Why Drupal doesn’t have great themes -yet-
I think that both Todd and Morten have raised some very good points about difficulties with the theming landscape in the Drupal world, but I would like to offer my take on the issue.
First I will put on my economical hat and later on I will add some points from a developer point of view.
Product Life Cycle:
In the Joomla templates and Wordpress themes business, theme developers have already gone through all the stages that us Drupal folks will have to face in the near future. Premium Theme developers in Wordpress and Joomla appear to have gone through the classical Growth-Slump-Maturity pattern:
I think the Primary reason why people currently stay away from doing premium Drupal themes is simply because if you want to offer premium value you need to bring some seriously good themes to the table. These themes take much work to develop, building a theme that works on thousands of different websites is much harder than to make a theme for 1 client. On my latest premium theme I spent about 200 hours developing it and developing all its extra features. And that was after about 2 weeks of work on the design, and with the ease and efficiency of having my own basetheme.
The thing is, with the current size of the Drupal themes market, I’m not going to make a profit any time soon!
The markets for Wordpress and Joomla are each approximately 10 times bigger:
Steph & Chris from topnotchthemes.com and I, are pioneers in this field. It’s much easier and often more profitable to be an early follower, when Drupal themes and Drupal itself get a growth surge. When will this happen? No one can tell, it’s a risky business. I’m personally betting on Drupal 7 to make a difference.
Joomla and Wordpress are simpler to theme
Maybe the difference is smaller since the release of Joomla 1.5, but in the past there really wasn´t much you can do in a Joomla template, that´s why template was probably a more appropriate name. It´s just an html file where you could drop some variables. Same goes for wordpress.
In Drupal it´s a whole different story, there is a formidable learning curve. Especially if you want to keep up with the latest developments, your themes are not just a bunch of HTML files with some variables. In drupal we have theme function overrides, preprocess functions, Skinr, theme settings, Forms API, color module, the theme registry etc.etc.
If you want to compete in the Drupal premium themes business there is a lot more to learn than in the Wordpress world for example.
What´s next?
As the Drupal project keeps growing, and as premium themes are gaining acceptance, the market for Drupal themes will attract more and more sellers, prices will go down, and hopefully we will see the same, or even better quality themes as offered by Yootheme.com and Rockettheme.com.
I don’t see anything standing the process in the way, in fact I know that one big player in Wordpress is planning to release a bunch of Drupal themes this month (Woothemes).
I’m currently working very hard on some very cool and unique themes for http://www.sooperthemes.com and hopefully I will also be able to start releasing 2 themes a month instead of barely 1 theme.
Best Seller
Urgency is a strong design, perfect for clear and powerful communication.
Comments
Submitted by KK on Fri, 10/02/2009 - 10:29
nice article.
I feel so hard to develop Drupal themes, not the drupal technique / cvs problem.
wordpress theme, when you active it, you will get 90%+ as what you want. but Drupal theme there is really hard.
how to display last comment ? WP using directly query. however I think no one will do that in drupal. we using views. so how to give them instruction to do that.
Submitted by Drupal Theme Garden on Fri, 10/02/2009 - 13:01
Joomla and WP are not simpler to theme, but it's simpler and faster to learn how to create such themes.
Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 10/02/2009 - 13:39
"project keeps and growing"?
Submitted by JurriaanRoelofs on Fri, 10/02/2009 - 13:46
thanks I corrected that phrase
Submitted by Jimi on Fri, 10/02/2009 - 17:43
First I just want to say that I love your themes and they are by far the best Drupal themes I have so far (I found your website after quite a lot of searching).
I would find that themes websites equalling your standard in the wordpress niche would find their way to me through design and development blogs that hold promotions/ contests/ giveaways.
Perhaps you have already considered this?
Submitted by shanebond on Wed, 12/16/2009 - 05:56
I think that Drupal has got the best themes than any other and by far the best themes I have ever seen. I love to see more themes related to nature and they can also help in promoting nature.
