Dropping Gantry 5
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- DanG
- Preeminent Rocketeer
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- For those of you wishing to use the Gantry 4 module position layout (enhanced for Gantry 5) there is an available Preset in the Layout Manager that can be selected. Please see " Gantry 4 layout in Gantry 5 "
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The following users have thanked you: Scott
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- Canberra Web
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Take a core Joomla site and install one of our Gantry 5 templates to it. Then simply remove any outlines other than the default outline and make sure that there are no other templates assigned to any of your pages (this is what you would do with any other non-gantry or Gantry 4 template too). Now go to the Layouts tab and click the 'Load' button. Choose for example 'Gantry 4'. This will add a selection of module positions that you've all known and used with our Gantry 4 templates.
Yes but your themes are not built this way! so if we want to buy a theme to quickly use and edit it we can't. We have to edit a layout for each section or page and that is annoying and takes forever. Then if we do what you say above we have to completely recreate the whole template. Whats the point?
Don't get me wrong i like some of the features in Gantry 5 like the sliding % based position system over the old Gantry 4 number based version. This is good but really this is all I need. I don't need particles and atoms. I need templates that are created using the method you decribe above with module positions and everything created using Joomla and Gantry simply positioning everything like a template framework should. We don't want to edit stuff in Gantry, we want to use Joomla.
In Gantry 4, take a look at the 'Features' tab in the template admin. Depending on which Gantry 4 template you're looking at, you'll see options such as 'Logo', 'Date', 'Social Buttons', 'Branding', 'ToTop', etc. Our users love that about Gantry 4, I am sure you do too.
No I always used to turn those features off actually but that was a small price to pay for what essentially did what I needed it to.
I have to disagree. I'm a novice at development since I have just started developing with Joomla and Gantry 4 for a year now. And I always enjoyed Gantry 4. Its very simple. However, Gantry 5 made it really easy to pass to a costumer to change anything and even for me to develop special custom tools with YAML and TWIG particles for the novice.
Maybe because you are a novice you don't understand how Gantry 5 affects the functionality of Joomla. I am happy though that is works for you. It just seems to have alienated a lot of real Joomla users.
Are there other template companies producing Gantry4 based templates?
If not, what's the next best framework I should consider? T3?
I think a move to t3 is worth considering. T3 is developed specifically for Joomla with no support for wordpress. T3 is faster than gantry anyway. The Gantry people will probably argue but do a Google pagespeed test on a t3 framework template vs any version of a Gantry template. I used to prefer gantry over t3 as I found it easier and nicer to use than t3 but now the benefits of gantry have faded for me so t3 wins because it is faster which everyone knows means better ranking on Google. -
The following users have thanked you: netstepinc, Dan221
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- Djamil Legato
- Elite Rocketeer
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Canberra Web wrote:
I think a move to t3 is worth considering. T3 is developed specifically for Joomla with no support for wordpress. T3 is faster than gantry anyway. The Gantry people will probably argue but do a Google pagespeed test on a t3 framework template vs any version of a Gantry template. I used to prefer gantry over t3 as I found it easier and nicer to use than t3 but now the benefits of gantry have faded for me so t3 wins because it is faster which everyone knows means better ranking on Google.
I am going to say that Gantry 5 is definitely faster than Gantry 4 and quite certainly than T3.
I generally don't like, nor trust, any of these tools that today are so popular for measuring the speed of a site, since I often see false positives.
Anyway, since you brought it up, these are the results between T3 blank and Callisto demo. Let me also add that the Callisto homepage is WAY more busy than the T3 blank.
Callisto Demo ( demo.rockettheme.com/live/joomla/callisto/ ): gtmetrix.com/reports/demo.rockettheme.com/MJ3DVpmt
T3 Blank Demo ( demo.t3-framework.org/joomla30/index.php/en/ ): gtmetrix.com/reports/demo.t3-framework.org/zhJfGtji
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And again, I personally do not think these performance measurements are a good way to say what's better and what's not, you should always use the framework you feel it's more appropriate to you, no argument there, just be careful when you throw out informations that are not accurate, since others are reading this and especially since you are on the RocketTheme forum.
We did focus on speed for Gantry 5 since the very first line of code and we are continuing optimizing as much as we can. You might have been right about Gantry 4, it is slower, but not Gantry 5.
For the sake of it I also just tested Hydrogen, the default Gantry 5 template, like Blank is for T3:
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Please log in or register to see it. - Last Edit: 8 years 9 months ago by MrT.
- / Djamil Legato / Lead Developer /
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- netstepinc
- Sr. Rocketeer
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Canberra Web: BOOM! Thank you for breaking this down!
T3 = Bootstrap, Responsive and LESS...plus multiple template providers. - Last Edit: 8 years 9 months ago by netstepinc.
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The following users have thanked you: Canberra Web
- "The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it."
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- DanG
- Preeminent Rocketeer
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Djamil thanks for clarifying the speed issue as I got similar results as you using
http://www.webpagetest.org/
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- David Goode
- Preeminent Rocketeer
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- Web Designer and Host
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Hello all,
Thank you all for your feedback, it is appreciated.
We recognise that most people are apprehensive of change unless they see an obvious need and benefit. Gantry 5 was created based on feedback from our members. Obviously different members have different needs and Gantry 5 may not suit everyones requirements so we can only work towards satisfying the majority of our members.
