I will help design a new thirty bees theme

[led24ee]

If possible then add me too to this list.

[Mark]

Leaving out most 3rd party modules is a totally understandable thing from a build point of view. I agree minimal is good, however it's obviously a pretty terminal thing for those modules people have or want if they aren't compatible so there needs be a clear process for assessing and handling what modules will no longer work properly/at all with the theme and what options the site owner has ... and what module developers need to do to get the module compatible.

Edited September 22, 2021 by Mark

[jollyfrog]

1 hour ago, led24ee said:

If possible then add me too to this list.

I have created a list of group members and added you to the list. Thank you.

[datakick]

8 hours ago, Mark said:

...terminal thing ... if they aren't compatible so there needs be a clear process for assessing and handling what modules will no longer work properly/at all with the theme and what options the site owner has ... and what module developers need to do to get the module compatible.

Almost all frontend modules will be affected, if the new theme will be based on different technology stack. I assume some of them will be easy to adjust -- simply rewrite the views and use scaffolding blocks from new framework. For some modules it will be much harder, as it might require rewriting parts of js and/or php. 

It's not reasonable to think that module authors will do this kind of modifications, at least not until the theme is well adopted by the community. 

Will this new group provide technical support for all these modules, and help with views/js adjustments?

If not, I'm afraid the new theme would not be adopted by general audience. Technical people like @wakabayashi might have no problems adjusting those few modules they are using for the new theme, but ordinary merchants wouldn't know how to modify module templates. They want something that works out of the box. 

Just my 2 cents

[wakabayashi]

1 hour ago, datakick said:

If not, I'm afraid the new theme would not be adopted by general audience. Technical people like @wakabayashi might have no problems adjusting those few modules they are using for the new theme, but ordinary merchants wouldn't know how to modify module templates. They want something that works out of the box.

It's a fair point. I am not a good example for the average merchant.

What surprised me was the follwoing: 

1 hour ago, datakick said:

as it might require rewriting parts of js and/or php

Why would you ever need to change php? I mean it's not the task of a them dev to change functionality, is it? IMO it should be the goal, that a theme DEV doesn't need to change PHP. Of course he should have a very basic knowledge, but not more... JS is clear. I am not a fan of putting too much functionality on JS, but obviously thats part of the theme game.

 

@jollyfrog I am always open for some interesting discussion about ecommerce/tb. But I won't get much involved in any decision and surely not work. As I really plan do to my own thing. I am also not totally sure, what the plan is right now. A new theme the way you plan it, means basically, that you just don't like Niara Design. Is this correct?

I just don't understand why do this again. Niara is not even 2 years old. If I do something new, I will try it with new technology. My way is ofc very radical. But it could also be interesting to build a theme with Bootstrap 5 and loading jQuery for compatibility reasons. @datakick would that work, without breaking most modules?

[datakick]

10 minutes ago, wakabayashi said:

Why would you ever need to change php? I mean it's not the task of a them dev to change functionality, is it? IMO it should be the goal, that a theme DEV doesn't need to change PHP. Of course he should have a very basic knowledge, but not more... JS is clear. I am not a fan of putting too much functionality on JS, but obviously thats part of the theme game.

What I meant with PHP is that module developers might not opt for using templates for some views. Sometimes it makes sense to generate html markup directly from PHP. For example, I've seen markdown interpreter module -- this allowed you to write your product description in markdown language, and the module converted it to html. For that, some php library was used, only customized to inject proper css classes to the output. Bootstrap css classes, mind you. Such module would not work properly on different tech stack, not without rewriting this php customization.

With js -- a lot of modules use javascript to construct and replace DOM tree dynamically. In that case, bootstrap classes and building blocks are hardcoded inside javascript code. How hard it would be to rewrite this functionality to work properly with different css framework depends on how similar these frameworks are. For example, bootstrap's rows/columns abstraction are not always available.

