Do Joomla Websites Have to Be Ugly?

We have worked on many Joomla websites for many customers covering nearly every profession anyone can think of. All of our customers’ websites are great when it comes to content, but most of them are not that great when it comes to design. Some of them are very ugly, and yes, we do tell our customers when their websites are ugly, and they either agree or they say that they know this already, but that was the design that they’ve chosen.

One has to think, is an ugly website a given when it’s powered by Joomla? The answer is obviously no, we have worked on many websites that are beautiful. See, the reason why many of our customers don’t have a very beautiful website is because they just pick a template from the vast array of the available Joomla templates, and they install that template without any modification. There are several disadvantages to this:

• All generic templates, including the paid ones (especially the paid ones), look much better in the demo than on your website. This is a little trick that designers do to make their templates more appealing so that they get more sales.
• A template that is not made for your website does not fit your website. Your website may have a corporate identity (in case of a business website), a cause (in case of charity website), a mission (in case of an educational website), etc… Any template that you install needs to be modified to accommodate your website’s identity.
• A generic template is often not compatible with your content. Some templates will look better if you activate certain modules, add pictures to articles, use specific colors, etc… But what if you do not want to activate these modules, you don’t have pictures in your articles, and you have your own colors/fonts that you want to use.

So, how can you have a beautiful Joomla website?

We’re happy to say that this is very easy, all you need to do is have a designer either accommodate a template for you, or create you own Joomla template. Then, and only then, you will have a very nice website that you will feel very proud to own. Unfortunately at itoctopus we currently don’t develop custom-made templates. We are currently seeking partnership in that area, however.

PS: One of the very nice Joomla websites we have worked on today is a recipe website, you can check it here (note: this link will take you to an external website).