Premium Drupal Theme Reviews

Jump to reviews of: ThemeShark, WorthAPost, Template Monster, ThemeSnap, CMS Quick Start

It wasn't long ago that Drupal users didn't have many options when it came to themes. You could learn to create your own (not overly difficult, but time you would like to spend on something else), or use one of the freely available themes at Drupal.org . The free themes are largely far from premium, and require a link to the creator's, or sponsor's, website.

If you have a business or a web project that you expect returns on you want the benefits of a well designed website, and won't want to link out to the designer. A completely custom one might run thousands of dollars, so a nice compromise is a premium professional theme available from one of the few new theme sellers.

Here's my review of three of those premium Drupal theme providers you'll easily find online, ThemeShark.com, WorthAPost.com and TemplateMonster.com, along with quick points of why I haven't tried TopNotchThemes.com offerings. I'll go over the visual appeal, cost, and support (which is very important). The three reviewed I have purchased from, the themes were not provided for the sake of the review.

ThemeShark.com

ThemeShark's offerings have improved visually since launch a year ago. Up to 5 themes now (4 of which I have purchased), they offer multiple collapsible regions, and each theme comes with a number of color options which can be easily set in the Configuration area. Also a nice bonus is you can change the widths of the main content area and sidebars right from config.

For example, here's the color options for the Galapagos theme.

Customizing the themes is pretty easy if you have HTML and CSS knowledge. For example, the theme currently behind DanDurick.com (which you're looking at) is ThemeShark's "Minimalist" design. I have tweaked the font, link and heading text colors more to my liking, adjusted the header image, the image behind the blocks at the left, and reduced the padding of the blocks.

In all this took under an hour to do, and it gives my site a bit of a different look from others which use the theme.

The latest theme (Stingray as of this post) also has some nice added features including the addition of the Dynamic Display Block module. All themes include suckerfish/superfish menus.

My only criticism would be the themes are a little heavy on gradients and bevels.

Pricing

ThemeShark's prices are very reasonable (frankly, they could probably charge more). Not only are the themes cheaper than many competing options, they also have a "Buy 2 Get 1 Free" special. If you're like me and have more websites than time, this is a nice bonus.

The themes run from $49.95 to $69.95.

Support

The support I have received from ThemeShark.com has been great. Response from Rob to emails are both fast and helpful, often including the code to fix an issue so that I don't have to replace the theme that I may have already tweaked. Rob has even replied helpfully to theming questions which are unrelated to my purchase.

Due to my experiences with ThemeShark.com I highly recommend them. You will have a hard time beating their designs and support for the price.

Grade: A

WorthAPost.com

I have purchased one theme from WorthAPost.com (called Endless XS). Set up was simple even though I had never used the QuickTabs module before. If you have an understanding of Drupal, this should be easy.

The designs are basic, but slick and very professional. They also come with suckerfish/superfish menus.

Endless XS and Endless News:

Pricing

WorthAPost.com's premium Drupal themes run from $89.95 to $99.95, and they also offer Wordpress themes. The price is more than those at ThemeShark.com, but reasonable.

Support

There was a problem with the search capabilities with the theme I purchased. I received a reply to my support request a couple of days later, and in a little over a week the problem was fixed.

Generally I'm patient with support. If this had been on another website, however, I would have liked a faster fix. That's not to say I was displeased.

Grade: A-

Template Monster

TemplateMonster.com easily has the most Drupal themes available. And, many of them look great.

One problem with the TemplateMonster.com Drupal templates is the code behind them. The cluttered code makes it difficult to customize, or even get your content to appear like the demo, which it should out-of-the-box.

While the other themers above utilize CSS, Template Monster relies largely on HTML tables, making it take longer to load.

The major problem, however, is they just do not look like they do in the demo site, and there are significant issues with the details.

For example, take a look at the how the login form appears:

And now the same form with the text highlighted:

Hidden text! Nice!

Once logged in, it isn't any better. Notice how off-center the Welcome text is:

Even my content was messed up. They had coded the CSS so there was no breaks between paragraphs:

Do you believe anyone will want to read that? You could have Pulitzer caliber piece, but the run of text makes it difficult to follow, and the choice of font is terrible.

The menu for the Navigation (particularly in the Admin area) wasn't set up to be user friendly. Look at how many links get pushed to another line:

Seeing all of these issues at moment of enabling the theme had me very disappointed. It looked like I had a lot of work ahead of me if I wanted the theme to operate as it should.

Pricing

While the prices for the Template Monster Drupal themes are competitive ($60 to $80 each) they'll cost you much more in time to fix. Frankly, if they were free I would still wouldn't use them. Too much of a headache.

If TemplateMonster.com utilized W3C valid XHTML, CSS rather than HTML tables, and worked out of the box I would be a big fan. But the way they are I could never recommend them.

Support

I was so blown away by how poor the theme was, and by how much would have to be done to get it to appear like the demo, that I didn't bother contacting Template Monster support. It's hard to believe that a company charging on $60 for a theme would provide the level of support necessary to fix it. It could easily cost the company ten times the original cost to get someone to fix the code for me.

Grade: F

Options Not Reviewed

I did not review TopNotchThemes.com or forDrupal.com.

Top Notch Themes' products all cost about $300. I can't speak to their support or how well they are coded, but they just don't look nice enough for me to shell out that much. I feel the others reviewed above offer nicer designs.

Another Drupal theme site I wanted to review was ThemeSnap.com. They offer two themes, Publisher ($189) and Efficient ($139):

Update: ThemeSnap review here.

Both look sweet, though I would like to see regions dedicated to display ads and flexible widths. Hopefully one day I'll have a site that will work with one of their themes and I'll revisit this post.

UPDATE

Lastly, forDrupal.com. They offer 2 very professional looking themes, but their prices are much higher than their competitors ($339/$359). In all fairness, the themes are very well thought out and offer a huge number of custom regions (one I checked out has 28) along with numerous classes and icons to give a site plenty of options. A review of forDrupal is coming soon.

Comment below with your experiences.