[jollyfrog]

8 hours ago, wakabayashi said:

@jollyfrog I am always open for some interesting discussion about ecommerce/tb. But I won't get much involved in any decision and surely not work. As I really plan do to my own thing. I am also not totally sure, what the plan is right now. A new theme the way you plan it, means basically, that you just don't like Niara Design. Is this correct?

To be honest, it wasn't that I had a dislike of anything. I explored TB on behalf of a client and realised that there wasn't a suitable theme available for their shop. I liked the idea of TB, regardless, and I like to contribute to decent open source projects if I can. I saw that certain members of the community were unhappy with the theme options available, and I have built themes in the past for various platforms.

I am no expert with TB, which is why I requested the help of those who have the skills and experience to implement the theme, but perhaps don't have the design skills to do it alone.

There has been a ton of discussion over the past 7 months and I took a back seat for a while, as there was too much confusion over what should or shouldn't be done regarding a theme.

The reason I am still in the picture is this thread keeps being resurrected, and I am repeatedly asked if I am going to design something. I feel that if the right people are willing to support, I should complete what I started/offered.

With that said, I have no personal agenda. I don't personally need a theme.

As a merchant and a developer, you clearly have an in-depth understanding of the problems which other merchants face (better than I do). I know you were looking at building something with Tailwind and potentially starting from scratch with your own theme.

If you feel that a new theme [design] is not the right solution, what would you suggest for other merchants?

Would you suggest that Niara should be improved instead? Or do you feel that Niara is sufficient?

[cienislaw]

23 minutes ago, jollyfrog said:

Would you suggest that Niara should be improved instead? Or do you feel that Niara is sufficient?

IMO Niara is just a 'skin' for Community Theme. there are no major differences between those two in terms of functionality. so as Community Theme was outdated, Niara still is too, but looks a bit fresher.

[haylau]

There seems to be a big push these days for 'Elementor' / Page builder style themes, there are some for PS1.6. (https://themeforest.net/search/elementor?platform=PrestaShop 1.6.0.x#content)

Is this doable for Thirtybees?

If you 'just' design a new theme then nothing much will change - it has to have :

1) Compatability with existing systems / modules

3) Mobile friendly

2) Functionality and most important adaptability / configurability

[haylau]

Or

Rather than re-inventing the wheel, could the 'owners' of thirtybees have conversations with some of those theme developers (only the best / most configurable themes) and offer a one off payment to adopt that theme as the new default theme and simply port it across and adopt it as the standard theme when TB is installed making it effectively open source. Perhaps the theme (Panda? @Jonny?) could actually supply a slightly cut down version with big advertising within their theme for the extra modules so they gain even more?

I am sure some of us would financially support that one off payment - I am sure it would not be too much as they won't really be getting many sales from ThirtyBees customers anyway.

Many of these themes are highly configurable and work with templates which can be imported and exported, then:

@jollyfrog could dessign some standard templates with help from users such as @Mark and @led24ee and @cienislaw who have perhaps some specific design features in mind

And them some development of the theme would be down to devs like @datakick, as part of the thirtybees environment, but other great devs like @wakabayashi, @yaniv14 are more likely to submit improvements and bug fixes on Github?

Win/Win??

[wakabayashi]

@haylau I am not interested in such a project, as my point is: yes we should finally think about reinventing the wheel.

About Elementor or something similar. I believe TB should have a pagebuilder/theme_config module, that each theme can rely on. Obviously this would be a huge work and won't happen any soon. 

[jollyfrog]

It appears, given the lack of response to the community invite to form a group, that there is no "community" interested in the theme.

Unfortunately, it does not look possible to design a theme based on the suggestions of the community when the community will not come together to vote on ideas and settle on some fundamental goals of the theme.

With this in mind, to end the endless discussion. I am officially dropping out.

If in the future, a group forms who are willing to make timely suggestions, vote on them and support the development of a theme, drop me a message.

For now, all the best.

[veganline]

@jollyfrog was there a particular problem with Niara for your client?
I'm happy to hack templates around if I know how, and put them on the "tips and tricks" page if that's what's needed. I don't know if I'd do it well but Haylau made the same offer.

