I am checking out Umbraco to see what it can do. Other CMS's have huge ecosystems for templates or themes. WordPress has tons of templates at places like Woothemes.com, or elegentthemes.com or themeforest.com. DotNetNuke.com, another ASP.NET based CMS has snowcovered.com.
Umbraco seems to be very dry in templates, skins, themes or starterkits. Why is that? It has been out since 2004 so after more than 6 years, shouldn't there be some out already? Or is the market still too small?
I would like to get interested in Umbraco but the lack of templates is discouraging and I don't want to hire designers to do this kind of work.
There are the basic skins and starter kits that you can set up at run-time, and there are a few others in the package repository here: http://our.umbraco.org/projects/starter-kits.
I think the reason that there aren't any skins is that Umbraco works slightly differently from things like Wordpress/DonNet Nuke. Both of these have a defined basic site that you get when you set the system up (a blog with Wordpress, a portal with DotNetNuke). This makes it easy to create skins and themes. Umbraco on the other hand, has no front end by default, its left up to the developer to create exactly the site that they want, with the layout and markup that you want.
This means that most Umbraco site's templates are completely bespoke, as they relate to functionality specific to each site that is built, rather than all Umbraco sites being broadly the same, as with WordPress.
That being said, the templates for Umbraco are pretty much just HTML, so converting a theme from another system shouldn't be a massive hassle, as all you need is the HTML, images and css, you just need to chop it up a bit to make it work how you want on Umbraco. In fact, one of the agencies I freelance at has done this in the past, just taken all the template files and assets and ported them to Umbraco templates.
There are also quite a few good services for converting PSD designs into HTML/CSS templates, and serveral allow you to specify which CMS you are aiming for, which can cut down the development time on templates. One such service is PSD 2 HTML: http://www.psd2html.com/
I've just converted a simple html template from templatemonster for Umbraco. It is very simple to do and you get a lot more control over what content is updatable from within Umbraco than you might if it was 'off the shelf'.
We have just launched uSkinned.net to provide a variety of fully responsive websites packed with features and fully integrated with Umbraco.You will find everything you need to know about our offering on the website.
Again, obvious disclaimer. I am one of the developers and co-founders behind the service.
Where are the premium/professional themes for Umbraco?
I am checking out Umbraco to see what it can do. Other CMS's have huge ecosystems for templates or themes. WordPress has tons of templates at places like Woothemes.com, or elegentthemes.com or themeforest.com. DotNetNuke.com, another ASP.NET based CMS has snowcovered.com.
Umbraco seems to be very dry in templates, skins, themes or starterkits. Why is that? It has been out since 2004 so after more than 6 years, shouldn't there be some out already? Or is the market still too small?
I would like to get interested in Umbraco but the lack of templates is discouraging and I don't want to hire designers to do this kind of work.
There are the basic skins and starter kits that you can set up at run-time, and there are a few others in the package repository here: http://our.umbraco.org/projects/starter-kits.
I think the reason that there aren't any skins is that Umbraco works slightly differently from things like Wordpress/DonNet Nuke. Both of these have a defined basic site that you get when you set the system up (a blog with Wordpress, a portal with DotNetNuke). This makes it easy to create skins and themes. Umbraco on the other hand, has no front end by default, its left up to the developer to create exactly the site that they want, with the layout and markup that you want.
This means that most Umbraco site's templates are completely bespoke, as they relate to functionality specific to each site that is built, rather than all Umbraco sites being broadly the same, as with WordPress.
That being said, the templates for Umbraco are pretty much just HTML, so converting a theme from another system shouldn't be a massive hassle, as all you need is the HTML, images and css, you just need to chop it up a bit to make it work how you want on Umbraco. In fact, one of the agencies I freelance at has done this in the past, just taken all the template files and assets and ported them to Umbraco templates.
There are also quite a few good services for converting PSD designs into HTML/CSS templates, and serveral allow you to specify which CMS you are aiming for, which can cut down the development time on templates. One such service is PSD 2 HTML: http://www.psd2html.com/
I've just converted a simple html template from templatemonster for Umbraco. It is very simple to do and you get a lot more control over what content is updatable from within Umbraco than you might if it was 'off the shelf'.
If you are looking for themes for Umbraco you can have a look here also http://bindtuning.com/cms/umbraco/themes
Why don't you try for psd to html conversion services.
We have just launched a new site for custom Umbraco themes which you can find here: Themebraco
Obvious disclaimer: I am involved in the development of the site :)
We have just launched uSkinned.net to provide a variety of fully responsive websites packed with features and fully integrated with Umbraco.You will find everything you need to know about our offering on the website.
Again, obvious disclaimer. I am one of the developers and co-founders behind the service.
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