Franky Branckaute over at BloggingPro.com has published his review of a new book called WordPress In Depth written by Bud Smith and Michael McCallister. According to his review, the book is aimed at beginners but near the end, provides ample opportunity to explain themes and plugins a little more in-depth providing a stepping stone to not only more advanced topics, but advanced books as well. The book is on sale at Amazon for $21.59 which is pretty affordable. For those that still have the time to read books, there is no shortage of WordPress material to read ranging from beginners to developers.
WordPress In Depth – The Book
Review Of The RichBiz Commercial Theme
At A Glance:
RichWP.com is a commercial theme provider maintained by Felix Krusch. RichWP has a variety of theme styles available including magazine, photo blog, news, and business oriented designs. The theme I’m reviewing today is called Rich-Biz 1.3. Rich Biz is a business oriented design that contains a large space to promote the initial offering of a product or service with up to three widget containers below the main content. This theme is monochrome in color with gray and white being the primary two colors. The third color of red enables links to stand out within content.
License:
All themes that are for sale on RichWP.com are licensed under the GPL.
Installation
The first thing I found out was that this theme does not play nice with WampServer which is what I use to create and manage my local server environment. However, when I installed the theme on a live site, it worked just fine. It must also be pointed out that when you extract the files from the theme zip file, they will not be added to a folder that is automatically created, leaving a mess within the extraction location. The manual specifies that it’s best to upload the zip file through the theme management page and allow the extraction of files to take place there so that the file names and paths do not get screwed up. Once I installed the theme this way, everything worked as expected.
Configuration And Use
Before you can dive into the theme to customize it to your hearts content, you’ll need to create two pages. One called Home with the Frontpage Page Template applied and the other called Blog or News. Then, in the Reading Settings area of WordPress, select Static page and choose Home for the front-page and Blog or News for the Posts page. This will ensure that the front-page contains the three boxes at the bottom mimicking the demo site.
Another thing worth mentioning is that after the theme is installed, you’ll need to edit the Media settings to make sure the image dimensions are compatible with the theme. Refer to the themes manual to figure out what these dimensions are.
As is standard on most commercial WordPress themes, Rich Biz has it’s own theme options panel to guide users through the configuration and design process. The theme options panel does a good job of not inundating the user with all of the options up front. Instead, they use a tabbed interface for the main menus with drop down sub-menus. This keeps the page nice and tidy throughout the configuration process.
While Rich Biz provides options to exclude pages in the navigation menu or include pages in the footer navigation area, you need to know the ID’s of those pages in order to make this panel useful. I much prefer the method seen in other commercial themes where they provide a list of pages that have been created and you select a check-box next to each one you want to include or exclude. However, with a new menu management system on the way with WordPress 3.0, this may become a moot point in all commercial themes. Asides from the navigation, users can configure custom icon images to replace the ones that ship with the theme, whether to enable or disable a built in light box effect and other options.
Rich Biz provides a Front Page tab that contains options to edit the content for the three boxes that appear within the Front Page. The nice thing about this particular options panel is that it provides a way to edit the front page template file without touching any PHP. The HTML or content goes into each corresponding box with options to link the title to a particular page or post. The options also give users a chance to upload a big picture inside of the big box which would be perfect to showcase a product. This is a design meant to be static most of the time so you won’t find an image scroller within the big box at the top of the site although this would certainly be a cool enhancement.
As for design options, Rich Biz did not skimp. Users can edit everything from the navigation text links to the content and sidebar box designs from within the options page. One thing I found annoying is that whenever I clicked the save button to apply a color code change I made, I was redirected to the first option tab with all of the sub menus closed. For those that like to apply color changes one hex code at a time such as myself and then view those changes, this behaviour will become an increasingly frustrating inconvenience.
Rich Biz also comes with it’s own advertising manager where you can apply advertising codes to specific areas of the theme. For example, an advertising block under the post headline or an advertising block above the comment box. Adding these is as simple as copying and pasting the advertising banner code into the corresponding box and saving the changes.
