Author Archive

VibrantCMS

VibrantCMS is another wonderful theme brought by WooThemes. As suggested by its name, VibrantCMS integrates the full features of a CMS system, meaning one can use WordPress for both content management and blogging. This way, it is extremely easy to set up a full-fledged website with vital information and a frequently updated blog as part of the main site. Users could switch from homepage to blog without noticing any changes at all because they are utilizing the same theme.

What Unique Features Does It Have?

• featured scroller above the fold
• customization options of up to 20 different color schemes
• Automatic Image Resizer
• Integrated banner management script

What Is It Most Suitable For?

This theme is indeed most suitable for small to medium sized businesses. The featured scroller function is a very useful function to disseminate vital information regarding products or the business itself, the scroller works so smoothly that it feels like watching some Powerpoint presentations. This feature is not only cool and sophisticated, it can help to presell a company or its products even before visitors access other areas of the site!

Individuals could probably also make use of this theme. We think that it would serve as a very good portfolio site for freelancers.

Is there any bad points about this theme? Should I buy it?

At the time of review, there is hardly any bad points about this theme which I can point out. It is perfect as it is but it is not an all-powerful CMS system, I am pretty sure you could get CMS with better functionality out there at a lower price. Perhaps one of the reasons why people will think twice before buying this theme is because of its high price. No doubt that WooThemes produces quality premium themes but its single license price of $70 seems to me to be a little steep, considering that the developers are probably sharing the base codes of their themes and they basically only need to tweak out another good-looking “skin” for the codes to come up with another new theme. We suspect the high price of single user license is because users are allowed to remove the all the credit links in the theme. The price of developer license and WooThemes Club is competitive and seems justified in the current premium themes market.

If you are a business owner and find that this theme is suitable for your purposes and you could afford it, by all means go for any license that suits you. Otherwise, do consider using other CMS system or other WordPress themes, there are cheaper or even free ones out there, although not necessarily as good as or better than VibrantCMS.

Average User Rating :

(4 votes, average: 1.75 out of 5)

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Organic

Organic is a premium WordPress Theme. It mainly consists of light green, various tones of blue and white. Overall it has a clean look but it is a little plain to my liking. Many themes are using similar layout, first there is a navigation bar right at the top, on the right hand side of the bar is an integrated search box. Drop menu is not available but I think anyone who really needs it can have the feature added by talking to the developer of Organic theme or some freelance theme designers. Next are the theme logo and tag line, which are customizable as the logo PSD file is provided in the theme package. Just for the record, I think this kind of layout is very similar to John Cow’s old theme.

Theme Features:

• large content width, can fit many words in a line and display average-sized pictures suitable for most people regardless of resolutions.
• customizable page width.
• sidebar and content positions are interchangeable.
• plugin-ready (Gravatar, PageNavi, ShareThis and PostRatings, more plugins can be added manually).
• separated trackbacks and comments.
• clean codes, SEO-friendly and W3C valid.
• built-in Ad Management feature

What is this theme suitable for?

This theme is most suitable for blog owners who are not too fuzzy about wonderful design and layout. It is simple and easily customizeable, allowing anyone to produce a presentable logo in a matter of minutes. I would strongly recommend using Organic as unofficial blog, preferably a personal blog but you should realize that many other themes with similar layouts have been used as themes for make money online (MMO) niche. If you are good at modifying and customizing themes, I am sure that you could make this theme look much nicer than how it is now. However, the biggest drawback with this theme is that it is a simple WordPress theme and do not integrate advanced features like CMS support and other powerful options.

Conclusion

Organic theme is not expensive and is worth investing in if all you want is a presentable blog with a neat layout, it is suitable for all kinds of niche. It is highly recommended for personal blogs but I personally think that it does not have a formal look, so avoid using it for blogs of web hosting company, freelance sites, banks, software company, etc. You might need to look somewhere else if you need advanced features and slightly more appealing themes.

(2 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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WordPress Newspaper

WordPress Newspaper is the latest premium theme of Gabfire Themes. It is aimed to showcase content in a unique package and take a website into next level. The main positive point of WordPress Newspaper is its unique NewsPaper layout.

This theme is also ad and search engine optimized, making it as close to a real newspaper as possible. Being search engine optimized, site built around this theme can be easily discovered by millions of internet users through major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN. Advertisers who wish to capitalize on the heavy traffic enjoyed by sites using this theme would be glad to know that ad places can easily be purchased and their ads would be displayed as soon as site owners approved them.

Theme Features:

• Auto-Image Resize
• Theme support
• Free updates
• Ajax tabs
• Search engine optimized
• Built in photo gallery
• W3C compliant
• Custom 404 Error page
• Dropdown navigation support for subcategories
• Multi widget support for sidebars
• Random news clip
• Ad optimized

What do I personally think about this theme?

