The Core
Why We Are Here => Hardware & Technology => Topic started by: thesaintv12 on June 12, 2011, 07:33:23 PM
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I am after a good fully featured theme that is easy to modify and alter to different designs.
I have been using Headway for a couple of sites which is a great idea, but goes wrong often and has frustrating support (I can't afford to have sites down for a week and then be met with sarcasm). It might be great one day, but is a work in progress at the moment.
I am toying with the idea of investing in a custom solution, but would be very interested to hear what other WP users are using, modifying or building on?
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Thesis seem to be well regarded.
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I use Thesis on a lot of my sites. Pretty easy to work with.
I have also started using Genesis from StudioPress. Lots of child themes and it is pretty easy to mess with the CSS files and get some good customization.
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I've used Arras a few times and has quite a lot of features and options and a very good support community.
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There is also this thread
http://th3core.com/talk/web-development/recommended-themes-and-plugins-for-wordpress/
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We've rolled our own based on the default Twentyten theme
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Thanks for the replies, I'll get looking at those themes.
@Rumbas - were any of the sites we exchanged links on built using your own? Maybe you could PM me and let me know?
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Yeah, some of them. I'll pm you.
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I was using thesis, but I really like the Genesis themes now.
Those are really nice out of the box. Find something similar to what you want and you just do some tweaking to get it perfect.
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Are these paid themes really that much better than what's available out there for free?
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Are these paid themes really that much better than what's available out there for free?
I'm wondering the same thing.
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yes - may of them are not so much themes, as theme frameworks - they let you do massive customisation without getting knee deep in code.
I used Classipress on a few sites - it is technically a theme, but is SO much more - it lets you turn the site into a full classified ads site, not just the appearance but the full functionality.
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The Studiopress themes are nice - still use a blog format as a basis for basic new sites from when they were still "Revolution" themes.
The big frustration for me is that they don't have an inbuilt tab content feature like lots of others: latest, popular, tags, etc. Seems a normal feature on other themes, not least from Solostream and Woos.
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TwentyEleven in WP 3.2 rocks
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I've spent half the day wandering through ThemeForest.net and am pleased with the killer designs there (sort by "Sales" for best results). Pick a design and then outsource the customization and you are ready to rock at a great price.
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http://wordpress.org/themes/responsive
"Responsive" By ThemeID by CyberChimps.comVersion 1.9.3.2
I like this one because it has a simple primary call to action, and then it has 3 detail areas at the bottom. After I took out all the blog crap, it cleaned up nice and simple.
Also very fluid... nice mobile experience on an iphone.
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I've been using this theme on one of my sites with good effect - http://themeforest.net/item/cuckootap-responsive-single-page-wordpress-theme/3512405
Like it because in essence the homepage becomes one big easy to manage sales page with woocommerce being added for that final sale ;)
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Are these paid themes really that much better than what's available out there for free?
I look at it in terms of hours. I use a rather passe paid theme (blanking on the name) for several sites. Genesis (which I haven't used yet, but plan to purchase as soon as I have time to actually act on the purchase) is $60. If you value your time at $1/hour it has to save you 60 hours of effort... but if you value your time at $60, if it saves you one hour, you break even.
I've found that if I see a paid theme and it is close to what I want, meaning it might save me 10 hours...
$60/hour * 10 hours = 600
Genesis cost = 60
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Net value = $540
If, on the other hand, it's a pain to use and takes me an extra ten hours to figure out....
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I have used Genesis for a few sites. Some of the child themes are pretty sweet looking but nearly all of them take quite a bit of customization. If I was better at CSS and PHP it wouldn't take too long but for me it would usually take at least a couple hours of changing the CSS, reloading to see what I broke, and then going back and fixing. Still better than starting from scratch with something basic though.
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DrCool - that being the case, you may find it faster to churn out sites with Artisteer. They tend to have a similar look and feel, but even when I don't plan to use the generated theme, I used to use it just for the fact that you can hit buttons and it will randomly cycle through colors, fonts and things like that either singly or all at once. It can be a great idea generator and you can get a decent theme with little effort.
I never installed it on this machine... and maybe not the last one. I haven't used it in a while.
http://www.artisteer.com/