Acne
Colon Cleanse
Submitted by Joomler on Sat, 01/09/2010 - 22:16
Very good and informative article, but i have a question about Drupal themes market.
You write that Joomla market is 10 times bigger than Drupal, according to Google trends, but does it mean that income from sellind drupal themes also is 10 times smaller ?
I dont think so, Thats why: all we know that everyone can easily googleit and find pirated Joomla and Wordpress templates, you can try this and of course find a lot of sites offering illegal Yootheme.com and Rockettheme.com templates (and not only, all magor providers like Gavick, Templatemonster etc), usually after several days of release. So, many users why search for themes dont buy it.
And, when i tied to find piracy copies of drupal themes i find only 5 real cool themes
Here is the interesting question: can you compare your Alldrupalthemes.com business income with Joomla template leaders (Yootheme.com and Rockettheme.com). Is it smaller, and if yes, how do you think in how times ?
Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 01/11/2010 - 22:47
I personally think Joomla is really an absolutely terrible alternative!! Wordpress, coupled with Wordpress MU & Buddypress, is a really easy yet powerful alternative - but Drupal is in desperate need of a drupal.org redesign: documentation is poorly laid out. All the Drupal experts will say, "Oh well if you want something easier to work with then you should go to WP, but Drupal is fine as it is..."
The reality is that if Drupal isn't made more accessible to the masses by making documentation simpler etc, then it will struggle to made the next leap in the product cycle. Also, we do want the masses to learn Drupal so that we can get exciting themes, exciting modules, etc. Also, something like Wordpress.tv would be really cool for Drupal!
All that being said, I hope you create a lot more themes, I love your designs (esp 'urgency theme') and I think what you're doing is exactly what Drupal needs! I definitely look forward to being a customer for the next project I work on.
I love Drupal, but with the advances of Wordpress (esp upcoming version 3) & Buddypress, Drupal is going to have a hard time breaking the next level if it doesn't do something about the terrible learning curve that a lot of people seem to talk about.
Thank you, alldrupalthemes is a wonderful site - well done!
Submitted by tom on Wed, 12/21/2011 - 00:55
I know this entry is old, but since even the big player "woothemes" have now stopped selling drupal themes, what would be your advice for someone who is thinking of focusing on commercial Drupal theming
Submitted by JurriaanRoelofs on Wed, 12/21/2011 - 18:44
It's funny that you ask this now because I just talked to Adii from Woothemes yesterday and yeah they're not planning to get back into Drupal any time soon.
I'm not really sure what you're asking about though, selling premium Drupal themes or working as a freelancer to sell theming as a service?
Submitted by tom on Sat, 12/24/2011 - 05:02
I am asking about selling premium Drupal themes. Was doing my research when i ran into your old post. I was under the assumption that as powerful as Drupal is, its poised for a take-off and it would be a nice way to get in from the bottom.
(Dont laugh) My plan was to get some attention with 2 free WordPress themes and phase in premium Drupal themes. But the amount of attention and WordPress business that my free WordPress themes brought my way is making me rethink this strategy.
Since you are one of the few successful premium Drupal theme sellers out there, i felt you would have some new insights on selling Drupal themes, 2yrs later.
Submitted by JurriaanRoelofs on Sat, 12/24/2011 - 15:01
Well, I think 2 years went by very fast and things didn't move as fast as I hoped. This is mainly because Drupal 7 adoption hinged on the late 6->7 conversion of a ton of contrib modules. Also, converting existing websites and all their theming/custom modules to Drupal 7 is quiet painful because of all the API changes in Drupal 7. Even now some sites/companies are developing on Drupal 6 because of the long tail of contrib modules that need to get converted to 7.
I have even higher hopes for the HTML5 powered Drupal 8 but it's looking like migration of modules and themes from Drupal 7 to 8 will be even more difficult.
Anyways, unfortunately the Drupal premium themes business is still nothing like the Wordpress equivalent. There are no companies making millions, like woothemes and elegantthemes.
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