Now you have to test the theme pack by creating a live demo of the theme online, but we will cover this in the next section.
Creating the live demo preview will help you to conduct an additional test on your theme to check if everything is working as expected. If it is, you can proceed to the next step.
1. The performance of the sever
Please keep in mind that the online demo will be accessed by a large number of visitors, mostly during the initial days after your theme is made available on a marketplace such as ThemeForest. So, make sure that your server is optimized for Magento and has high performance.
To check if the server is compatible with a Magento installation, you can perform the following steps:
- Download the magento-check.php file from http://www.com/_media/magento-check.zip.
- Extract the file and upload it on your server into the Magento installation folder, for example, http://www.sitename.com/magento_root/magento_ php.
- Then, open the link and check if everything is working If the server is optimized as well, you will see the following messages:
2. Sample products
Once you created a live demo, you have to create a product that will highlight all the features and beauty of your new theme. The products you use on the demo are very important, so pay attention to the pictures that you use for the demo products. The pictures you use will have a great impact for the theme, so it is necessary to use pictures that actually represent the products the theme is designed for.
As you know, you can install some sample data with the Magento installation, but the pictures used are not great, and most of the time, not apt for your theme.
In the following screenshot, you can see the default Magento theme with the sample data:
So in our case, for example, the theme is designed for a book store, so we have used some book covers, as you can see in the following screenshot:
3. Searching for royalty-free photos for the theme
Where can you find some royalty-free pictures that can be used to create a great eye-catching live demo? If you search on the Internet, you can find a lot of websites. Let’s discuss some of the most important ones.
3.1. iStock
The iStock (iStockphoto.com) website is probably one of the most well-known websites to buy photos. The quality of the pictures is very good, but the price of the extended license is very expensive.
The extended license is needed to sell a theme; if you want to invest some extra money to get some eye-catching pictures and illustrations, this is the right site for you.
The following is a screenshot of what the website looks like (http:/www.istockphotos.com):
3.2. BIGSTOCK
The BIGSTOCK website includes a lot of images with licensing for templates. The photos are very good and the price is lower than that of iStock photos.
You can try it for some days with a limited number of free pictures, or you can opt for a monthly subscription that allows you to download five photos per day.
The site includes not only high-quality photos, but also some great vector files. The following is a screenshot of what the website looks like (http://www.bigstockphotos.com):
3.3. PhotoDune
The PhotoDune agency is a part of the Envato network, where you can get a lot of pictures at a very low price. The following is a screenshot of what the website looks like (http://photodune.net/):
4. The Envato asset library
On the Envato blog, you can get some tips on where to find photos, and an asset library that includes some free files to be used for your next project.
The following is a screenshot of what the website looks like (http://themeforest.net/page/asset_library):
As you can see, there are many images that are grouped by a theme, so you can find pictures in the themes Nature, City, or Portfolio.
Please keep in mind that you must be logged in to the ThemeForest website and that you must agree with the Envato conditions in order to find images on the page.
Source: Sacca Andrea (2014), Mastering Magento theme design, Packt Publishing; Illustrated edition.