What would you like done?
Basically want a theme that looks the same as https://community.wemod.com
When do you need it done?
7-10 days
What is your budget, in $ USD that you can offer for this task?
$100-150 (negotiable within reason)
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Budget can be a little more flexible if that is what is holding people off/.
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Just chiming in with some feedback because thereās been a few posts recently looking for an expert with a budget of a few hundred dollarsā¦
$100-150 is a medior hourly rate for a developer. It will be below for junior developers and above for senior experts.
The theme you linked to as an example is not doing anything super fancy, but itās carefully crafted. Also, the host company has a fully defined design language in place, so the theme developer didnāt have to come up with style definitions themselves.
Iād probably estimate around 10-15 hrs to build such a theme giving an example template. If you donāt have a design language defined this adds at least another couple hours for very basic definitions of colors, fonts, bordersā¦ When done for a client, you also have to add in time for project management, communication and deployment of the theme, letās say just 5 hrs. So as a ballpark Iād be looking at a project range of 20-25 hrs. Multiply this by $150 and you get a rough scope where I for example would start budgeting such a project.
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Hey bud,
I donāt see why the cost of something like a theme, that is not incredibly taxing for someone rehearsed in Ruby to make with Discourse, especially when Iām requesting a carbon copy, any style/colours etc would be just copied from wemod and I can always customise/change it at a later date, what Iām majorly interested in is the layout of that forum, how the categories are like boxes, etc, would cost anymore than my budgeted price, Iām not asking for a re-design/brand new concept, Iām literally asking for a copy and paste.
I have development experience, Iāll be it with PHP, Iām moving from years of using Xenforo and top level developers in that community donāt charge $150 per hour for their design workā¦
A competent developer would be able to complete my request within 5-8 hours, $150-200 for a days work is a fantastic rate.
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Thatās your assumption, thatās not how things work in theme development for discourse.
Which is technically speaking, more work than
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Themes are made in Javascript / Ember and CSS, not in Rubyā¦
I guess that depends on where they live, but even then 
.
Good luck finding someone!
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So what Iām hearing from the community is that Iām better off using a competitors product unless im willing to pay someone thousands of dollars for copying another already exsiting theme
Maybe you should reconsider the ācopying another already exsiting themeā part as well.
You make it sound like someone is holding a knife to your throat. Fact is that there are not many good developers for Discourse so the rates are not as low as for the average PHP job.
If things are so easy as you say you might as well want to try it yourself ? And you can always use an existing open-source theme and work from there.
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Discourse is free and open source. Just like the other solution that you used in past. Every platform has its nuances and you canāt compare them apples to apples.
Nobody is forcing discourse on you, You have all the rights to choose a platform that fits your usecase.
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Other than the complete lack of design concepts and how difficult it is to create your own design when having to move html elements around, etc for someone new to the software it does fit my use case. Ah well, back to the drawing board.
If it fits your use case, it might be worth investing in a design that fits your requirements.
We donāt have the budget to be spending $1000+ on a site design thatās intended userbase isnāt expected to exceed 100-200 users.
Then it might be worth reading the materials available here about theme development and giving it a shot. Since you have an understanding of programming in PHP, the same concepts do apply here as well. It might be worth learning a new skill and getting the desired results.
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For what itās worth, I updated a site Iām working on from this:
to this:
Just by installing the Air theme and making minor updates to settings. Itās an improvement, but I expect Iāll be doing a lot of tinkering with it as I develop the site. Iām not happy with the colors and fonts just yet, for example.
When I read āa theme that looks the same asā some other site, all I can think of is scope creep. What elements do you want to copy? Colors and fonts are easy enough. (Though I would say dark gray text on a black background is a violation of my personal code of ethics and I wouldnāt do that. 
) I know how to use the Custom Header Links theme component to add those. Rounded corners isnāt that hard if you know about border-radius. I could see making those changes for $100-150. (Step one could very well be to find a theme that gets close and fork it.)
Trouble is the target theme probably has elements that Iām not seeing right now that might be important to a client. The logo with the gradient (AKA ombrĆ©, I think?) looks cool. I canāt help with that. Some users have āPROā avatar flair. I can help set that up if Iām provided the desired icon, but my graphic design skills are next to non-existent. You get the idea: ālooks the same asā isnāt a useful specification (either functional or technical).
From hard experience I can also tell you that there are shortcuts to make a Discourse theme that ālooks likeā another site. Trouble is, the result is unlikely to be maintainable as Discourse (and the design esthetic of the internet) changes. Creating a theme isnāt something youād want to pay $100 for. If thatās your budget, youāre better off learning how to do it yourself. As I suggested when you PMed me, you might benefit from just paying for someone to walk you through the process. I strongly suspect itās the cheapest and fastest way to get what you really want.
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The original post was more just a conversation opener rather than a full on specification.
But what I want essentially is the bare minimum, I donāt want all the same functionality etc as the other site, just how it looks and feels, so eg forum categories in seperate boxes that are styled the same way as on the site i showed, colour wise id prefer something that matched the default discourse light theme if im honest as again colours, etc is all stuff ive got the ability to change and play with myself, its the core ālookā of the theme id struggle with myself which is the layout elements compared to vanilla discourse
Thatās totally fine, in my book. Thereās always going to be a push and pull as people learn whatās possible. For whatever reason, I read the initial post as asking for a bunch of work that probably would blast through your budget. It was such a mismatch between what I read as your expectation and what I could provide[1] that I skipped over it until you PMed me. Why risk disappointment and frustration?
Iād strongly suggest finding a theme that has the important elements and playing around with that. If you run into problems down the line, maybe use your budget to get some help.
This morning I had a conversation with the contractor who is remodeling our garage. Weāve been working with him for nearly a year and I swear Iāve contradicted myself a hundred times. Things that made sense in the abstract suddenly look wrong when I see them in real life. Today we noticed a funky gap between the stairwell and a wall. It was in the plan and we could have done something about it then. It just wasnāt obvious that there would be a problem until there was a problem.
Part of why we hired a general contractor (and an architect and a structural engineer) is to avoid some of these problems. But they canāt catch everything. Since we are paying them a ton of money to get things right, they fix these little things so that we are happy with the result. I have a friend who owns rental units and he just hires work crews. Heās his own general contractor. It saves him money and he still gets something heās satisfied with. If something isnāt right, he takes responsibility for it.
Given your budget, your best bet is to hire people for very specific things you canāt do yourself. For instance, if you try the Air theme and want to adjust the way the category boxes are styled and you have specific changes, Iāll bet you can find someone to help.
Iām not a designer, so Iām not going to be much help in any case. But suppose I were an expert. ā©ļø
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