Best theme for Thirty Bees

[motion2082]

What is the best theme to use for Thirty Bees?

The community theme or a totally new theme?

[yaniv14]

The community theme will always be updated to support core changes. So I guess it is the best to use. What I usually do, is creating a new theme based on duplication of community theme.

[alwayspaws]

The transformer theme (themeforest) and the warehouse theme are supported by thirty bees per Michael Dekker. Also, @lesley and I convinced the Transformer theme developer (Jonny Li aka tantan199 aka sunnytoo) to support thirty bees.

[motion2082]

Nice it will be great when more theme developers get onboard.

[Pedalman]

Oh, that is interesting news.

I started ThirtyBees with Shoply (Iquit author of Warehouse) 10 days ago. Actually we migrated after 5 years Prestashop.

I stumbled about several critical issues (schema org prices differ from price -> very bad for google shopping/PayPal login crashes cart/images on product page are loaded as mixed content http:// though SSL is set for whole page).

In a nutshell, I would like to copy layout design now form our Shoply theme into Warehouse, since Iquit refunded me Shoply in order to buy Warehoues :) Here it is said, that mdekker supports Warehouse. Well, that is best news but should it be vice versa. Shouldnt Iquit do so? Anyhow this is thumbs up for me for buying Warehouse until Community-Theme gets a homepage builder.

Or are there concerns agaings Warehouse and general suggestions is for Panda and Transformer (not to mention community-theme blob?).

[wakabayashi]

@yaniv14 said in Best theme for Thirty Bees:

What I usually do, is creating a new theme based on duplication of community theme.

How do you take care for changes, after you have duplicated?

[yaniv14]

I just follow up on community theme updates and add them manually if their necessary. Most updates usually are on core files or modules and not theme files. I usually setup the new theme based on the client design and makes sure that there are no bugs, in most cases the theme don't need any future modification that are bugs related.

If you look at the community theme repo, it has only 87 commits in total and most of them are before it was stable for release, and some of the others commits are not important if you modify the layout and the css.

[Pedalman]

Taht is absolutely reasonable and I think another thumb up for a homepage builder in the communtity theme. Until then I will need help to get of my actual bugs that drive me nuts or a sunny weekend to migrate to a suggestion like Warehouse, Transformer or Panada ...

[alwayspaws]

@yaniv14 said in Best theme for Thirty Bees:

I just follow up on community theme updates and add them manually if their necessary. Most updates usually are on core files or modules and not theme files. I usually setup the new theme based on the client design and makes sure that there are no bugs, in most cases the theme don't need any future modification that are bugs related.

If you look at the community theme repo, it has only 87 commits in total and most of them are before it was stable for release, and some of the others commits are not important if you modify the layout and the css.

For the transformer theme and similar "3rd party" themes, I don't know how to keep up with all this and when to do an update and when not to.

The only updates I currently do are when I'm in admin and see a notice of an update. That's easy for me and easy to cope with.

All this other stuff is beyond the scope of my experience. There must be an easier way, right?

[yaniv14]

@alwayspaws The are rare occasions when you need to upgrade your theme to support core updates. Most of commercial theme updates are to fix bugs that discovered by users who purchase the theme and not to comply with new releases. If a theme is working fine with no bugs why upgrade it. In case you do want to upgrade a commercial theme, I suggest contact the developer and ask him/her what files has been modified, and just consult on this forum before doing any upgrade.

[alwayspaws]

@yaniv14 - That is a big relief. Thanks!

[x97wehner]

@pedalman I am using Warehouse as well and so far have found minimal issues

[Janvier]

Warehouse here as well, so far so good.

[Pedalman]

Nice, I am going to be another Warehouse user then. I just bought it and when I got the time and did some testing I will migrate from Shoply to Warehouse.

(Issues might rise since the theme Shoply is ca 90% the same as Warehouse. Anyway, I won't deinstall modules in order not to loose settings and to minimise the time I will have to spent to get the same look I aleady have with Shoply in Warehouse. I will just delete Iquit Shoply modules via FTP and then install Warehouse, deinstall Shoply. I think I will be good)

[koskimaa]

What's the status in February 2018 on this?

What themes are supported? Panda seems gone from a lot of marketplaces.

Is it basically a choice between the community theme or Warehouse?

