WordPress Theme Company Review – Elegant Themes

Posted by admin on Apr 18, 2012 in Blog, Wordpress Resources

Once you have decided to commit yourself to WordPress and really understand its capabilities you will find yourself very quickly considering the value of purchasing a commercially made theme.

I tweak and customise themes often for my clients and have discovered over time the good and the bad. I’m going to review some theme companies I have used hoping this can guide you towards making a sound decision.

There is nothing worse than stumping up $65 bucks or more on a WordPress theme and dry humping it in desperation before finally admitting defeat. Dramatic yes but true.

Elegant Themes get 8/10 from this web builder

My most important considerations are:

1. Overall structure and performance of the theme
2. Customisation options – Headers, Content Areas, Fonts, Colours, Backgrounds, Homepage options
3. Basic ‘Look & Feel’
4. Dashboard of the Theme – where you will spend most of your time
5. Handling of thumbnails, Sliders and Image Galleries
6. Speedy advice and support from the company
7. Price

Lucky for me one of the first theme companies I used was Elegant Themes. I’m giving them an 8/10 straight up for overall ease of use and well-designed themes. I have read on a few forums some complaints about the code and processing/memory speed but have never experienced anything like this myself. I have used 10 plus versions of their themes.

What I Like

The design of the themes are clean and light. Perhaps a bit ‘safe’ design wise but perfect for further customisation. As a web builder who wants to help small businesses and solo operators have a great online presence – it is important to remember most people are not avidly following web design trends. They want something to look professional and display their services and products to best effect. Not keep up with the cool kids. So I’m happy to say Elegant Themes really fit the bill design wise.

The dashboard is well laid out and once you have used one of their themes, getting another up and running is a quick process. You can control and change many parts of the theme without having to alter any code. Generally the homepage has various options for highlighting important products and services. Sliders and content area’s can use posts or pages. This is important as some themes I have used will only use posts. Their themes come with several page layouts such as gallery, full-screen, search, contact. Great shortcode implementation. This means you can insert very easily pretty numbers, information boxes, tables and much more.

Elegant Themes use the ”timthumb’ method for resizing images you are using within your post to be displayed as thumbnails on index, search and other area’s of the site where a small image is required. Once you have ‘read‘ the instructions it is a breeze. There is no way I would ever resize images myself manually. The only issue I have ever had is working on a test server and then moving and running a ‘find and replace’ plugin to update the domain name in the url of the images. It doesn’t pick up the code on each post where you ‘add’ the timthumb method. I have had to go through and change manually. If someone has worked this out please drop me a msg.

The support forum is great. I have read many many forum posts and their responses are polite and intelligent. Other theme companies I have noticed can be condescending when a newbie ask questions (that are easily answered in a FAQ). They are very clear in defining what your actual problem is. They have gotten back to me well within 12 hours each time.

What I don’t like

I’m going to get nit picky here as overall I am very happy. I have had a couple of sliders in themes when left open in a browser window speed up and act a little crazy. However it is not usual to leave a site open in a chrome tab (with 30 others open too) for 12 hours.

I wish they had more e-commerce friendly themes. I have both of their one e-commerce themes and they were great.

So the final scorecard is

1. Overall structure and performance of the theme…….8/10
2. Customisation options – Headers, Content Areas, Fonts, Colours, Backgrounds, Homepage options…….8/10
3. Basic ‘Look & Feel’…….7.5/10
4. Dashboard of the Theme – where you will spend most of your time……..8/10
5. Handling of thumbnails, Sliders and Image Galleries……..7.5/10
6. Speedy advice and support from the company…….8.5/10
7. Price…….9/10 (price comparison wise-Elegant Themes is great value for money)

Ill-Gotten Gains

Posted by admin on Mar 31, 2012 in Blog, In Development, Sites

I enjoy ‘making it work’ for clients, and have helped out a diverse mix of business interests with websites, blogs, Facebook pages and social media advice.

Sometimes though you get a client you LOVE!

Ill-Gotten Gains - Massive Empire's newest client!

Ill Gotten Gains is a funky new retail store in Thebarton specializing in “Rock, pin up, vintage, glam and zombie love clothing”. Possibly the only time I have considered contra. Taya is rocking her Facebook Page while we work away on the site and e-shop.

I look forward to sharing our efforts with you soon.