Last but not least, the Upgrade tab provides easy access to upgrade the theme to the PRO version. If you purchase the regular theme, upgrading to the PRO version is only $57.00. The PRO Version of the RichBIZ theme is aimed at designers, and gives you full control over your theme design. You can change the look and feel of your site with just a few clicks with access to pre-made color schemes.
Support:
Support for RichWP products is handled through email as well as Skype. Felix states that any support for the initial setup for any of his themes is free. Support that extends beyond those boundaries will cost you $75.00 per hour. If you have a design that needs to be coded into a WordPress theme, Felix can do it in about 7-10 hours. RichWP also has a couple of video tutorials available for their themes.
Conclusion:
The theme itself works as advertised without any problems and is well suited to be used for a corporate website or the face of a product. When I inquired about a specific problem via email, Felix was quick to give me a response. However, I don’t understand how an email or Skype only support system could scale with an increasing amount of customers. Furthermore, since no public forums are in use, it’s hard for a customer to gauge how good the support is.
Before I wrap up the review, if you register an account with RichWP.com, RichBiz is one of the free themes you’ll gain access to as well as the Magazine Theme giving you a chance to play around with those themes.
Writing Zen In WordPress
Zen is a distraction free plugin that removes just about everything in order for you to concentrate on your words. Franky over at BloggingPro.com has a good writeup going into more details on how the plugin works.
If you’re a fan of ‘anti-clutter’ plugins such as simple email notifications, you’ll love Zen for WordPress. More even, if you would have been on the verge of switching to a more writing focused platform such as Habari but could not decide to ditch WP yet, Zen might be what you are looking for.
I’ve seen the screenshots and personally, I’m not a fan of taking away the very tools with which I use to generate content. In order to achieve my zen in WordPress, I use the icons only menu layout on the left hand side and if I’m really in the mood, I’ll hit F11 on my keyboard to take the writing pane to full screen. I’ve also adjusted my work-flow so that the meta details are covered first, then I concentrate on the content. I don’t often find myself distracted by the WordPress write panel but if you do, then Zen might be the plugin for you.
Plugin Review: Technical Support
It’s become evident that a large portion of the WPTavern readership is made up of consultants. This next plugin should be right up their alley. It’s called Technical Support and is authored by Konstantin Kovshenin. The plugin provides a dashboard widget that after configuration, gives clients an easy way to contact you for support. After install and activation, you’ll need to configure a couple of fields such as provider name, provider email address (this is where the support queries will go), provider logo and provider URL.
The next step is to customize the technical support widget. From here, you can add or delete topics such as General Support, etc. You can also customize the default E-Mail Subject line which is nice since you can then add that subject line to a filter within your favorite e-mail client. Last but not least is the configuration of the message format. You can reword the default text while also rearranging the shortcodes available.
After I saved the configuration, I added the widget to my dashboard.
The email I received provided all of the necessary information I configured. Worked just as expected. Note that if the site this is installed on can not send email, neither can the plugin. As for the other side of the equation, I don’t know how to respond back to the ticket author. Therefor, this is not a good means of two way communication. However, this is a great way to notify the person in charge of issues that have sprung up such as an error.
Genesis Under The Scope
At A Glance:
The Genesis Theme Framework is built on a simple vanilla blog-type parent theme, and can be extended with the use of child themes. Each child theme comes with its own home file, that makes extending the parent theme very easy.
License:
Genesis like all the other themes StudioPress.com offers is licensed under the GPL.
Installation:
Installation was as easy as any other WordPress theme. However, things become slightly more complicated when you want to use a child theme. The Genesis theme will need to be installed but deactivated for child themes to work properly since the child theme relies on the Genesis theme to function.
Configuration And Use:
This is the nuts and bolts of any theme and Genesis doesn’t skimp on options. There are options to configure post content, whether or not to display a post author box on a single post, primary as well as secondary navigation, where to display breadcrumbs, header and footer scripts, disabling comments on posts or pages, and how the blog page will be displayed. It’s important to note that the settings not only control the Genesis theme by itself, but also child themes. For example, if you install a child theme that looks better with post excerpts instead of the full post, you can configure that from the Genesis options panel. This makes changing a themes behaviour convenient.