The editor in me wanted to just buy the developer package of this theme and turn all my future web projects into NewsPaper layout. That is how deeply in love I am with this theme. This is no doubt, the best NewsPaper layout theme that I have laid my eyes on. Some NewsPaper layouts are too congested and while the same can be said about the front page of WordPress Newspaper, you ought to see its clean and neat individual news pages, they are nicely organized into the classical content on the left and 2 sidebars on the right layout. It will be really interesting if there is real newspaper publishing company that decides to use this theme for the online portal (kindly contact me for pricing when I purchase the developer package).

Conclusion

Newspaper layout has a mysterious and magical effects on some people, they just love it! This theme is highly recommended if you intend to build a community news site for people with similar interests, i.e. a college e-newspaper, local housing community newsletter, updated political portal, etc.

We personally think that NewsPaper layout may not be the best way to generate maximum interest in each of your latest post (due to excessive highlight of all other articles in the front page). So, depending on your line of work and the significance of each the information in each of your post, this theme may or may not be suitable for you.

One last thing, we think the single use license priced at $59 is value for money, eventhough buyers are not allowed to modify or remove the credits in the site footer.

(3 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)

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Over Easy

Over Easy is another excellent premium WordPress theme brought to you by WooThemes. Let’s see what the developer has to say about it.

Over Easy is a minimalistically-elegant theme aimed at companies who’d like a serious, all-in-one online web presence. The homepage is perfectly suited for sales, whilst the inner pages & blog has been hand-crafted to publish important info efficiently and promote engagement through the blog.

I fully agree with the description of the theme, it is indeed elegant and minimalistic, it is not laden with unnecessary plugins and features but it has all the basic and intermediate blog features. However, I personally think this theme is not serious enough for some companies which would like to establish a professional online presence. I shall elaborate on this later. Over Easy theme is quite similar to VibrantCMS, another theme from WooThemes.

Theme Features:

• Easy-to-use featured scroller to broadcast your business’ most important information;
• A separate company blog that is tucked away from the homepage;
• Different page templates, 7 widgetized spaces and a 5 custom widgets to increase your value;
• Integrated Theme Options (for WordPress) to tweak the layout, colour scheme etc. for the theme;
• Automatic Image Resizer, which is used to dynamically create the thumbnails and featured images;
• Built-in Gravatar Support for Authors & Comments;
• Integrated Banner Management script to display randomized banner ads of your choice site-wide;
• Many, great colour schemes to use as the basis of your corporate identity / brand.

What do I think about this theme?

I am quite attracted to the simple yet beautiful design and layout of this theme. Like I said, this theme with a featured scroller feature is very suitable for use by businesses. However, unlike VibrantCMS, I feel that the design of this theme exudes a carefree spirit and a more casual feel. I recommend less “serious” companies to consider using this theme, especially those involved with creative writings, arts and multimedia. The scroller can be used by these companies to display their portfolios and company philosophies.

No doubt, this theme is an absolute beauty. The main page provides sufficient focus on posts and pages which are important while the inner pages are simple, neatly arranged and not congested. Do check out the scroller, I like how the featured pages are rolled back to the first page when we reach the end of the scroller, very cool effect indeed!

(2 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5)

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Arras.Theme - Gaming Edition

Arras.Theme - Gaming Edition is a premium WordPress theme designed by a talented young Singaporean web designer. It is designed for gaming sites but can easily be customized to suit other sites as well such as any review site, personal blog or unique website.

Arras.Theme - Gaming Edition boasts having powerful features such as post thumbnail, reviews scoring and other features making it a full-fledged small and beautiful CMS.

Features

• 10 different color schemes available
• Tabbed sidebar with customizable features
• Embedded review scoreboard for reviews
• Auto image thumbnail resizing
• Built-in basic ad management
• Gravatar support
• Widget ready
• Support for NextGEN Gallery plugin
• Option to choose the position of the navigation bar (before or after header) from the admin panel
• Documentation and support

What do I think about this theme?

This theme is very beautiful, with the thumbnail and review score features, it is most suited for gaming news and review sites. The 10 color schemes are essential because some niche gaming sites need a certain color and feel which match a specific game to let gamers feel “at home”. However to achieve such effect, a mere change of color schemes is insufficient and would require other customizations.

I don’t know why but I feel that this theme does not seem too complicated to design and put the elements together. I am not implying that the author slacked and designed the theme casually, just that I think the aesthetics in it is the result of clever combination of elements and disciplined and simplistic design rather than pure innovation.

Regarding the price

The price of $50 and $110 for single and multi site licenses respectively are inexpensive and fairly affordable by industry standards. The price is especially value for money because all buyers are allowed to remove the credit link in the footer, regardless of single or multi site licenses. In contrast, normally with single site license purchase, credit link cannot be removed from the footer because that link is part of the cost of the single site license.

