Merged Templating choices - including 3rd party designs - for Kunena

Is it just me or is kunena still being crippled by a lack of choices for templates.

Theres the one that it comes with and a handful of third party choices, most of which that have fallen behind in support. I was using one main source but thats ceased to be of use because they havent been updated to support beyond K1.6

So far Ive only found one developer that supports K1.7

Can anyone point me to more sources?

www.templateblender.com/

Thanks, mindriot, for starting this topic. I hope you do not mind if I moved it to the General Talk about Kunena category.

The Kunena team does not have any influence over people who independently have created templates for Kunena in the past. The team cannot compel independent developers to upgrade their templates - many of them that no longer work or that are no longer supported by those who designed them - when the team releases changes/bugfixes to Kunena.

What would help, when people discover problems with a third-party template written for Kunena, is to post a review in the KED about that template so as to give the developer an opportunity to respond. If developers do not respond to complaints or questions about their products then I think the consequences for those products (and those who advertise them here) are fairly obvious.

I accept the main point you're making which is about a general lack of template choices available for K 1.7 (or, possibly, for Kunena in a wider sense). We hope to improve on this situation by offering more choice in K 2.0.

Thanks Sozzled. NP. I will elaborate further and hopefully manage not to just restate points

I am aware that the Kunena team have been busy bringing Kunena up to a very good standard, but I do feel it would greatly help its wider acceptance if it had more styling choices.

I did not intend to imply criticism of the developers so I hope I didnt come across as such, and I do acknowlege the main developers have no power to compel third party developers. I do agree that third party developers could keep things more up to date, several times since the first Kunena have I had to change provider to get current support, twice having to give up on templates I was very happy using, and spend disproportionate amounts of time finding a new solution that matches a specific template in style and colour.

Since 1.6 / 1.7 I think it must be much easier to support styling templates as prior to that there were regular changes in the template code being mixed up with program code as it were and probably made the job of keeping up much harder, perhaps thats what limited more contenders.

I personally think Kunena is second to none in the Joomla arena, and certainly on a par with several of the yardstick forums in general, and I do think the lack of more styles to help integrate with joomla templates is probably harming take up a bit, but Im no expert so I could be wrong

Seems if the third party developers in general cant see the opportunity, the Kunena team have in fact an opportunity to spawn a whole range of styling options totally integrated into development and guaranteed to work. Perhaps the Kunena team should seek a partnership with some of the major template makers for Joomla, tie in theme releases with the monthly releases of those Joomla template clubs releases, then it would be a win on both sides.

Ive made a bit of an effort to have a go at soliciting a discussion, if Im lucky we can reveal some more choices, perhaps if it goes well it would merit a sticky :woohoo:

www.kunena.org/forum/170-K-16-and-K-17-T...ent-template-options

We agree. The Kunena forum and most of the add-ons designed by the team that you see today will continue to remain free: free to obtain, download and (as far as is humanly possible) supported. However, in the future, there is also the opportunity to structure things in a way that allows for professionally-designed, developed, and supported add-ons - including templates - to be offered on a commercial basis as many other Joomla developers have already done for many years. The basic product will always free but you pay for some optional extras. The issue then becomes a matter of deciding what's a basic, must-have feature, and what's optional.

We're not there yet, of course, but if we were to head down that path and do as you suggested, there would clearly be advantages in forging new partnerships.

In the meantime, however, many of the alternative templates,designed and developed by other members of the community, are also free. The level of guarantee that these third-party templates will work with Kunena (as well as a commitment to any long-term support) varies with each product. I still suggest using the KED as the vehicle to transmit any messages people have for third-party template designers.

Nice to be in agreement

Absolutely regarding the KED, hopefully anything revealed in the thread I linked can be added.