I’ve been using Mambo / Joomla for about 5 years on various sites that I’ve made for different clients. You could always find a free Joomla template, change the CSS around, add a new header and slap together a fairly good looking site in under half day. This morning, I downloaded the latest stable, installed it and then begun looking around for free 1.5 compatible Joomla skins…..

It was a complete waste of time, and if you don’t want to throw away half of your own day searching for a free Joomla 1.5 template, then this is all you need to know; there are none. Actually, there aren’t many good paid templates that are 1.5 compatible either. The best one I could find is Weblogic from Joomlashack (which looks great in the blog layout) demonstrated below;

It does look very ‘newsy’, but it’s flexible enough to be used for a portal or blog, and it comes in 5 different colors. It represents excellent value for $39.95. This easily the best 1.5 Joomla Template around. The only reason you might not buy it is that because it’s one of the only good 1.5 templates on the market, and therefore every man and his dog will probably use it.

If you are determined to find a Free Joomla 1.5 Template read on…

At the end of last year, the Joomla developers ran a Joomla 1.5 Template Competition. I’m not sure if they’ve announced a winner, but the last time I looked (which was this morning) JA Purity by JoomlArt was winning by a mile - it is a nice template, the only problem is that once you install it you can’t select it from the administrator backend - I’ve tried this a few times, and double checked my download link and I still get “template not found” error message…

Still, might be worth a try (and the problem might have been fixed by the time I make this post)… and it does seem to be working for everyone else.

RedEvo_Aphelion by Red Evolution (pictured below) has the second most votes, but it’s a pretty ordinary attempt. It’s clean looking and easy to navigate, but it’s not going to blow anyone’s socks off, but remember it is free - you can download it here

Spend a bit more time trawling the web for “Joomla 1.5 Templates”, and you’ll no doubt stumble accross Site Ground- nearly all their templates look the same. This one (I’m not sure what it’s called) is the pick of the bunch - only because it’s a good blank canvas to start with. Spend a bit of time on the header you could make a decent looking site out in less than half an hour. HINT: if you are looking for a header graphic, try Free Web Page Headers.

Even less impressive is Joomla 24 - they’ve got 93 Free templates listed and ALL of them are rubbish. In fact, only about 25% of them are 1.5 compatible and most of those are listings from Siteground. GROAN.

Best of Joomla have a few more of the contest entries listed, I initially missed this entry on the competition forum;

There’s a few odd things going on here. The graphic is terrible and there’s too many colours happening at once -but with a little refinement (a new header graphic and a bit of time tweaking the CSS) and you’d be left with a really nice looking template (demo / download via Best of Joomla).

CMS Lounge have a couple of completely Free 1.5 Joomla templates available….

This one would probably look okay if you sniff enough paint thinner. If you want to give that a go, you can download it for free here.

Higher Grounds (pictured below) also by CMS Lounge might keep you out of trouble if are running a simple blog with your Joomla installation (download here).

… and that’s about it for Free Joomla 1.5 Templates (at least that’s all I could find). If you know of any great 1.5 templates that are free to use (and work), please post links in the comments section below.

Premium Jooma 1.5 Templates

After looking at all of my available options, I thought stuff it, I’m going to actually have to buy a template. This normally isn’t a bad option (especially when you can find exactly what you’re after). I had a look on Template Monster and even they appear to only have 4 x 1.5 compatible Joomla Templates - they all stink and two of them are themed around Valentines Day (i.e. about as useful as lips on a chicken).

Joomla Capital have a few nice designs, they are reasonably priced, and unlike other sites ALL of their templates are Joomla 1.5 compatible. Yay!

JC Rome (pictured below) is probably the pick of the bunch (Demo)

And that’s about it. The only other option you have is to buy an old 1.0 template and get someone on Rentacoder to convert it for you. Either that or you could learn how to do it yourself. There’s an excellent article here - (courtesy of Compass Designs) which explains how you can create a blank template, how to usse CSS to create a tableless layout and provides a few tips on working with Joomla 1.5 Template features. If you are going to give this a go, then I’d suggest downloading this blank skeleton template (registration required) which should give you a few basic foundations to work with.