For the SEO junkies out there, you’ll love the flexibility Genesis offers out of the box as there are a wealth of SEO specific options to configure. You can configure Doctitle settings, search engine indexing, link no follow, homepage, and canonical tag settings. I have no idea what half of these settings do so I’ll put my faith in that the default selections will work best. The option panels each have a note that provides more detail with what the group of settings does, but I found myself scratching my head as I’m not knowledgeable in SEO.
If that were not enough, there are even more SEO options when creating a post or page. I have a feeling that with all this SEO stuff built into Genesis, that having All In One SEO installed would be overkill.
When it comes to flexibility, Genesis offers six different layouts to choose from.
- Content/Sidebar
- Sidebar/Content
- Content/Sidebar/Sidebar
- Sidebar/Sidebar/Content
- Sidebar/Content/Sidebar
- Full Width Content
This should be enough for most use cases but one thing you’ll notice is that there is no way to configure widgets in the footer. Whether or not widgets can go into the footer has been delegated to child themes. If you like widgets in the footer, make sure you use a child theme that has them built-in. Genesis also gives users the chance to give posts or pages a layout that is different from the main site. The same six layout options are available when creating or editing a post or page.
Speaking of widgets, Genesis comes with a few custom-built ones.
- My Tweets – displays an unordered list of your latest Tweets
- User Profile – displays the Gravatar of a user, as well as their biography and a link to an about page
- eNews & Updates – displays an opt-in box for users to sign up for delivery of your posts by email
- Featured Posts – displays post excerpts and a thumbnail to be used in a homepage featured section
- Featured Page – displays page excerpts and a thumbnail to be used in a homepage featured section
However, I think the one widget that will get exceptional use based on its large amount of configuration options is Featured Posts. Users can place this widget into a sidebar and configure it to show an author gravatar next to the post, a post image, which category to display, and finally, the order in which the posts can be shown. This also includes the random parameter so you can place it on your front page and upon reload, it will display random posts which is pretty neat.
Genesis does not come with any child themes but there are currently two available to choose from, Mocha and Executive. Mocha is a fantastic looking child theme that combined with the flexibility options in Genesis should please quite a few customers. Executive provides more of the business look as the name implies. The most important part of child themes is that they give Genesis a completely new look and it’s almost all CSS/Image based while still retaining the configuration options in Genesis. If you’re wondering about what will happen when it comes time to upgrade, Brian states that:
While the current StudioPress “classic” themes have required folks to load updated versions from scratch, and meant that customizations had to be redone – the Genesis Theme Framework should end that. We have spent an enormous amount of time and energy on the parent theme, and the emphasis we made on semantics and careful naming of CSS elements should mean that most (if not all) theme updates will not affect your customizations.
On the same topic of child themes, the other part of the story around Genesis is the launch of the child theme marketplace. The marketplace idea is a win-win situation for both designers and customers. Designers can send PSD designs to StudioPress who will then code them to work with Genesis or developers can provide full child themes that are then reviewed for code compatibility, efficiency, etc. Since developers don’t need to worry about writing PHP code to handle the layout aspects of the design, it enables designers to concentrate on creating beautiful designs.
One of the slickest things I discovered within the Genesis theme is the Purchase Themes area. This is where users can preview child themes before they make their purchase. The purchasing of a child theme can be completed without leaving the back-end of the site since the shopping cart pops up in lightbox fashion. This will be really convenient for users once more child themes become available.
Support:
StudioPress stands behind their products 100% and offers excellent support. Customers get access to the StudioPress forum which is filled with knowledge not only from the SP Team, but from the very active community around their products. In fact, the Genesis Theme Framework support section already has 184 threads with over 1,000 posts.