Please bear in mind that we have been working on this project for a long time now and when it was released it had performed well in testing. However, when our members started testing and providing feedback we were pleased as it helped us to prioritise elements that we never suspected would be issues. This is why there has been so much activity by the dev team to incorporate new changes and functionality.
Gantry 5 is a learning curve for us all in the same way Gantry 4 was. When that was released we had similar comments from members who felt the changes were too many and made creating websites harder not faster. Here we are years later having the same conversations.
RocketTheme are reviewing feedback from all sources and will use that feedback to improve Gantry 5 and subsequent templates. This does not mean that every suggestion will get incorporated though, as I said earlier - members have different needs and we will never satisfy everyone.
Please remember that when you provide comments about other products you must be able to prove their accuracy as it would be wrong and negligent of anybody to post misleading information as Djamil pointed out.
At this point we have highlighted solutions to most of the comments and if the solutions do not meet your specific needs then we will have to agree to differ in our opinions.
netstepinc - Do you still need assistance with the thread about absolute URLs?
Once again thanks for your views. -
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- Dan221
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Hi, my point of view is usability, not the tech thing. From that understanding Gantry5 has a quite similar approach like Gantry 4. My personal issue was, that it was not possible to make a site with more languages and have any benefit from the new Gantry.
At the moment Gantry5 has no benefits to the end-customer or in the Frontend at all. Maybe the speed, but as you said, thats relative and I think 50% or more are related to the hosting. This benefits aka features will come, I know. But you should understand, that the most importand in web business is trust, and RT is one of the most trusted clubs. So its very painful, that you make a cut and leave Gantry4 back without a migration-scenario to Gantry5. -
The following users have thanked you: netstepinc
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- Ryan M Pierson
- Sr. Rocketeer
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- Technical Writer
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Hello,
We totally appreciate your point-of-view and I hope to address some of the concerns you've shared.
Dan221 wrote:My personal issue was, that it was not possible to make a site with more languages and have any benefit from the new Gantry.
Multi-language is in the roadmap for Gantry, and has been a focus of our team's. You will see an improvement in multilanguage handling very soon. Keep in mind despite beta releases and release candidates, that this is not the end of the road for Gantry 5, and we are continuing to make improvements and add additional features every day.
Dan221 wrote:At the moment Gantry5 has no benefits to the end-customer or in the Frontend at all.
I have to point out the Menu Editor here is one such benefit. You can inject modules, particles, arrange things very easily, and make the menu as easy to use for your customers as possible. This is just one feature that directly affects the front end. RokNavMenu was an excellent solution for Gantry 4, but the team went well beyond its capabilities in Gantry 5.
Our customers requested for quite some time to switch to a mobile-first design philosophy. While we did create responsive, mobile-friendly themes in Gantry 4, Gantry 5 is made from the ground up to be mobile friendly. The Offcanvas position, for example, is baked in to the framework, as is the mobile menu.
Dan221 wrote:So its very painful, that you make a cut and leave Gantry4 back without a migration-scenario to Gantry5.
We totally get that. This is why we made an effort to let everyone know ( almost exactly one year ago ) that backward compatibility was not possible if we wanted to shed the weight of five years of backward compatibility with Gantry 5. This means that if we were to build a theme for both Gantry 4 and Gantry 5, we would have to do a few things:
1. Take double the time to produce each template.
2. Restrict the capabilities of new templates to only what Gantry 4 was capable of. (No Particles, menu editor, etc.)
3. Create a more confusing customer support experience.
RocketTheme remains a very small team, and we are dedicated to making Gantry 5 the best framework out there. Your feedback is an important part of this process. We are taking it to heart, and are working to make it better and better, every day. - Last Edit: 8 years 9 months ago by Ryan M Pierson.
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- Ryan Matthew Pierson / Technical Writer / Buda, TX USA
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- damo
- Elite Rocketeer
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I've just played for the first time and it looks impressive. I'm also a long time user of RocketTheme and Joomla, from back in the days when it was MamboDev and Mambo respectively.
But I can seriously understand why some are saying what they're saying; it does look quite daunting and many of us actually just want the template, not the framework and then the template. Who remembers SolarFlare? That's what is was all about.
And if you're just making a small site with a few pages, then this is probably way too much. Hell, any framework is probably too much. What many of us would actually prefer me included and I'd pay lots of money for this, is an extension we could use inside Joomla that when the site was complete, we run it and it exports it as a HTML site with everything you need.
Question; how many sites do you have that the only time you update is to update Joomla or an extension?
The point of this post is to say that you should spend a bit of time understanding what Gantry is first then make it fit for what you want to do with it - you don't have to use all of it. Much like someone above said that their business runs on the back of RocketTheme and Gantry, you must have understood how to do that to be able to come up with it.
You'll understand Gantry 5 in time ... but you have to give it that time for that to happen. But, I want to echo something someone above wrote and that's that I'm not sure I'll be giving it the time, because it is something different and I'm not sure if I want to learn a new framework when all I want is the template. - www.c3p0.se - sweden
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- netstepinc
- Sr. Rocketeer
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netstepinc - Do you still need assistance with the thread about absolute URLs?Thank you for asking.
Yes. - "The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it."
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