How Many Templates for Joomla! Are There?

August 1st, 2011 at 7:53 PM CEST in Templates

I've been meaning to write this blog for quite a while, but for some reason I've never put on my research hat and found the proper motivation to actually do it. Seeing that the amount of themes for Joomla! was the only missing data point in this infographic I decided the right time had come.

Image credits: ansik

There is no Joomla Templates Directory (JTD)

Unfortunately there isn't a central place where all Joomla! templates are collected (like the Joomla! Extensions Directory is for extensions). This means that the amount of Joomla! templates will be an estimate at best. But, working with estimates hasn't stopped us before when we tried to find out the amount of websites running Joomla! Therefore we will start this journey with an estimation based on a couple of websites at which a lot of Joomla templates are listed.

How many FREE Joomla templates are there?

Below are the websites that list the most free Joomla! templates with the number of listed free Joomla! templates behind them. (Note: JoomlaOS is not on the list because it appears to collaborate with Joomla24.)

• Joomla24: 3,969 free templates listed
• ThemesBase: 1,580 free templates listed
• Best of Joomla: 1,125 free templates listed

To check for overlap between the websites the following procedure was followed: select 100 templates (34 from Joomla24, 33 from Best of Joomla and 33 from ThemesBase) with unique names and place them in a spreadsheet. Then the 'site:' operator in Google was used to check on the other two websites to see if that particular template was found on the other sites as well. Manual verification using the internal search engines (when available) on the websites showed that the 'site:' operator was in fact quite capable of finding the templates. By using Google the subtle differences in how the name was entered in the database (such as 'Thekingisdead' and 'The King is Dead') were smoothed out. Even though some templates might not have been found due to not being indexed in Google, manual samples showed that all three websites were well indexed. The results were as follows:

• Joomla24: 89 / 100 templates listed
• ThemesBase: 54 / 100 templates listed
• Best of Joomla: 55 / 100 templates listed

It was already stated that the amount of themes listed on Joomla24 is far greater than the amount on Best of Joomla and ThemesBase. If that is taken into account when looking at the percentage of templates listed, the numbers of this sample seem solid. The findings were that of the templates that were researched, 28 appeared on just one website, 46 on two websites and 26 on all three of them. To get an estimate of the total amount of free templates we should therefore add 28% of 1,580 (the templates that appeared on ThemesBase, but not on any of the other two websites) and 28% of 1,125 (the templates that appeared on Best of Joomla, but not on any of the other two websites) to 3,969 (the amount of templates listed on Joomla24).

3,969 + (0.28 * 1,580) + (0.28 * 1,125) = 4,726 free Joomla! templates

How many COMMERCIAL Joomla templates are there?

At first glance, estimating the amount of commercial Joomla! templates seems much simpler than the analysis of the free templates above.

• Best of Joomla: 2,158 commercial templates listed
• TemplateMonster: 738 commercial templates listed

Because Best of Joomla only lists 31 templates created by TemplateMonster, it is tempting to conclude that the total number of commercial templates available is (2,158 + 707 =) 2,865. The problem is that Best of Joomla only lists 30 providers of Joomla templates. Because the 'official Joomla! resource' on template providers lists even less (only 19), we'll have to get down and dirty, again.

Getting down and dirty

Luckily we thoroughly prepared ourselves for the launch of our company back in 2009. Back then we analysed every single website we could find that sold commercial Joomla! templates. This is paying itself off now with what is probably the most complete and up-to-date list of commercial template providers selling custom made templates (50 in total). All I had to do was hand count the templates on each and every one of them, and voila, a complete list! (Note: if you're not on the list, but you consider yourself an international provider of custom build commercial Joomla! templates, please contact me and I will add you to the list.)

ATICT (100), AtJoomla (109), Bonus Themes (39), ByJoomla (3), Camp26 (16), ClubJoomla (74), CMS Lounge (36), Design For Joomla (94), ThemePartner (3), GavickPro (48 50), HotJoomlaTemplates (23), Ice Theme (42), iTemplater (69), jForJoomla (68), JooMagic (28), Joomla Creative (5), Joomla Market (73), Joomla monster (123), Joomla51 (75), JoomlaBamboo (63), JoomlaBear (23), JoomlaBucket (11), JoomlaCapital (17), JoomlaDesigns (181), Joomlage (36), JoomlaJet  (73), JoomlaJunkie (38), JoomlaPlates (53), JoomlaPraise (49), JoomlArt (109), JoomlaShack (41), JoomlaShine (3), JoomlaTD (71), JoomlaXTC (31), JoomShaper (26), JoomSpirit (35), MightyTemplate (16), MixWebTemplates (70), olWebdesign (70), PickJoomla (50), PixelPointCreative (20), PixelsParadise (78), Pure Joomla (65), RocketTheme (91), Shape5 (56), TemplateMonster (738), TemplatePlazza (80), Veero (53), YooTheme (50), YouJoomla (75)

The values above add up to: 3,402 commercial Joomla! templates

How many templates are there for each major release?

To analyse the distribution of templates over each of the major versions of Joomla! (1.0, 1.5, 1.6 and 1.7) the data from Best of Joomla was used. The reason for this is that their website provides the best filtering on different versions and lists both commercial and free templates. Unfortunately there is no way to set the filters to limit exclusively on a version. This means that setting the filter to 'Joomla! 1.5' will show all templates that support at least Joomla! 1.5 (and possibly any other version).

The graphs below provides a pretty clear picture of the commercialization of Joomla. Of the free templates that are listed on Best of Joomla only 25 (2.3%) support Joomla 1.6 or Joomla 1.7. For the commercial templates on the other hand, this number is 401 (13.9%).

• Free: 839 (1.0), 236 (1.5), 24 (1.6) and 1 (1.7)
• Commercial: 805 (1.0), 1673 (1.5), 305 (1.6) and 96 (1.7)

Conclusion

Taking all the 'buts' and 'ifs' mentioned above into account, it is assumed the following number of Joomla! templates is available for download or purchase:

8,128

Please leave a comment or contact me on Twitter (@theovdzee) if you've found any mistakes or know of any improvement for the article above. Also don't forget to check out the (J! 1.7 compatible) Joomla business templates by ThemePartner!