Final Thoughts:
The Genesis theme is a solid product. It works well out of the box and has just enough options and flexibility to fit the needs of most publishers. I’m interested in how the child theme market place will shake out. I’m in love with the Mocha child theme which I feel has set the bar. But considering the amount of designer talent that uses StudioPress themes for their clients, I think that bar won’t have a problem being raised. The best part about reviewing Genesis is that I didn’t have to touch any code.
Last but not least, Brian Gardner has announced that prices for the All Theme Pro Plus membership price will rise on Monday, February 8th from $199.95 to $249.95. This membership gives you access to all current and future themes that StudioPress releases as long as your membership is active. This also includes all the child themes that will soon be available for Genesis.
Review Of iThemes Builder Theme
At A Glance:
Builder is a revolutionary new theme developed and released by iThemes. I had the privilege of being a beta tester of the first version and in this review, I’ll be using the latest release version 2.0.2.
License:
The theme is licensed under the GPL as is all of the themes available from iThemes.
Installation:
Installing was easy. All I had to do was upload the files to my themes folder and click activate. I didn’t encounter any errors but I am reviewing this theme on a fresh install of WordPress 2.9.1 on my local server without any plugins activated.
Configuration:
With every theme available for purchase, iThemes includes a My Theme widget which provides links to relevant information when it comes to configuring WordPress or the special features found within the theme. A nice touch since I don’t have to go searching through their support base looking for the same links.
As for the actual configuration of the theme, this is where it gets interesting. First, you tell builder which pages and categories you want to be INCLUDED into the navigational menu. It’s as easy as checkmarking a box next to a page name. The second configuration option enables you to decide on whether the default text widgets should have default text in order to identify them easier. This is like dummy content. I recommend setting this to yes just to make it easier from the get go to see what’s going on with the theme. Next is the familiar tracking code that would normally go into the footer of your theme. Last but not least, Builder includes some SEO options such as using post tags as meta keywords on single posts and category archives being indexed by search engines.
The bread and butter of this theme that I find exciting to use is its layout builder. Builder comes with four created layouts to use but why stick with those when the real fun is in creating one of your own. First, you have to give your layout a name. Second, select between narrow 600px, medium 780px, wide 960px, or a custom width. Third, select an extension. Selecting an Extension allows this Layout to modify the theme’s style.css styling. I decided to use the built in blog extension. You can then tell builder whether the extension should disable the theme’s style.css file. You can also choose to hide the widget areas to make working with the theme easier.
Last but not least, my favorite part of the process, actually creating the design without using any code. Builder currently uses a module system where you choose from different modules that are available to determine the overall design of the site. There are six different modules to choose from: Content, Footer, HTML, Image, Navigation, and Widget Bar. Most of these should be self-explanatory. Using these modules, I will create a layout similar to the one used here on WPTavern.com with Hybrid News.
In less than five minutes, I was able to create a layout similar to the one used here without touching any code. Thanks to the way the design flow works with being able to add modules above or below each other, you can easily create some creative layouts very easily. This is what makes Builder exciting and this is the kind of theme framework I always thought about when thinking of the term. As a non developer type, I’m able to whip up themes in no time without worrying about hooks, filters, or those other weird terms. That’s not to say those don’t exist as I believe over 50 actions and filters are available for developers to tap into.
The next step in the Builder process is to configure views. Custom layouts can be applied to specific posts, pages, etc. This part of the equation takes the building process to the next level as I can create an awesome front page layout but have an entirely different one for the single page view. Sure, you can already accomplish this manually by creating Single.php and assigning that page template to a newly created page. However, while the creation of Single.php would normally have to be done by hand, I can use the View builder to create a page template which in this case is called a view, then assign that view as I see fit. To make things simpler, this component of the Builder theme provides a Page Template builder so that you don’t have to create each page template by hand. Exciting for me since I’m no code monkey!
The views that can be configured are 404, archives, attachment, author, category, date archive, page, post, search, singular, and tag. All of which would be normal page templates in any other theme except in Builder, you can easily control how the page is laid out for that specific template.
