. Template its around 100 bux. If anyone wants to try them out, they aren't bad. Just be prepared to do work and run into issues, which are resolvable.

Onetrade,
the issue is that NOVICES buy these templates, and they SHOULD work right out of the box, just like the stock templates,
with all the switches and such in place and usable.

and kudos to the TM team for realizing this and working towards compliance

sure would be nice if they worked out of the box . many of them look fantastic and give a real professional feel to your site. these can give the perception that you are a huge business when in fact you run it out of your basement. This perception can be what makes your online store ultimitly successful.

it was my understanding that the reason many of them don't work is because they don't use the override system right . Like they override every single template file rather then just the ones that need changing and this is what causes problems between versions . this true ?

snarkys:

it was my understanding that the reason many of them don't work is because they don't use the override system right . Like they override every single template file rather then just the ones that need changing and this is what causes problems between versions . this true ?For the current range that is true. But worse they over-ride the standard files with their own versions that are poorly coded and don't include all of Zen Cart's functions. This is what they are currently working to correct.

TM, what is the current status of the operation? I have been waiting for over two months and my template still isn't working.

Last time I received 'new' template files from the helpdesk, but it turned out that 95% of the new files were absolutely unchanged!

Above that I don't hear a thing from the helpdesk. Right now I know within a week I will receive a message stating 'sorry for the delay, but... blablabla'.

In my last message I stated that if my site wasn't working on Monday (last Monday to be precise) I wanted my money back. Guess what, no response ever since...

I've totally had it... I just want my template to work! These guys absolutely don't care that closing down your store actually is COSTING MONEY! >-(