Choosing a theme for Thirtybees migration

[hubbobubbo]

I am planning to migrated to TB when 1.0.4 is ready. However there are a lot of comments around the themes and their possibilities floating around.

From what I can see these are the options most mentioned:

• Community theme I installed this a few months back. It probably has the basics but it felt like a long way from a production site. @ssimard made a nice site based on it but confirmed it required a lot of work.

• Warehouse. I have not tested this but I saw a comment that @mdekker is doing some TB maintenance on this one. Does this mean TB is taking a personal interest in this theme?

• Transformer. From the latest comments it seems that Sunnytoo wants to focus only on Panda for PS 1.6. If that is the case this theme will become less relevant for TB.

• Panda. Seems to be very popular. However there are some comments on sunnytoo which are a bit concerning. The old version used for PS 1.6 is apparently not getting enough love according to some users (not only TB users). It seems the PS 1.7 version is more polished and receives more features. I tried the demo site for TB and while providing the basics it was not really impressive either.

Please note that these are just high level findings trying to plan for a theme to start working with when migrating from PS 1.5 to something else.

I follow the TB community closely and read all posts here daily and would like to do the migration to TB instead of PS 1.7. The only thing that worries me is the front office experience and work involved in remaking our 1.5 site.

If anyone has more comments or thoughts about this to share it would be very interesting.

[MockoB]

1. Community theme - some like it, I don't. But if you aim performance it would be the best one to choose.
2. I doubt mdekker has personal interest in that theme, he most probably helped someone with it.
3. I would stay away from so popular template, if you want identity I don't think transformer is your theme. I read many times the author is devoted and supportive, but the thirty bees template is missing some of the main features, which I don't find very promising ...
4. Same for panda theme, except I'm not sure if the thirty bees version has all features.

Why you need to upgrade the 1.5 shop? I decided to keep mine on 1.5 because it is working properly and I personally find it faster even than thirty bees. Yes, it has some bugs but it's not something I can't live with. One thing I understood in my life is: if something works, don't try to repair it.

All my new projects will be on thirty bees. I struggled very long with premade templates and finally found someone to make me a custom theme based on the community one. That way I will keep the best possible performance and go away from that basic look. I am also waiting 1.0.4 like you.

And I tried many 1.6.1.x themes on thirty bees and so far all work as expected. So if you go for premade one, I don't think you have to limit your choices to the ones you mentioned above.

[hubbobubbo]

@MockoB thanks for the very informative reply. I agree, my 1.5 site works fine. My main concern is that I do not have https support except for the checkout page. Do you know if that is possible to add on 1.5. Apart from that I guess there will be other improvements coming further down the road but site wide https is something I do not know how to solve on 1.5

[MockoB]

I tried to force ssl on all pages once but I remember it was followed with some issues and I disabled it. Now I have it only on checkout page like you. I don't remember what the issues were but at that moment it was not an option solving them on live site... Did you tried to force ssl on all pages?

[MockoB]

No, I don't because it is regional site. But tomorrow I will contact my hosting support and will ask them if it is possible. Thanks for the information @mdekker.