Top of the Line

Submitted by lauramba on February 17, 2010 - 13:47

I have been dreading this theme review for months. Let me explain. As a fan of the amazing and powerful CMS program Drupal®, I believe that ALL theme solutions are important. For Drupal to continue to develop into a world class publishing tool for EVERYONE, it should be easily made into an attractive publication. For example, a small school in rural Latin America should be able to find themes for free, or fee, to skin their site.

Top Notch Themes® is definitely an important member of the theming community. They produce Drupal® themes that are trusted by members of the development community. In fact, I have no hesitation in recommending that you purchase one of their themes.

However, I am not happy with a few aspects of their business model. First, where are the demonstrations? I know they have screenshots, but every other theme provider on the planet provides demonstrations of their themes in action.

Second, the prices are unbelievably high when compared with other commercial theme providers. For example, I am a developer member of Rocket Themes®, Joomlart®, YooThemes®, Joomla Bamboo®, and Template Plazza® which all permit me to download an unlimited number of themes. The price? About the cost of one theme with Top Notch Themes®. In the Drupal® community I can purchase themes for under $100 from ThemeShark® and ThemeSnap®.

Third, for the price I would like to see more bundled quickstart solutions. For example, ThemeShark® has a pre-configured theme quickstart installation that includes a Views Carousel and other nice pre-configurations. Though many may not use the quickstart installation there are distinct benefits to the theme purchaser. For example, many of us have struggled to install a set of modules and wish we could see how it was configured successfully in another site. I have found it very helpful to install the quickstart in an offline location and use it to help configure my installations, modules, and the theme itself.

In closing, Top Notch Themes® is producing solid themes that are trusted by the development community. I have no hesitation in recommending that you purchase their products. However, expect to pay a PREMIUM for the themes, have to ask to demo them, and look elsewhere for quickstart bundled installations.
 

Comments

Term paper (not verified)February 18, 2010 - 04:36
I really like your article, it is simple and precise, I will implement this to my new website Articles Idea.

greggles (not verified)February 17, 2010 - 17:26
Can you identify community events that the other theme companies you mentioned sponsored? TopNotchThemes has sponsored several community events and they give presentations that promote learning in the community - I haven't seen that from the other companies. There's also the fact that TNT release high quality free themes to the community while most of the companies you identify release mediocre quality or no themes at all. And there's the fact that TNT had the right license (GPL V2 and later on parts of the theme) from the beginning while most of these other places had to be reminded before they changed or still don't have the right license. It's a different class of business: template factory or community aware sustainable organization. For all of our benefit I hope people will choose the latter.

Anonymous (not verified)February 17, 2010 - 15:23
if you do not like to pay for quality you will not like top notch themes. their themes are made correctly by drupal experts and have the best support in the biz.

ipwa (not verified)February 17, 2010 - 15:20
I think you make some good recommendations to TNT, but I don't agree with some things. TNT contributes a lot to the Drupal community, they create and maintain Drupal themes for free, like for example the amazing base theme Fusion. These guys spend a whole lot of time helping in the Drupal community, contributing there work, and keep fixing and updating theirs contributed themes through the issue queues. I am not aware if any of the Joomla theme providers you mentioned do this, but for example th4 major WP theme shops don't. Look at Woo Themes, StudioPress, etc, they don't contribute anything to the community. It's a different story for TNT, who in many cases are making groundbreaking work in there themes. Btw, I know you're not a theme provider, but you don't offer demos for your themes, and removing breadcumbs with CSS is bad practice IMHO. Thanks for bringing the demos point up, it would be awesome to see demos for TNT themes.

Stephanie (not verified)February 17, 2010 - 15:18
Hi Laura! Thanks so much for the positive review. We are days away from launching our new site of Fusion-based themes, which all have demo sites. Existing customers will get a free upgrade to the Fusion version of the theme as well. Downloadable sites is a tricky thing to do well, but that is also in the pipeline for us. We're committed to doing this in a way that is secure, sustainable, and genuinely useful to our customers. Thanks again for the kind words :) ~ Stephanie

lauramba's picture
laurambaFebruary 17, 2010 - 21:04
Looking forward to your Fusion based themes and the demo. Keep up the good work.
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