Therefore we highly recommend you getting this theme if you decide to develop a gaming news and review site or other sites which may make good use of this theme. There is hardly any cheaper and yet as powerful theme out there!

(4 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5)

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CelebrityPress

CelebrityPress is a sexy WordPress theme ideal for those wanting to run a magazine website related to celebrity/gossip, music, movies and lifestyle in general. The theme acts like a CMS system where you can randomize and feature selected content and manage advertisements right from the Theme Options.

The theme is available in 4 different presentations including the Customizable Wireframe but further customizations can easily be added to the theme through its stylesheet switcher feature.

Theme Features:

• Extensive help and tutorial included
• Build your sub-navigation and dropdown menu from the Theme Options
• Stylesheet switcher
• Select category for random posts
• Select category for main news
• flickr and Feedburner integration
• Random video rotator manager (copy and paste video code)
• Ad banner management and adsense code
• Photo gallery
• Image auto resizer

What do I think about this theme?

The demo really demonstrates all the great features of CelebrityPress theme. There is almost all elements you would have expected from an entertainment site - daily poll, video, featured news, random news, photo gallery and flash ad banners.

However, looking from the point of view of a WordPress theme enthusiast, I must say that this theme do not portray much of its WordPress origin. It looks like a standalone website and no one would have noticed that it runs off WordPress save for the footer credits, the tags and the commenting system. I don’t think the theme is suitable for individual blogger, it is better suited for a team of bloggers who really wish to write updated entertainment news. Apart from that, there is basically no way to list your content in a conventional way, by category or by chronology. The only way to get to deep buried content is through the top navigation menu and archives.

Theme is slightly expensive by industry standard. For $79.95/single license, most designers would have allowed the footer credit to be removed. I suppose entertainment site owners are rich and could afford this price, eh? The good thing about Plug & Press is that they state explicitly that buyer of the theme will get free updates for it.

(3 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)

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Shiva Pro

Shiva Pro is an absolutely beautiful premium WordPress theme. Some categories are provided directly in the navigation bar below the header while pages are actually listed on the sidebar, this seems like a new way of presentation compared to most WordPress themes out there.

Recent blog posts are listed in chronological order in the front page. There can be several posts listed in recent articles section with thumbnails shown, while order posts will be shown under more articles with no thumbnail. The right sidebar is used for displaying ads.

Theme Features:

• Widget ready
• Adsense ready
• Gravatar ready
• Logo PSDs included
• Fonts and support included

What do I think about this theme?

Firstly, the header looks stunning and the blog preview available in the home tab of the navigation menu is another attractive feature of this theme. I guess it is true that you have won half the battle of selling a theme when you have an attractive header and navigation menu. On clicking the other tabs, posts in categories are listed. However, the switch from the blog preview tab to categories’ tabs seem sudden and forced. It will be better if the mini content area is not diminished on clicking other tabs, instead list the posts of categories in that small content area and only show the post in the main content area when user select a particular post.

Listing of pages in the sidebar looks a little weird to be honest. I think this theme has the potential to be used as the main page of a community website with forums. The navigation menu mimics the design of most forums and will be a good match for the popular blogging platforms.

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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Gotham News

Gotham News is a clean and elegant news theme with a focus on creating a blank canvas with a strong structure to display your own personalized news, and broadcast it to the world.

By the way, if you don’t already know Gotham City is the city where Bruce Wayne roams at night assuming the secret identity of one Dark Knight Batman.

Although the fictional city and this theme share a name, there’s no other similarities. The city may have dark alleys and notorious villains but this theme has none of those features. Instead this theme is presented in a sparkling white background with shades of blue and grey. It does look like a very good news theme, there’s so many ways to highlight the news, through featured content, chronological listing, category, archives and most popular posts.

Theme Features:

• Built-in option to center or left-align (view left-aligned demo here) the layout by only clicking one box in the backend;
• Integrated Theme Options (for WordPress) to tweak the layout, colour scheme etc. for the theme;
• Automatic Image Resizer, which is used to dynamically create the thumbnails and featured images;
• Custom Page Templates for Archives, Sitemap & Image Gallery;
• Built-in Gravatar Support for Authors & Comments;
• Integrated Banner Management script to display randomized banner ads of your choice site-wide; and
• Widgetized Sidebars;
• Tabview widget on the sidebar.

What do I think about this theme?

This theme looks nice but it does not look much like a news theme except for the big featured story and several other featured articles. As with most news theme (which always try to cram as much content into the front page), the main page looks slightly congested to me. Besides the featured articles are listed vertically, making the front page a lengthy and too stretched out to my liking. I imagine not many people would scroll all the way down to read all the news unless the site is really interesting. Other than that, this theme is a beauty just like all other themes desinged by WooThemes.

(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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