Unfortunately, there isn’t that many serious Virtuemart templates provider out there who are producing high quality Virtuemart themes. So I though I would share my experience and hopefully point you in the direction of finding the best of best. This article isn’t reviewing Virtuemart template providers, but more concerned with my experience of developing e-commerce websites using Joomla / Virtuemart templates.
Shape 5
I have personally used a number of Shape 5 templates for Joomla and Virtuemart. Currently, Shape 5 have three Virtuemart templates available. All three are not free but certainly worth the money. Shape 5 have utilised the demo sites for each template to provide guidance and instruction on setting up the template.
1. Your Store. This template is very customisable and has 21 module positions, and 20 colour variations.
2. eMerchantilism. This template has 19 module positions and various menu styles and colour variations.
3. Shopper Frenzy. This is my personal favourite of the three. I recently used this template to build www.gemmsdream.com. This template boasts 23 module positions and various menu styles.
VJ Templates
Probably the largest provider that I have found of Virtuemart templates. Currently, they have 30 templates covering many categories and theie design style can be observed in most of their templates. The only draw back is you can only use the template on one site; however, the documentation provided with the template is very comprehensive and their online forum is also very helpful.
I have only used one template from this site: www.homefurniturewarehouse.co.uk.
Template Monster
At the moment there are ten Virtuemart templates listed here covering a number of popular categories. They do offer a buy out fee of several thousand dollar, which I personally think it way too much to own the template outright. I haven’t personally used any templates from here, so if any has it would be great to hear your views.
Ice Theme
Ice Themes only have produced one Virtuemart template called The Store 2. I am unsure whether there ever was a Store 1, as it doesn’t appear on their site. The design of the template very much follows the Ice Theme styling of their Joomla templates. I personally have never used this template; however, I hope to get my hands dirty with this one in the near future.
Mall WP
I came across this website be chance whilst actually writing this article via Google Alert keyword Virtuemart. They predominantly provide WordPress themes, and only have one Virtuemart template called Top Shop. Normally, this templates is sells for $40; however, at the moment they have it for $5. Bargin!
I know this never going to be an exclusive list, so if you do find other Virtuemart template providers, please let me know and I’ll take a look.
Hi Ian,
Nice article. I’m fairly new to VirtueMart but loving it so far. It’s so powerful. I’ve used a VirtueMart template from TemplatePlazza.com on a Jewellery site (http://JewelleryJersey.com). It seemed well built and was a lot faster than some of the javescript rich templates around. TemplatePlazza have quite a few others too.
Am hearing a lot about Magento? Is anyone using this?
Cheers,
Phil
http://www.bluellama.co.uk
Hi Phil,
Thanks for your comment. I’m going to do a follow up to this post shortly, since posting this I have come across several other Virtuemart providers. I’ll take a look at the site you mention as well, as again I hadn’t come across them either.
Regards,
Ian
Is this Shopper Frenzy for newer Virtuemart 1.1.4? Shape5 own pages or kind of sticky, won’t work like it should.
Hi Sami,
I cannot remember off the top of my head. I would suggest checking the with http://www.shape5.com to confirm.
Ian
Hello,
I have just launched a Virtuemart Templates website focusing on offering Virtuemart Templates. Hope to hear some feedback or comments on our product from you guys.
Cassrina
I will consider to use one of it for our new site. Thanks.
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Thanks for good article. Hope to see more soon. I am also a joomla designer and its really great to know more about it.
While we are discussing the benefits of Virtuemart Templates, The list of features in the CMS systems differs considerably so you should be careful and study the list of features included with the template package attentively before making the purchase.