Support:
Support for Builder is available for paying customers in the iThemes forum.
Final Thoughts:
Between the layout builder and the view assignments, this theme is killer because of the ease of use in creating unique looking designs with a couple of mouse clicks instead of modifying code. While not ready for prime time, iThemes has already started to put the foundation in place to add a simple Extension editor which will make it really easy to create styles that can be applied to your layouts. Note that in Builder, layout styles are now called Extensions.
While I was a big fan of Flexx, Builder takes the concepts of Flexx to the next level while also breaking down the walls of limitations that Flexx contained. During my conversation with Chris Jean who is the main driving force behind the theme, Builder is aimed at being the tool used to create a theme from start to finish without spending hours within a code editor. It’s also interesting to note that child themes can be built off of Builder and that is one of the topics covered in tomorrows webinar being presented by iThemes.
All in all, the only thing missing from this theme right now is an awesome style editor but as stated earlier, that’s on the roadmap. If you want to easily create different layouts and have the ability to assign those layouts to specific places down to the post level, this is the theme for you. My hope is that WordPress theme frameworks in the future somehow tap into the design ideas inside of Builder and improve upon them.
Also, if you feel luck is on your side, tell me what you think of what you’ve seen of this theme or ask questions regarding it. Chris will be keeping a watchful eye on the comments and one lucky commenter will receive access to the Builder theme for free!
Personal Blogging Theme By BloggingTips.com
At A Glance:
This theme is compatible with WordPress 2.8.6 and was released by Kevin Muldoon of BloggingTips.com. This theme has two columns, one for content and one for the sidebar with the option of splitting the sidebar into two narrow columns.
License:
The Personal WordPress theme is licensed under the GPL and is available for $49.95.
Installation:
Installation of this theme was painless although I did run into one hiccup. On my local server, I use the WP-PageNavi plugin to handle page navigation. When I installed the Personal Blog theme, I ended up seeing the white screen of death. Here is the error I received after I enabled plugins one by one to locate the issue.
Plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error.
Fatal error: Cannot redeclare wp_pagenavi() (previously declared in
C:\wamp\www\wp-content\themes\PersonalTheme\functions.php:404) in
C:\wamp\www\wp-content\plugins\wp-pagenavi\wp-pagenavi.php on line 180
After getting in touch with Kevin, he let me know that information will be added to the F.A.Q. that the theme uses its own page navigation feature which will most likely clash with navigational plugins. This is the only issue I’ve run into with the theme.
Configuration:
This has become the bread and butter of most commercial WordPress themes. This one is no exception as it provides four distinct expandable option columns for configuration as seen in the following screenshot.
The only downside I encountered with these expandable columns is that after the save button is pressed, the page is reloaded with all of the panels being closed. I’d much rather see them remain open. Changing the color scheme, fonts, etc is as simple as selecting an option from a drop down menu. This theme offers up to 10 different color schemes and provides an easy way to upload a custom background image. There are 5 different font schemes to choose from as well. If you don’t want to use normal full post listings, Personal Blogging provides options to show excerpts only or a number of posts with titles only. This provides a bit of flexibility in terms of the home page layout.
Sidebar configuration is straight forward with the option to show a bio section in the sidebar without messing with code or a text widget. There is also a place to add social media icons by adding your account link to the appropriate boxes.
As for the navigational section, there are options to show or hide the RSS/Email section. It’s nice to see a built-in way to subscribe via email. If the search box cramps the navigational menu, you can hide it in favor of using the search widget in WordPress.
Last but not least as has been standard on most WordPress themes, there are a slew of boxes to add things such as Googla Analytics code, Feedburner ID links, the ability to exclude links from the menu and footer links. Speaking of menu and footer links, I want to highlight something I have yet to come across in another theme. That is, the ability to have two navigational menus, one in the footer and one in the footer that can be controlled to show menu items in one but maybe different items in another. On WPTavern.com, I simply hard coded the links into the footer as the theme only has a way for me to easily edit what shows up in the top nav menu.