[30knees]

Panda got kicked from Envato for stupid reasons: https://www.sunnytoo.com/9135/selling-transformer-panda-themes-on-sunnytoo I'm happy with the Panda theme, but the community theme has the advantage of always being supported.

[alwayspaws]

@koskimaa The transformer and panda themes are fully supported and will continue to be.

I use Transformer theme for PS version 1.6. There are versions for 1.6 and 1.7 for panda and transformer.

Jonny Li, the developer, provides excellent tech-support by email if you are a purchaser and also in the forums. Many people are there.

Please check it out, including purchasing details.

https://www.sunnytoo.com/forums/forum/transformer-theme

Create your own login directly into his site.

[koskimaa]

Thanks for sharing the info guys, good to know we have at least:

• Community theme
• Warehouse
• Panda
• Transformer

...to choose from. I’ll look further into the info about Jonny Li, the dev as well.

[alwayspaws]

@moy2010 or @MockoB (sorry, it's been a while) I don't know where your question is about the difference between panda and transformer but I told you I'd ask Jonny. His forum post here says:

https://www.sunnytoo.com/forums/topic/please-report-compatibility-problems-with-thirtybees#post-15451

Panda theme for thirtybees was created based on Panda theme for prestashop1.6, so they have almost the same features. Features shows on demos for prestashop1.6 are all available in Panda theme for thirtybees.

[Pedalman]

Cool would be a section in the TB forum where we could download "JSON" overrides for the named themes. Each of the commercial themes has micro data markup integrated but since TB offers the nice TB module "JSON" markup... I am happy with Warehouse theme until TB realeases a template editor for the communinty theme. And I vote for an editor not only for the homepage but also for category pages (category ID) and cms pages (cmd ID).

[hubbobubbo]

I just tested to install PS 1.7 and I have to say that if we could have a community theme looking something like that it would be an excellent starting point to make your own customizations from.

On another note, with a clean install of PS 1.7.3 when I tested to add a new product image to a demo product it did not show in Frontoffice even though it was all ok in backoffice, scary...

[zimmer-media]

@hubbobubbo

I'm not sure what you mean, or whether I understand that of you correctly now - but this is the forum for TB and not PS.

I think it will take some time until the TB 1.7.x release.

EDIT: Sorry, but I'm not smart from the requests, it's about ps 1.5, then times with ps 1.6 and then even ps 1.7 it is more than confusing to me

[hubbobubbo]

@zimmer-media maybe I did not make myself clear enough. I am planning to update from a perfectly working 1.5 to either TB or Prestashop. I am currently in the stage to choose which theme to base the update on. Yesterday I tried to install PS 1.7 for the first time and I only spent 30 min on it but I made two quick observations:

1. The default theme in 1.7 is really nice, it would have been perfectly fine for me to start developing on. Due to that my comment on that if TB in the future has a community theme of that caliber, it would be more appealing to people getting started because the first impression is really nice. That was the positive remark in favour of PS.
2. On the negative side, in the short time I spent with PS 1.7 I found several things that simply did not work such as mails and also the simple thing of adding an image to an existing product. That such a basic thing is broken in the latest release of PS strongly talks against spending time on 1.7 right now.

Hope that makes it clear, I am fully aware that this is a TB forum but I think its good to cherry pick what is good also from PS 1.7 and keep improving on what was already good in 1.6.

[wakabayashi]

@hubbobubbo Well you are right. Your decision will be thirtybees or 1.7 ps. I wouldn't rely too much, how the basic theme is looking. As you said, in ps there are a lot of things broken. If I were you, I would test out, if this things are working for you here in tb.

[zimmer-media]

@hubbobubbo

Thanks, now I understand your situation better. For me there were several reasons to switch from PS 1.6.x to TB. PS made (I think I'm not alone in this thought) with the 1.7 version too many steps back. Even if you sometimes have to take a step back to get 2 steps forward, there were too many negative steps backwards for my shops.

In terms of design, I personally think that you can find out in peace through the existing suggestions in the forum and your own tests, existing demos or even at live shops. There are already some suggestions in the forum. For the most part, they have so far referred to the themes of Sunnytoo (transformer & panda theme).

The decision to switch to TB for me was the main reason, for example - the optimization (further development) of the PS 1.6 version - better and faster BO & FO - SEO options (product links, duplicate urls, etc) !!! - etc