What is this site?

This site contains a collection of free, open source, templates available for use with Expression Engine, a personal publishing/blogging/CMS system available from pMachine.

Why port templates to Expression Engine?

Expression Engine is an extremely powerful, and flexible, personal publishing system. It uses templates that are largely HTML and CSS based with some specialized EE code to import content from a back-end database. However, creating these templates can be daunting to users who are new to Expression Engine and creating a great template can be difficult for anyone without HTML and CSS skills. pMachine distributes a handfull of stock templates to use, but these are very limited and may not appeal to many individuals setting up a personal site. I started this site so that a variety of high-quality templates would be available to other who may be interested in using Expression Engine, but who do not have the expertise to create their own.

Where do these templates come from? Who designed them?

These templates were mostly downloaded from open source web design site, as well as various designer's websites. Where ever possible, each template includes the original source where the template was found as well as the designer's name and website.

Will these templates work with both the Core and paid versions of Expression Engine?

The Core and paid versions of Expression Engine are very similar, differing more in which functionality is included rather than the underlying software. Most of these templates should work equally well with either system. Some customization may be requred to use some of the addtional functionality that is included with the paid versions, such as the membership module and mailing list.
No attempt has been made to provide templates for the gallery and forum modules that are available from pMachine.

Will I port your template to Expression Engine?

Send me a link to the template and I will take a look. I will consider porting it to EE if I like the layout, use of colors and typography, and if the template's HTML and CSS are clean. I will only port templates that are open source, or that the original author has given express permission to port to other personal publishing platforms. And, since I have a day job, a family and plent of hobbies to keep me busy, I only port templates as time permits and the spirit moves me.

Will I remove my template from this site?

All the templates I've ported were found through open source web design template sites. If you can show that one of the designs I've used is not open source or that the original designer did not release it to be ported to other personal publishing platforms, I will remove it.

Will I make additional changes to one of the posted templates?

I've tried to stick to the original designer's layout as much as possible. I may make some changes to the template to make it work with Expression Engine, such as resizing colums or trying to find a suitable place for some of the EE-specific features such as the archives and search box, but I try not to make too many changes to the original design. I probably won't make any changes based on individual requests, but feel free to use these templates as a starting point for your own designs.

What about corrections?

Please contact me with corrections to any template found on this site and I will try to incorporate the changes into the next revision. Again, this is only done as time allows.

How much work is involved in porting templates?

It depends on how complex the template is, how clean the HTML and CSS is, and if the original template works well in different browsers. For a typical template group -- an index page, comments and comments preview pages, category and chronological archive, RSS and atom feeds -- it takes an evening of work. (Roughly defined as the amount of time from when my kids go to sleep and when I go to sleep.) I tend to go back through the templates after they're roughed out to make any changes or alterations I think are necessary before releasing the template.

How are the templates distributed? What's included?

Each template is actually a group of templates -- an index page, comments and comments preview pages, category and chronological archive, RSS and atom feeds -- that are saved as text files with a ".tpl" extension. Any image files included with the original templates are also included. These files are then combined in a .zip archives and stored on this website where they can be downloaded.

How are the templates installed and used?

Generally speaking, each individual template file can be opened in a text editor and the contents be copied into the corresponding template field within your EE installation. There is information in pMachine's user guide about managing templates, but the short version is you will need to create a new template group; create new, empty, templates with the same names as are in the .zip archive; copy and past the contents of each .tpl file to the respective template on your site. Once you've done that, you will need to go into each template and change the value of "this_weblog" from "demo_site" to whatever you have your EE weblog named. Some templates also use image files, either in the HTML or CSS; these images need to be uploaded to your server, typically in the /themes/site_themes/theme_name. Test the new template and, optionally, make it the default for your site.

Will I install your template for you?

No, you will need to install the template yourself. This is discussed in pMachine's user guide, and the good people on pMachine's forums are very helpful if you have any questions.

A template broke my site -- what should I do now?

Since Expression Engine abstracts the data from the presentation, and the public interface from the administrative control panel, it is highly unlikely that your site is well and truly broken. You may have to make some adjustment to the template or, if all else fails, revert to using the default template included with the software. Again, the good people on pMachine's forums are very helpful if you have any questions.

Good luck and enjoy!
-- The Management