Notice how I don’t have menu item 165 in the menu links area so that it shows up in the top menu. I also have it in the footer to show up and sure enough, it’s in both menus. I can easily adjust whether to have it be on the top or bottom which is a very nice feature as most sites these days simply don’t have the room for all of the different pages and menu items created at the top of the site. An alternative to that problem is drop down menus but unless the theme has those built-in, you’ll be spending time using plugins or adding that functionality to the theme.
The only downside I see from this implementation of the idea is that end users have to figure out the ID’s for menu items they want to show or hide. I’d much rather just see a list of pages I have created and check mark the ones I want to hide in the top menu and check mark the ones I want to show in the footer. Doing things this way would add another notch to the ease of use.
Support:
Support for this theme is provided via a special section on the BloggingTips.com forum.
Final Thoughts:
All in all, I didn’t encounter any issues with this theme outside of the navigational plugin conflict. I can’t comment on quality of code since I don’t know enough to warrant a good opinion but the theme works as is. I think there is enough flexibility in this theme between color schemes and font choices where it wouldn’t take much to create a personal blogging theme design of your own. If you want to see the theme in action, check out the demo.
If you decide to purchase this theme, please consider doing so through this link where I’ll receive $19.98 or 40% per sale.
Also, Kevin has allowed me to give away a few copies of this theme. If you are interested in obtaining this theme, let me know why in the comments and you just may get a copy complete with support forum access.
Who Needs eBay When You Have WP Auctions?
About two weeks ago, I was contacted by the lead developer of the WP Auctions plugin for WordPress asking if I’d take a look at his plugin. Considering my distaste for Ebay, I decided to give this plugin a spin and write a review. Stay tuned as at the end of this review, you’ll have a chance to win a copy of this plugin.
Synopsis:
To make a long story short, WP Auctions enables you to host your own auctions allowing you to keep all of the profit resulting from the auction. No more sellers fees! The plugin costs $39.99 and is licensed under the GPL.
Support:
Support is handled in a way I have not seen before. If users encounter an error, they are told to report it on the Help Page. As errors are dealt with comments are deleted which seems a bit crazy considering there is no way to tell what has been dealt with in the past. Although this does help keep the error reporting area clean. Users also have a way to request features via the feature request page.
Going Once, Going Twice, Sold:
Plugin installation/activation was simple. Once activated, a new menu group called WP Auctions is created on the left hand navigation menu. This is where you’ll find the links to manage, add, and configure auctions.
The general settings for WP Auctions allow me to give my auction title a name, select the currency that the auctions will run in, provide an email address to be notified of when a bid is placed on an item, a link to any eBay feedback I might want to show to the public, how many auctions to display in the widget and whether everyone or only registered members can place bids.
The next group of options deal with the payment and shipping options. There are three different methods supported by WP Auctions. Either PayPal, Bank, or Mailing Address. Obviously, if using PayPal, that is where the auction winners cash will go. Bank details is used to provide information on where to wire the transfer to and mailing address is self explanatory.
That last bit of configuration revolves around the look and style of the plugin. Out of the box, WP Auctions supports 6 styles if you include the default. Additional styles will be available to be purchased at some point in the future. I can tell the widget to show auctions either in a graphical format or a standard list format. Last but not least, if no auctions are ongoing, I can specify HTML that is displayed to take it’s place instead of an empty box.
Auction Creation Process:
Creating an auction is as easy as configuring the plugin. The process is split up into three separate sections. Details, Shipping and Optional features. The auction details describe the title, description, image, starting price, duration and payment method of the auctions. Shipping details enables you to specify how much the shipping cost will be as well as where you are willing to ship to and from.
The optional features area provides the Buy It Now option, extra images and whether you would like to show the auction in an AJAX popup or direct folks to a post or page. No need to be worried about managing multiple auctions as the management page is laid out as if you were moderating comments. So it should feel natural.
