Template Monster: Public Service Announcement

testuser:

Your post was moved last night I believe (depending on your geographic location:cool:).

Here's the thread.

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=72835

I thought that this line would have made it useful to be included in this thread:

"Why am I babbling about this topic here? Because I really was near the point of trashing the Template Monster template that I paid for, until I learned how to find all the annoying hidden hardcodes using Xsearch. So it really was a good tool that 'saved' the template for me."

Anyhooo, there it is again for reference. Anyone interested can jump to the link in tester's post above.

Sorry for a long period of silence. We work hard to re-arrange our production facilities to comply with ZC requirements. At the moment we have decided to stop producing any new templates until we get things resolved.

I'll keep you posted about the progress here.

-edited-

pasi:

I added to my customer agreement that I do not work with deadlines if the customer wants to use a bought templateWe learnt our lesson some time ago and now simply refuse to work with sites where the client uses one of these templates, and turn away one or two prospective clients almost every week :cry:

It shouldn't be like this and I look forward to seeing the results of Template Monster's improvements and hope that these templates will truly become an asset to the Zen Cart community rather than a liability.

kuroi:

and hope that these templates will truly become an asset to the Zen Cart community rather than a liability.

i agree, these could be wonderful if they worked ....

snarkys:

i agree, these could be wonderful if they worked ....
Even if some items did not function so that the design can be delivered, but these were in the form of Zen Cart structure and not some 3rd obscure coding regiment so that on woul know where and how to "tweak" these on a standard would be a great improvement.

i.e. "Nifty Zen" free template - Designer left aligned this but it is fully within the Zen Cart structure and can be worked with easily.

hanc:

I have been reading this topic. I recenlty purchased a TM template too and having some problems too. One of my biggest headaches is that, on the "contact us" page, their default company contact information is already there and always there, and I have no idea where to go to remove them. I updated my own contact information through admin->too->define pages. That part of their info. is not there for me to remove at all.

The undesired "default" information is like this:
Customer Service: +1 800 559 6580
9870 St Vincent Place,
Glasgow, DC 45 Fr 45.

I went to "view source" and found this part from the txt file:
**<address> **Customer Service: +1 800 559 6580<br>9870 St Vincent Place,<br>Glasgow, DC 45 Fr 45.<br> </address>
Maybe this <address></address> thing indicates something? I only know basic knowledge about php or css codes.

I appreciate any help from you, thank you!

They put that in their SQL file that they have you upload, read through the SQL and revert that statement.

j0ney3:

They put that in their SQL file that they have you upload, read through the SQL and revert that statement.

obnoxious remarks removed

Hi there,

I spent $160 on a template monster template.

The specials page on my site doesnt work properly if you add a product to specials it balloons the page out.

Add to this other problems, and no response to support, you end up on here moaning. (seems they've got a terrible reputation on here anyway)

The site looks good, so overall im happy, but they should sort their templates and their customer service out.

Phil

Hi

Allthough these templates on this site here look very nice,
http://(sorry, site offline)/

they all look pretty much the same.
just the colors and images css etc have been changed
the layouts are pretty much the same

I dont think that is much of a template change
I feel the changes in templates should be a strong one

as in the classic look to something like this http://www.voug5.com

and in the posts maybe post a screen shot of it as well

kryton, these are ALL templates that are designed and donated to the community,

Just how long did it take you to sort out the issues with that template monster template?

no one says that their sites dont look good, just to bad they lack most of the functionality of the ones in zencarttemplats.info

and the fact that there are hard coded changes and that they have manually coded OUT features and functions that they either cant figure out how to work in or dont feel are relevant,

Case in point
http://74.211.135.100/index.php?main_page=products_all
If you look at this page WHATS missing? the quick add boxe, where are they.....
neither product has attributes

So with this design when someone looks and says to add these items to cart,
they are now faced with an error
http://74.211.135.100/index.php?main_page=products_all&disp_order=1&action=multiple_products_add_product

so while they look nice they function for crap

kryton:

Hi

Allthough these templates on this site here look very nice,
http://(sorry, site offline)/

they all look pretty much the same.
just the colors and images css etc have been changed
the layouts are pretty much the same

I dont think that is much of a template change
I feel the changes in templates should be a strong one

as in the classic look to something like this http://www.voug5.com

and in the posts maybe post a screen shot of it as well

Don't most TM templates look the same too ?
It's pretty easy to spot a TM template or a variant just by looking at it ...

Or were you posting to the TM discussion thread for some other reason ?

So are the TM ZC themes updated to work yet?

Nope not to the b est of my Knowledge

Merlinpa1969:

Nope not to the b est of my Knowledge

TM said they've stopped development until they get it all straightened out ... my guess 6 months. This was a classic example of OSC and Zen confusion.

Stopped development..yes
Stopped offering, for sale, zencart templates
that do not work correctly..no

misty:

Stopped development..yes
Stopped offering, for sale, zencart templates
that do not work correctly..no

Make money, then make more money supporting your failed attempt.

Gotta love it. :lamo:

I've worked with three different TM templates over the past month or so, client bought them, my job was to make them work. I've encountered some issues that seem to beyond their coming up to speed with ZC.

Across templates their PHP code is essentially the same, at least in what it does. Yet the actually text in the code shows many inconsistencies. Some times the code is commented, other times its not. Often times different variables and class names are used when there really isn't any reason to.

I found the PSD files provided in particular difficult to work with. The layers have no descriptive name, only the default numbers. I found myself going through over forty layers attempting to find the correct one I needed to work on. It was after the second go round of this exercise that I took a couple of hours to give the layers descriptive names. Why didn't they do that?

I have to say that I didn't have that much trouble fixing their PHP code, it was the basic layout code (HTML/CSS) that caused me the most work.

If I were to get a TM template for a non-ZC system, would it work really well or would it also have issues? It's an honest question, I have no experience to say one way or the other.

stage

OSC and CRE templates I believe are decent enough ...

They stepped into the Zen market on an insiders tip. Didn't work out to well...

Diversification failed miserably!

Such simple fixes can't be fixed by them with ease? I'd put some worry into that.

If I were to get a TM template for a non-ZC system, would it work really well or would it also have issues? It's an honest question, I have no experience to say one way or the other.

stage

I would say "monster" ^^.