Where are the templates?

[lonniemode]

Hi. Totally new user here. This may be a stupid question, but I've done several searches and have barely been able to find any templates for Scribus. Where are they?  Maybe sites reference "http://scribusstuff.org/" but that site is locked down, asking for a username/password which I don't have, and no guidance on how to get them.

I want to create a magazine. And before I invest a lot of time into learning Scribus and creating one from scratch, I want to look at some templates of magazines to get an idea of how others have done it.

I also want to create a mockup of my magazine. I'm happy to use an existing template and swap in my images/text just to get that done. Yes, I know that I'll have to modify the design to fit my content, but I can do that later. For now I just need to get it out there, even if it's just using a generic magazine template.  Trouble is... I can't find any templates.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

[GarryP]

The problem you will have in finding a generic magazine template is that there is no such thing as a generic magazine. All magazines look different and have different layouts. It's deliberate, so you can tell them apart.

With any non-trivial Scribus document it would probably take you just as long to figure out how someone has done it as it would take to learn how to do it yourself.

I realise that it's sometimes good to see how someone else has achieved their result but you will only see how they have achieved what they wanted to achieve, not what you want to achieve.

It's a bit like looking at someone's code for a web-based database application when you actually want to make a desktop game. Some of the code will be there for the same sort of reasons but trying to untangle what you need from what is there will probably take you longer than just learning what you need to do in the first place.

My advice would be to find an existing magazine layout that you like and learn how to copy it in Scribus. By the time you've been able to re-create it yourself you will probably have learned most of what you need to be able to use Scribus for most general publications.

With Scribus - along with GIMP and Inkscape lending a hand here and there - you can create just about anything you want to (within reason). If it can be printed then you can use Scribus to create it. It's just a case of giving it a try and asking questions when you get stuck.

[steven8]

Joomag has an automatic PDF to digital conversion and templates to publish your magazine online.  Some of the magazines there are professional quality to say the least.

https://www.joomag.com/en

[GarryP]

Interesting. I've never heard of this site before but I've bookmarked it for future investigation.

I'm not entirely sure what "PDF to digital" means as PDFs are already digital by their very nature but it looks like it could be useful to a lot of people. (The Ts&Cs will, of course, need to be checked to see who owns what when something is published.)

[steven8]

What they mean by digital is a magazine you can read online.  Flip pages and so forth.

[GarryP]

Hmm. I'm just not entirely convinced that "digital" is the correct word to use. You can read PDFs online and flip between pages so there's nothing new there.

I think I understand what they mean but I've a feeling that the word they need hasn't been invented yet. "PDF to ePublishing" sounds a little more correct but that's not really right either.

Oh well, it was just something that didn't sit right with me. Not a big issue.

[mnawij]

The site I read digital magazines is www.issuu.com and they call themselves a digital publishing platform, but I do agree .pdf files are digital and flipping through them is an option...

mnawij