History: Theme marketplace outline
Preview of version: 14 (current)
Status: Tracker and pages added
The tracker has been added for submitting/listing the themes, and the associated wiki pages were also made. These pages are:
Field name | Field type | Description |
---|---|---|
Theme name | Text Field | The "official" name of the theme. This may be a variant of the theme's file system directory name and CSS file name. |
Valid | Radio Buttons (yes, no) | This has "Restrict visibility to administrators" set and is to control listing the theme or not. Could be switched to "no" if, for example, a bad link problem occurs, if there are problems with the theme temporarily, etc. |
Author | User Selector or Text Field | The name of the individual, company, or studio that created the theme or adapted a non-Tiki theme in the creation of the theme. (Maybe user selector field type is better, for accountability, identity, etc. purposes.) |
Website | URL | The website of the individual, company, or studio that created the theme or adapted a non-Tiki theme for use with Tiki. |
License (Tiki theme) | Multiselect (GPL, LGPL, MIT, CCA, Other) | Normally only one option should be selected, unless the theme is distributed under more than one license. |
Screenshot | Files | A 1200px-wide image to show the appearance of the theme. This image will be scaled to use as the theme thumbnail, etc. Try to minimize the file size by using an optimized jpg or png8 file type (but not so much that the image has compression artifacts, etc.). |
Description | Text Area | A brief description of the theme, including things like its best use case, color characteristics, origin or motivation for creation, special features, etc. This can be up to several paragraphs. (1000 words maximum) |
Description (brief) | Text Field | A sentence or some short phrases to use in places like the thumbnail caption area. (64 characters) |
Tiki version compatibility | Multiselect (Tiki 12, Tiki15, other) | Indicate the Tiki version(s) the theme is compatible with. |
Live demo | URL | Link to a website or page where the theme can be seen and tried out. |
Download | URL | Link to the file that is a compressed archive (.zip, etc.) and is either just the actual files used for the theme or also includes "source" files such as Less files and original graphic resources and so on. |
Price | Text Field | Either "Free" or "Premium" (monetary amount). Shopping cart, purchase function, etc. would be set up at the author's site. |
In the case of a theme adapted for Tiki | Header | Indicate a section for information on an original, source theme, if one was used. |
Source theme author | Text Field | The individual, company, or studio that created the theme in its original form, in the case of a non-Tiki theme adapted for Tiki. |
Source theme website | URL | The website of the individual, company, or studio that created the theme in its original form, in the case of a non-Tiki theme adapted for Tiki. |
Source theme license | Multiselect (GPL, LGPL, MIT, CCA, Other) | Normally only one option should be selected, unless the theme is distributed under more than one license. |
Background
(This is an edited version of an October 1, 2015 post to the developers mailing list.)
The idea is to revamp themes.tiki.org by giving it a focus as a themes marketplace (in addition to theme-related documentation, etc.). This would facilitate contributing themes to and finding themes for Tiki. At one time there was quite a bit of activity at themes.t.o, with new "aftermarket" themes being made and people posting in the forums about how to use themes and so on, but for several years it's been pretty quiet. The reasons are probably that questions about themes have been posted at the community site instead and, due to time constraints in the past (at least in my case), the flow of new themes slowed to zero.
Situations have changed now, though, so it's a good time to give the site a new mission. These are tentative ideas (feel free to give input):
• The site will be a marketplace for Tiki themes, as well as a theme docs site.
• Trackers will be used to store and display theme information.
• Themes will be listed with screenshots, specs, and other information, but not hosted (that is, not installed at themes.t.o).
• To see a demo of the theme, there will be a link to the author's site.
• Both free and commercial themes can be listed.
• There should be minimal requirements/standards for the theme.
• Themes (file packages) could be simple (just a bootstrap.css file with new values) or complex (CSS and Less files, icons, fonts, and templates, etc.).
• Since the "simple" themes are actually bootstrap.css equivalents, the site could also be a source of Bootstrap themes for general use (I don't know if this should be promoted, but it could be a way to expose people to Tiki).
• The license is up to the author, in contrast to themes for some platforms.
• Other suggestions?
To compare hosting/demoing approaches, for Drupal, theme authors are strongly encouraged to host their theme at drupal.org To have some inventory when the marketplace opens, there are at least a dozen or so themes in the pipeline, including new versions of a few themes that were previously available for Tiki, like Tikipedia, and some adaptations of Bootstrap themes that are pretty different from what's in Tiki now. Anyone wanting to have a theme listed there to promote your own business or to add to Tiki's theme selection, please plan on doing that, as well as giving your suggestions about the site.
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History
Information | Version | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
06:26 UTC System Administrator automatic conversion | 14 | ||||||
Fri 05 of Aug, 2016 07:15 UTC luci volunteering to prepare the page field for automation of the page creation process | 13 | ||||||
Fri 05 of Aug, 2016 05:06 UTC Gary Cunningham-Lee | 12 | ||||||
Fri 05 of Aug, 2016 05:01 UTC Gary Cunningham-Lee Updated info about current status. | 11 | ||||||
Thu 16 of Jun, 2016 14:11 UTC Gary Cunningham-Lee Ideas added based on feedback. | 10 | ||||||
Wed 15 of Jun, 2016 07:39 UTC Gary Cunningham-Lee Homepage links diagram added. | 9 | ||||||
Thu 09 of Jun, 2016 09:54 UTC Gary Cunningham-Lee | 8 | ||||||
Thu 09 of Jun, 2016 09:32 UTC Gary Cunningham-Lee | 7 | ||||||
Thu 09 of Jun, 2016 09:28 UTC Gary Cunningham-Lee Changes in tracker field ideas. | 6 | ||||||
Thu 26 of May, 2016 13:01 UTC Gary Cunningham-Lee Used UR~tc~ ~/tc~L instead of URL to avoid sanitizing and conversion to lower case. | 5 | ||||||
Thu 26 of May, 2016 12:59 UTC Gary Cunningham-Lee | 4 | ||||||
Thu 26 of May, 2016 12:48 UTC Gary Cunningham-Lee | 3 | ||||||
Thu 26 of May, 2016 12:45 UTC Gary Cunningham-Lee Proposed tracker fields added. | 2 | ||||||
Thu 19 of May, 2016 05:56 UTC Gary Cunningham-Lee Page created. | 1 |