[Mark]

On 9/24/2021 at 8:51 PM, haylau said:

Or

Rather than re-inventing the wheel, could the 'owners' of thirtybees have conversations with some of those theme developers (only the best / most configurable themes) and offer a one off payment to adopt that theme as the new default theme and simply port it across and adopt it as the standard theme when TB is installed making it effectively open source. Perhaps the theme (Panda? @Jonny?) could actually supply a slightly cut down version with big advertising within their theme for the extra modules so they gain even more?

I am sure some of us would financially support that one off payment - I am sure it would not be too much as they won't really be getting many sales from ThirtyBees customers anyway.

Many of these themes are highly configurable and work with templates which can be imported and exported, then:

@jollyfrog could dessign some standard templates with help from users such as @Mark and @led24ee and @cienislaw who have perhaps some specific design features in mind

And them some development of the theme would be down to devs like @datakick, as part of the thirtybees environment, but other great devs like @wakabayashi, @yaniv14 are more likely to submit improvements and bug fixes on Github?

Win/Win??

I asked this earlier in this topic of @Smile and got no response unfortunately @haylau

I have spoken to the Panda makers once who said they'd like to help but

a) its a big piece of work

b) TB base is too small

Doing this kind of work is, in all fairness, beyond the realm of volunteer work and its not surprising the guys here reluctant to help out.

What I could see working possibly is this:

The theme could be built as a collaboration between Panda (for example) and the guys here. We do very much need this. What we have is all we have, and it isnt enough now, let alone the future.

Panda have done this before, they will probably know the best path under collaboration from people here.

Smile needs to talk to Panda, he's the boss, its his baby.

 

BOTTOM LINE:

We members are going to have to pay for it, and we should have expectations around what we get. The money we pay should go to thirtybees, and Smile the owner of thirtybees, should pay Panda to get the work done with help from the guys here to keep costs down.

 

Without this, thirtybees gets closer to to its own untimely demise.

[wakabayashi]

On 9/24/2021 at 3:56 PM, jollyfrog said:

It appears, given the lack of response to the community invite to form a group, that there is no "community" interested in the theme.

Unfortunately, it does not look possible to design a theme based on the suggestions of the community when the community will not come together to vote on ideas and settle on some fundamental goals of the theme.

With this in mind, to end the endless discussion. I am officially dropping out.

If in the future, a group forms who are willing to make timely suggestions, vote on them and support the development of a theme, drop me a message.

For now, all the best.

I feel you. In general, the expectation are too big at the community. I had to learn it too. There is just no such community. There are for sure some TB installations around in the web, cause some Dev installed it. But there are only a bunch of people that really chosed TB and fully stick to it. 

That's why I also don't understand why this compatibility topic is so inviolable. IMO it would make sense, too just collect data, which modules are used by now existing TB User. Then to move forward and give some kind of support for the really used modules right now...

[wakabayashi]

9 hours ago, Mark said:

The theme could be built as a collaboration between Panda (for example) and the guys here.

This idea comes up a lot. Also when we talk about modules. To be honest: I haven't seen any collaboration coming, out with a serious result, since I am in PS World. While this idea makes sense in theory in pratice it (almost) never works.

Btw: I worked like 10 hours at the weekend to push my theme project a bit forward. I am very happy with the progress. 😎

IMO I already found a very stupid behaviour that each theme copies from the other themes (root is probably 1.6 PS theme), but was probably never intended to do so. If you have ever looked into the tpl files, you have maybe noticed that some tags are opened in header.tpl and closed in footer.tpl. Very unnecessary... Just use layout.tpl for it. Such stuff is the reason, why I prefer to do it from an empty folder.

