This may sound like a strange question but I would like to know the answer. I'll try and state my question clearly.

If I understand correctly - when someone builds a Joomla site they can choose what "framework" it is built on. Different folks use different "frameworks" and call them different names for branding reasons. Joomlabamboo has chosen to use ZenGrid as the framework for a lot of the templates that you sell. Understandably when you create a new template it will work on your framework since Zen Grid is used as the base.

Will the ZenGrid framework work with a different template from a different source? Or will there be conflicts if differnt frameworks were used?

If someone doesn't have enough experience to create a custom template from scratch can they combine two different templates? Can a Joomla site have two totally different templates using different frameworks in use at the same time?

This question can up at the local coffee shop and I volunteered to see if I could find an answer.

Hi Serena,

Frameworks are a bit of an in thing at the moment with all of the clubs but not all templates necessarily use a framework. A framework is just a fancy way of saying that the template is built on a base of code that provides an advanced starting point as well as offering common functionality to any theme released using the framework.

Back in November we released the Zen Grid template which is a standalone starter template that we subsequently used to create Avant, Woodflower and Pixel Eight.

This month we released the Zen Grid framework which is actually not a template but a bunch of code that compatible templates can hook into.

So other people can develop templates for use with the Zen Grid Framework but it needs to be written especially for it with the right hooks to make use of the framework. It is easy enough though to port existing templates to the Zen Grid Framework by using the Zen Default template and then copying and tweaking the css and images from the existing template. The degree of difficulty would really depend on the complexity of the template you were trying to reproduce.

You can run two different template son a site by assigning them to different menu items. So in this case you could feasibly use a Zen Grid and Gantry (Rocktheme's framework) template on the same site.

Hope this helps.

Anthony