One of the cool aspects of WP Auctions is that they provide a Live Auctions page where purchasers of the plugin can register their blog so that when they create an auction, it shows up on this page. Just another way to get more traffic to your auctions.
Auction Display:
In order to display the auctions, you need to set the WP Auctions widget to display in the sidebar of your choosing. As mentioned in the creation process, you can also point people to a particular post or page where the auction will be displayed. Here is what the widget looks like using the default skin on a fresh install of WordPress.
One thing I like about this particular widget is the fact that it provides an easy way to subscribe to the RSS feed related to that particular auction. One thing I noticed with the AJAX popup window is that when I wanted to close it, I kept searching in the top right corner to close the window when in fact, the close link is located to the right of center. Possibly a UI issue as I expect the close button to be in that corner. It is for everything else.
Final Thoughts:
So after playing around with WP Auctions, I’m pretty impressed that using WordPress and this plugin, you can completely bypass the need to use something like eBay to auction off an item. Granted, you won’t have nearly the amount of eyeballs to see the item, you’ll get to keep all the profits and the only person you’ll pay seller fees to is yourself. I’m also impressed with the fact that overall, the auctioning process is simple as is auction management. Limiting the electronic fund processor to PayPal will be a turn off to some, but that is how most electronic transfers of money are handled these days. In the end, this is definitely a plugin I can recommend to others looking for a way to auction items from their WordPress powered site.
Want A Free Copy?:
So all you have to do to qualify to win a free copy of this plugin is to comment on this blog post. Tell me your thoughts, what you’d use the plugin for or use this as an opportunity to ask questions as the plugin author will be monitoring the comment section to answer them. In the next few days, I’ll place the comment ID’s into a random number picker and choose the winner who will receive one free copy of WP Auctions.
Review Of Eventina 2.0 – jQuery Strikes Again
Since the launch of WordPress Tavern, I’ve been trying to figure out a way to promote/review commercial themes without joining their affiliate program. I think I’ve come up with an answer outside of telling those who want reviews to just purchase display advertising. If you expect me to review your commercial theme without paying me a dime, you must provide at least one copy of the theme to give away to my audience. I find this to be a win-win-win situation. Also, don’t expect me to provide a glowing review simply because you purchased advertising. These reviews are honest opinions and no one should put their integrity on the line because of a few bucks.
At A Glance:
With that said, I’d like to introduce Eventina 2.0 as the first commercial theme to be reviewed here on the Tavern. This theme was developed by ThemesCloset.com and is compatible with WordPress 2.7 with a single site license going for $39.00.
License:
If you’re going to be purchasing a theme, it’s important to know before hand what the license will and will not allow in terms of redistribution, modifcation, credit links, etc. If the theme itself is licensed under the GPL, you pretty much have free reign with what you can do with the theme.
In the case of Eventina, the license for the theme is not clearly visible on the product page. Here is the details regarding the single site license:
This license allows you to use EVENTINA on a single website. The copyright informations must remain in the footer.
However, located within the theme package is a file called license_agreement.txt which goes more in depth with regards to what you can and can’t do with this theme.
This license entitles you to use the theme on one domain / website, whilst also allowing you to remove any of our credit links within the theme. Themes released under this license include all theme files but not the PSD file. Themes released under this license is for personal usage only. You are free to modify the theme in any way you want.
This license does not apply to the Plugins that are included/compatible with the theme. All themes come compressed (“zipped”). All files within the Plugin folders are not governed by the above license, and instead, retain their respective licenses (as noted in the files themselves).
That information is in addition to the general terms found within this document. This document should be in plain view on the ThemesCloset website as it contains information which could influence a purchasing decision. It’s not right to find this stuff out AFTER you have spent the money considering ThemesCloset only offers refunds if there are major bugs or problems with the theme itself.
Installation:
Installation was a simple process however, for these types of reviews, I’ll be using the included readme file or instructions.txt file as my method for installation. Eventina 2.0 provides easy enough to understand instructions for installing and then activating the theme. There is one step you’ll have to perform after you upload the theme and that is to set file permissions 777 to /wp-content/themes/eventina/scripts and /wp-content/themes/eventina/scripts/cache/. Otherwise TimThumb images resize script will not work properly. After the theme is activated, it’s time to dive into the options panel to configure how this baby functions.
