Building website templates with Joomla has changed quite a bit over the years. Gone are the days of simple basic templates that are essentially HTML pages converted into PHP and using the Joomla templating functions.
Now we see more and more complex template frameworks that extend the simple templating framework that most people are so use. These frameworks extend the functionality of the simple templates by adding in a huge list of additional features.
Here at PB Web Development we have been investigating the use of several Joomla template frameworks over the past year and have narrowed down our selection to just one that we feel is the most comfortable and most flexible for us in terms of customisation and use. The template frameworks that we looked at included, JoomlArts T3 Framework, RocketTheme's Gantry framework and our own in-house template framework.
The T3 framework by JoomlArt is the main Joomla template framework that we have been using besides our own mini framework that isn’t as complex or feature rich. The options between the two frameworks really gives us the flexibility to swap and switch between the two depending on the requirements and complexity of the project.
Benefits of T3
There are so many features just out of the box including, web fonts, prebuilt layouts and template themeing, inbuilt site caching. These standard features in their framework allowed web implementors to have a huge set of tools at their disposal to hopefully make development easier. You can see a full list of T3 Framework features on the framework overview section of our website.
Another major advantage is that a lot of other template development houses use T3 as a par tof their templating framework including, Gavick and of course JoomlArt.
Disadvantages of T3
Some of the templates are a little overloaded with additional features that you may never use. With a little bit of customisation of the templates you can take these features out and help de-bulk the templates of additional Javascript and PHP code.
This is where our own in-house template framework shines as it is optimised for speed and content delivery without all the bells and whistles.
Outcomes in Using Frameworks
So over the last year of using these frameworks we’ve now set our template usage to our own internal template framework and the T3 Framework which we’ve found works best for out clients and projects.
Knowing the templates well means that we can easily adjust and modify any of the templates that we use and if we come across any other premade template that runs on the T3 framework we can easily work within its build.
We highly recommend the T3 framework or any other framework for building Joomla websites. It doesn’t speed up the development process but more so gives you a whole new chest of tools to easily pickup and start using.
Thank you JoomlArt and the guys and girls working on the T3 Framework.