Are there any other partners waiting for new templates to come out for use, such as the “Template Max”. It’s been a while since any new ones have come out. I know we use them as a starting point for many of our sites in Treepl and BC and also they serve as a great way to sell new sites. These templates save a lot of time and for new users are a great way get things working properly when starting out.
Do other partners find their templates useful? Let Treepl know if you do.
I find them usefully occasionally, but at the moment I would prefer functionality and user experience be fixed before more templates, personal opinion only though.
I generally don’t use templates but regardless of the platform, I find that templates usually don’t save me development time because I’m always having to modify them—mostly deleting unwanted stuff and modifying the css. But because I don’t come from a graphic artist/designer background, templates can give my client a more beautiful visual design and some nifty little behavioural function or animation that I otherwise would not have thought to create.
I did use the Dine&Wine template for a client which produced a really great outcome but I wish it had come with instructions for how to modify it. That would have saved me heaps of time.
In general we don’t use the templates made by Treepl. We have used the furniture for a client that needed a site with ecommerce ASAP and that worked out perfectly.
The templates are great in general but my personal opinion is that it is great with some templates to start out from, but I don’t see it as a main selling point for Treepl. We use a lot of templates from Themeforest. These templates are not necessarily better than Treepls but the selection of templates is enormous and it is very easy to find the look and functionality you want to start your work from.
As @hopestew mentioned I have the same challenge with the Treepl templates. They are very well thought out and very extensive in terms of functionality, so for the most part I only need 10% of the work and it takes me a lot of time to delete all the functions I don’t need. Further to that I like to implement it myself so I know how it works.
That is why I find it much easier to grab a Themeforest template and build from that. I can grab and implement what I need and make it a lot “cleaner”. For some it might be harder to do it this way, but taking a basic HTML template and getting it to work in Treepl takes me maybe 15 minutes and then I can start working. That is uploading css, js, setting up a template and then I am ready to start working.
So again, I have only great things to say about Treepls templates, but they will never be able to “compete” with the selection of templates out there, and I am sure that they don’t want to either, since this is not their core business. So for me personally it is fine to have some templates, but I don’t rely on the Treepl themes at all. Even if there where 500 templates it would be easier for me to find a better fit on for example Themeforest, which makes total sense since this is their core business 
I can see the value of having a handful of templates to show off the platform capabilities and give new users a jump start, but they are not useful for me. I’ve never used a Treepl template for a live site. I don’t see myself using Treepl templates in the future either.
Our designer prefers to work from scratch for each site. I agree with @hopestew I end up overriding so much in templates that it’s cleaner and faster to start from scratch.
We have used both, Treepl templates and Themeforest templates so far. The difference is mainly, that Treepl templates are ready to use and can be customized right from the start, with modules, snippets etc. already set up. Templates from Themeforest need to be implemented first, meaning you would have to seperate the code into module layouts, content templates, snippets and also write some liquid youself which the Treepl template already includes.
As Peter already wrote, Themeforest templates on the other side offer a lot of ready baked solutions for very little money. Often the template you purchase comes with different variations covering all kinds of use cases from one-pager to complex stores and marketplaces.
The only problem we had in the past with Treepl templates was that they wouldn’t be IE compatible right way (yes, some clients noticed that). Although this browser is totally outdated, it’s still officially supported bei MS :-(. But there is an easy fix, which @Peta_Simpson described here in Slack: Slack
Hey guys, I’ve found that one some templates there is a with the following CSS:
#main {flex:1; display: flex; flex-direction: column;}
This isn’t IE compatible (stupid IE won’t show anything inside that which in the case of these templates is the entire page content!) and just needs to be changed to flex: 1 0 auto; to fix. Cheers
I use both … but only about 30% of my new sites use treepl templates. I do modify the templates a fair bit though. I find using a template gets a basic site up and running much quicker. There is a bit of a learning curve on how to modify … but once you get use to them … it becomes faster.
@Peta_Simpson my site creaserconstructions.com.au doesn’t work on IE and I used the Treepl template to set it up. Can you please help me with the code that is suppose to be causing the problem as I couldn’t see the code in the css -https://www.creaserconstructions.com.au/css/main.min.css
I am keen to see an Bed & Breakfast template and a logistics template as I find them very easy to use and it saves so much time.
@cretam I’d start with changing the #main to:
#main {
overflow: hidden;
-ms-flex: 1 0 0;
flex: 1 0 auto;
display: -ms-flexbox;
display: flex;
-ms-flex-direction: column;
flex-direction: column;
}
Looks like there are still some issues, but it’s a huge improvement.
Thank you so much Peta. It did make a huge difference.
I find them quite useful. That way you don’t have to re-invent the wheel on a lot of functionality and modules. I would like to see more industries covered for sure.
Not this lad… I like to have full control of my templates right from the start. So everything I build is from scratch. While I could just modify templates to suit (html, css, js, etc), since we always start with a visual UI/UX design mock up for our clients, we need to code from scratch.
I agree. I prefer the industry-specific temples. I do wish the temples had more animation. I was a big fan of https://www.bcgurus.com templets.
would let you know if i like the max template the loader ever stops has been going for 30 minutes and i still cant view the site.
It’s a bit weird. On Chrome both the Max Template site on treepl.co and your test instance work fine. On Firefox I get stuck with the preloader animation, too.
FYI: Your test installation is giving Liquid Error: Unexpected tag: 'if' not matching 'for' tag. when clicking on items in /catalogs. But that seems to be unrelated.
Thanks @TimL , we will fix this issue soon.
The loader will also be fixed in the near future, but for now you can move the code from line 323 to the beginning of the document,
file: /js/jquery.main.js this should help
I agree with Kevin on Industry specific, now that Michael and his team have completed the very fine Max template. The one thing I think is still missing are the in depth training videos like the ones provided by BC Gurus. I would gladly pay the $49 or $99 per month for a monthly theme and in depth videos on the entire Treepl system broken down into 10 or 20 minute videos, quizzes etc. Treepl may be able to grow faster with a training system to bring on new partners who are not familiar with BC, Treepl, and Liquid. Anyone looking to do something like BC Gurus (paid training videos and payment system) should look at Thinkrific and integration with Shopify.
We would like to provide templates for Treepl partners, but the infrastructure is not there. Installing templates and modules on other partners portals is not really supported by Treepl at the moment. Even the Agency reseller plan only provides a way to export and import modules and only if both parthers are on that plan. Treepl is not really a partner 2 partner eco system - yet. And I really think it needs that eco system to grow on the marketplace.