Configuration:
The nice thing about the configuration page for this theme is that all of the options are on one page. I don’t have to search throughout the backend for different menus containing different options. Eventina comes prepackaged with 13 different color schemes. Using one of these schemes is as simple as selecting it from the drop down menu and clicking the save button.
A Look At The Theme Options Panel
I know many themes for awhile now have allowed users to configure a feature post block to use a specified category. Eventina goes one step further allowing you to configure the featured content to be specified via a tag instead of a category. Just make sure you put the tag slug into the Featured Content Slug area so they match up.
Eventina offers two ways to display post thumbnails. Either by using custom fields or the built in TimThumb script. The choice is up to you. If you choose to go with custom fields, the options panel provides ways for you to specify a custom field name for photos and thumbnails.
I’m not going to cover every option in the panel but overall, I enjoyed the experience of staying within one panel to configure the theme. The save boxes for each section was a nice touch which saved me from using the mouse wheel too much.
Widgets:
This theme has three widget containers. A wide one with two narrow containers underneath. Not a lot of versatility when it comes to widgets but it gets the job done with this particular theme.
jQuery Strikes Again:
While reviewing Eventina 2.0, I discovered an incompatibility between the tabs in the sidebar and the CommentLuv plugin. Eventina is bundled with three different jquery files.
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jquery-1.1.3.1.pack.js
jquery-ui-personalized-1.5.2.packed.js
jquery.tabs.pack.js
CommentLuv is bundled with a few javascript files of it’s own and so there in lies the problem. There is some sort of conflict between the two. Personally, I like the CommentLuv plugin so it’s a bit of a shame that I can’t use it with this theme out of the box. I’m not smart enough to know who gets the blame here, the plugin author or the theme author but based on my experience, using themes which are bundled with a specific version of jQuery usually leads to problems when it comes to plugins using jQuery.
I also discovered the same issue with the Contact Form 7 plugin. Considering this is a widely used plugin, this incompatibility could upset quite a few people if they find out about it after they’ve spent their money.
Support:
ThemesCloset provides a support forum specifically for this theme. This is where I went when I encountered a problem activating this theme on my local server which apparently doesn’t work. I had no problems activating the theme on a public site though. The forum doesn’t provide much in the way of an established base of threads but since this is a newly released theme, that is to be expected.
Support Forum Just Getting Started
If the forum doesn’t provide the answer you need, there are four other methods of getting in touch with the theme author including email, Skype, ICQ, and Yahoo Messenger. As a side bonus, the author speaks three different languages, English, Romanian and Russian.
Final Thoughts:
For starters, this theme definitely looks different than most magazine themes, especially with the three headlines near the top of the page. Some folks may think the gradient between the three images looks weird but I find it to be a cool way to view at a glance which headlines were published first.
Eventina 2.0 On Jeffc.ME
One of the best things about this theme is that it is FAST. By limiting the number of images down to three, this thing loads very quickly. The options panel was laid out nicely in discrete sections so I can certainly see how ThemesCloset claims this theme could be configured within 10 minutes.
Not bad for $39.00 but the plugin incompatibilities which I mentioned earlier in the review really need to be resolved for this theme to be taken seriously. Based on experience, themes which are bundled with their own jQuery stuff usually have compatibility problems with plugins. The last theme I used for Jeffro2pt0.com contained jQuery which broke many of my favorite plugins that also used jQuery. It’s a shame because the fancy tabs in themes are nice but if they break plugins, it’s not worth it.
Want This Theme?
The author of this theme will be monitoring the comments you folks leave and will choose one of you to become the recipient of a free single license copy of Eventina 2.0. Just leave a comment letting me know what you think about this review, the theme, or if you have any questions, maybe he’ll stop by and answer them for you.