[Mark]

23 hours ago, wakabayashi said:

Btw: I worked like 10 hours at the weekend to push my theme project a bit forward. I am very happy with the progress. 😎

IMO I already found a very stupid behaviour that each theme copies from the other themes (root is probably 1.6 PS theme), but was probably never intended to do so. If you have ever looked into the tpl files, you have maybe noticed that some tags are opened in header.tpl and closed in footer.tpl. Very unnecessary... Just use layout.tpl for it. Such stuff is the reason, why I prefer to do it from an empty folder.

Hopefully you'll see a way to take this that might not be as bad as it first looks (or at least you'll be able to define exactly whats involved) and maybe others will help you in that if you provide the framework by which to do it.

Edited September 28, 2021 by Mark

[Billy]

I have been following this thread and wondered if we can gain some insight from other systems. So digging around I found that Xoops has a new theme based on Bootstrap. Now I know that this doesn't relate very well to TB. However we can glean some powerful insight on how these new themes are designed for said opensource systems. Does this help any? Well yes I thinks so as it's a free guide on how other systems are moving forward. Let me go on to add that Joomla now has themes based on Tailwind. I will provide links to the new Xoops theme. You can google for the new Joomla examples. If you think looking at other examples is a benefit or not.

https://www.monxoops.fr/modules/xmtutorial/tutorial.php?tutorial_id=15

https://bootswatch.com/4/

https://github.com/thomaspark/bootswatch

Edited September 28, 2021 by Billy
added bootswatch github

[wakabayashi]

@Billy Thanks for the sources. It seems to me, that they have a pretty similair approach when building a theme... But I haven't looked deeply into it. Surely they work with variants too.

[Billy]

@wakabayashi I figured it wouldn't hurt to look around and see if I could find some bootstrap 4 & 5 examples that could be used. I guess the main thing was the license from which the examples were released. Those at bootswatch are under MIT so they can be used as a base for TB with no issues.

V4 & V5 bootstrap releases https://github.com/thomaspark/bootswatch/releases

Edited October 1, 2021 by Billy

[wakabayashi]

@Billy For me this bootstrap stuff isn't too interesting. As I go with an other CSS Framework called "Tailwindcss". In general most Dev have clear opinion what they want to use. It often leads to little fights inside Dev discussions ^^ 

I just wanted to say that, not that you create big hopes that anyone here will build something with bootstrap...

Edited December 2, 2022 by wakabayashi

[Billy]

@wakabayashi Yea I know your using Tailwindcss that's why I posted about Joomla above using Tailwind too.

Anyway lets go a little deeper here with Magento and Tailwindcss

Magento has new Tailwindcss framework see this writeup below. It's a very interesting approach from the ground up.

https://alanstorm.com/magento-frontend-2020-a-preview-review-of-hyva/

Very expensive framework but certainly state of the art.

Now in first google search I found open Tailwindcss example for Magento under MIT license 

https://github.com/NavaneethVijay/magento2-sass-tailwindcss-theme

I find examples of other systems pushing the limit quite refreshing. Can TB learn from examples like this I think so.

Edited October 4, 2021 by Billy
spelling

[Billy]

Just to add based on search of Magento, Opencart & Shopify...

Shopify has the most examples of eCommerce themes based on Tailwind.

github tailwind "shopify" theme

 

[wakabayashi]

Thanks for the sources. Tailwind is now very popular so it's not hard to find stuff about it. But I bought TailwindUI, so I have access to really high quality templates. 

I have coded a very modular way of how a theme should work IMO. In general it adds a Framework in top of TB. Module Developer could save a lot of time and merchants would get a consistent design. But unfortunately it didn't get any real response in "DEV" Channel from TB. Either people are no more around or they are just no interested in creating big changes to an old system. 

BTW: I am on a webserver. So if somebody would like to see, what I do, I could give you the URL by PN.

[Billy]

Nice as i was looking for examples under correct license to redistribute. Since this is all about bringing next level theme to TB it needs to be open license.

Maybe someone else has links to templates with right license?

@wakabayashi  I would love to look. I guess your asking about our countries when you say URL by PN. I am in the US...

 

Edited October 5, 2021 by Billy