Dubsak — 05:27 on 03.02.2010

I haven’t really been able to grasp how these are useful to EE users but I guess we’ll see how it plays out. From a personal standpoint, as a fan of design, it’s disappointing to see a layer of homogenization creep onto my favourite CMS. From a professional standpoint, I’m always disappointed when I see purchased themes resold as complete solutions to clients. As they say though, to each their own.

Randy — 06:00 on 03.02.2010

Give me themes or give me death (EE user since 2005)

Rob Lombardi — 06:00 on 03.02.2010

I too noticed them this morning and already test-drove the demos. I was thinking about this very thing this morning on my commute to work. As attractive as these themes are, why would I want to spend money for these themes?

I agree, as an experienced user of EE, I prefer to have the added flexibility of creating my own thing. But at the same time, I’m not much of a “designer”; so perhaps for I can use the framework provided in terms of layout, aesthetics and then tweak it to fit my specific needs.

I personally, like to save a few bucks and try to learn how to create something. But perhaps with my tight schedule, and since web development is not my full time job, I might need to consider getting a packaged theme as a well-design framework to use for my own purposes.

I’m still on the fence, because sometimes it can take just as long to learn someone else’s implementation and tweak it, as it would to learn how to do it yourself. And if you learn how to do it yourself, you have the skills to reuse in future project. On the other hand, learning someone else’s well-designed implementation can also be a learning process to see how you might improve the way you do things.

Whether you use another framework, or build your own, it should be with the mindset that you are building your skills and improving your ability to build better websites with EE in the future.

Todd — 06:36 on 03.02.2010

I would rather the themes exist than not… even if I never use them. The more resources built around ee, the more attention it will get. Plus, many people like to use themes to learn from. While most people who currently use ee chose it for reasons other than themes… a new kind of person will probably join the community because the ability to quickly import a theme brought them in.

Omkar — 08:15 on 03.02.2010

I think it’s a great thing that will help a lot of people who are new to EE get started.  I agree with Todd regarding learning from it (for example, the slider in the Delegate theme).

Brian — 09:53 on 03.02.2010

Dubsak - I agree!

Absolute crap! WooThemes you killed the quality that EE has held for such a long time. Nothing good comes out of Templates.

John Faulds — 10:13 on 03.02.2010

Maybe I’m wrong about the theme buyers market but I would think that most would not be developers and as such would be looking for something that’s fairly easy to set up.

Buying a theme removes some of the technical barrier to getting a site up and running, but the reason you’d choose EE over WP in the first place is because it gives you more flexibility and it’s easier to pull off functionality that would be troublesome with WP.

So assuming that the average theme buyer would probably only require basic functionality (because otherwise they’d really need developer skills) and faced with WP which is free and EE which isn’t, I can’t see them going for the paid option.

Andy — 15:37 on 03.02.2010

I used a purchased theme in wordpress to get me started that I learned from a lot quicker than a book and it allowed me to customise and get the site live quicker.

I think these themes are a useful starting point for new users

Jim — 09:21 on 03.03.2010

Precisely the reason why I left WP for EE - to get away from every site looking the same/setup the same and so on.  I understand the idea that these are good to learn from to set up your own, but the greatest thing about EE is that you’re responsible for your own “theme” - the content dictates how things are supposed to be laid out.

Ryan Battles — 05:21 on 03.16.2010

I don’t really get how you can use a “theme” with ExpressionEngine.  You still have to make decisions about weblogs, fields, etc.  I have used XHTML/CSS templates with EE, but that is just to get started with a design.  The structure of the content and the back-end experience is unique with every site I create.  Personally, I don’t see EE themes taking off.  Why would someone fork over $299 for a CMS just to cripple it down to what a theme tells them to do.  That’s what Wordpress is for.