i disagree about that statement. i think a couple of the template have potential and the design is not bad, not low quality, not poor at all...

cheers

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Hi all

I think that this contest a bit precipitated for these reasons:

- The timeline is too short.
- Not good explanation of 4.5.3 changes on the templates.
- The rules are a bit confused.
- I counted less than 100 votes total until now. To few votes to fit in a universe of mambo users.
- The need of registration to vote.
- Not apropriate voting system.
- Trying not offending the template autors, I think you can do better than this if you have time.
- it should have deadline for delivering the templates and a deadline to vote, so everybody haves the same exposing time.
- To few templates in the contest.
- maybe everybody should think in making a diferent template, than portals.
- the templates should be lighter and simplistic Css/Xhtml based.


Hey! By now all of you will think, this guy is nuts! -No I'm not nuts

my 2 dots,

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Peekmambo

I agree with you on some point, but i don't agree with you on the above
The forum is the best place to host a contest poll like this one, why?
Because it's hard to cheat and vote more than once and registration is part of that system.

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Michael Morris - Buyhttp Internet Services
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Oh, great! So everybody can still install their favorite template.

Michael, could you please add one more option to your poll - 'against all'?

Though I really appreciate work of those who submitted their templates, I think there is no template that should come with the core.

All templates are lacking 'creativity' (portal layouts only) and most are lacking thoroughness and carefulness.

If there will be no option 'against all', I will go for Madeyourweb. Somewhat nice, but not outstanding.

I allways build custom templates for all my sites. So for me the core templates are not used in a site, but they can be very usefull in showing the possibilties of a new release of Mambo.
Rhuk's Solar Flare was very usefull to me when 4.5.1 was released.
I agree with Bloke, it doesn't need to be a fancy glossy thing, it has to be a good example.

And I also agree with peekmambo [- Trying not offending the template autors, I think you can do better than this if you have time.]
I like MadeMyDay's own site very much. His submission for this contest has potential, but isn't as good as his own site.

Hi,

the last days I heard this argument very often. "Just another portal site", "not individual" and so on. If you "individual" guys could show me an "individual" layout, where NO custom suffix is used, WHERE all standard module positions exist and where you you have the flexibility to show modules or not without breaking layout, then show me these ones.

Me too. And therefore it´s very hard to design something where:

- every position is used
- no suffix is used
- switching modules off doesn´t break Layout or leaves empty spaces
- this amount of sample data (which is unneccessary imho) is placed

And another thing: I´m moderator at a german mambo forum, we have lots of questions about layouts where the position "left" isn´t left but right (e.g. planetfall) A newbie to mambo DOESN´T understand it, a newbie DOESN´T understand the solarflare template. So I decided to make a template, which is clean, where left is left and right is right. And where you have the possibility to easily switch between different colors and even sizes, where you can easily replace your logo, which is XHTML compliant and so on. "Power in simplicity" is the claim of mambo, not "individual style which noone understands and which can be used only for specific pages".

So, what do you guys want? Show me the design which should be implemented. And show me how this should be done with the sample data.

Sorry, just my two bits

Greetz mmD

PS: @netcruiser: My site is individual, this is not possible with that sample data, and if people install components, I would not guarantee that layout would be okay.

I agree with you. It is very hard to make a 'general' design. That's probably one of the main reasons that there were so few competitors. It would cost me quite a lot of time to come to a good looking, functional design. And then convert it to a CSS. That's why I think that next time we should be given more time.

ps. Most third party components don't go well with my templates. That is mainly because these components have way to much html code in it and use CSS to few. I spend many hours adjusting these components.

The reason there was not more time was because 4.5.3 is going to be released very shortly, and we needed to have everything done before it was out.

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I totally agree but if you vote for a good example you have to vote for Mc and not as me for Mmd_madeyourweb that I like. But even the design is important for having new mambers.