lauramba!

i would not buy template made on tables
bukmacher

In my opinion, tables are easier to work with and you can still optimize your site this way. There are so many factors that you should not stop at this point.

Hello Laura, if you are still reviewing premium Drupal theme providers we just released several new themes and also provide an option to join our Premium Drupal themes club.

Also I just read one of your other blog posts and noticed a broken link entitled "growing list".

Hope to see you at Drupalcon SF!

I wrote about this on my blog a while back. I just downloaded a regular HTML theme for a client and was very displeased with what I got from them. Anyone that knows anything about good design, and structure, should stay away from these templates!

Laura --

I've purchased 4 themes from TemplateMonster over the last 2 years. I've had 2 that were as you described: table-based, spacing / code not so great, etc.

But I've had 2 that were "decent." Not as great as TopNotchThemes, but workable. They were both CSS-driven, and had collapsable columns. They had a limited number of defined blocks, but the basic block definition was ok. The CSS was well structured, and I could extend it fairly easily.

The only _real_ hassle I had with them was with the PSD artwork original, actually. In one of the two sites, I wanted to have the top artwork be something that changed from page to page. I had _hoped_ that the way they'd defined the HTML/CSS layout of the headers / menus / ... would make that easy. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. I had to re-layout some of the CSS "above" the main content area, and re-work the PSD file so it output graphics that worked.

That said, the job didn't take me more than about 3 hours. And given that I'm not a "designer" per-se (more of a person who can theme somebody else's design), this was a fair tradeoff: I paid a small amount of money for somebody's creativity, then put my technical skills to customize it for my purposes.

They have full-page previews of their templates; but the preview server is frequently "offline", and even when it's working, you can't _really_ tell everything about the template. But you _can_ tell if the layout is CSS-based (vs. table), and if you have Firebug installed, you can see the way the artwork is structured.

The thing that TemplateMonster does is to present people who don't build websites for a living (e.g. "your customers') with a bunch of visual design choices. It can help them understand some of the basics - 2-3 column, where headers / menus / breadcrumbs / ... can go. So they're good for a starting place. (What customer's _don't_ typically understand is what is relatively easy to change in the theme, and what is hard. This is where using TM as a resource breaks down....)

So don't throw the baby out with the bath water. If you're not a creative person, and want somebody else's inspiration, my experience says there's a 50/50 chance that < $100 will get you the inspiration - and a reasonable starting place for code.

Seems to me that their drupal themes are just "ported" from plain templates. So, they don't have "native" drupal themes and quality of them ...
If you wish to have drupal theme with better quality and flexibility, you probably need to spend more money and to buy something from TNT (Top Notch Themes) - they are building really great drupal themes.

"I'm not rich enough to buy cheap products."

I looking for how to breka one big page in two or more pages in Template monster.

Great themes, I actually use one of those

We have started our family site on Drupal recently, and coming from a Textpattern background we were rather disappointed about the quality of available Drupal themes, too.

We didn't even look that close into how they are built (layout tables and what-not) but simply failed to locate many themes which were as visually appealing as the ones we were acquainted to. IMHO, most public Drupal themes look so ... nineties. In the end, we gave in and reverted to Minelli ;-)

They actually have some pretty good themes. It helps out a lot if you know a little about html so you can tweek them a bit