Elegant Themes Review – Premium WordPress Themes
Your website/blog design is the first impression you make on a visitor. You want this first impression to WOW them because let’s just face it. If your design sucks or doesn’t look professional then they are going to be hitting the back button faster than you can say “Elegant Themes”.
The Problem With Design
As a blogger, it is important to focus on great content. Sites like Craigslist deliver exceptional content yet has a horrible design. The reason people use Craigslist is because it’s the best place for classified ads on the Internet. And since we are not all as popular as Craigslist we need to integrate design into usability to create an end result that is both visually arousing and simple to use for your visitors to navigate.
However, you are most likely not a web guru who can whip out a CSS stylesheet in 5 minutes flat. In fact, you are probably using WordPress because you don’t want to fool with any of that crap. You wanted to cut out the middle man (web designer) and get a website/blog built with minimal effort, that’s visually appealing displaying your business professionally. And you want all this done the cheapest way possible. (nothing wrong with that)
Elegant Themes
Have you ever spent countless hours browsing through Google for free WordPress themes only to find nothing that completely satisfied you? After searching and searching until I was literally blue in the face I came to the conclusion that free WordPress themes are… well… free for a reason. I decided to focus my attention on finding some of the best premium WordPress themes. That’s when I discovered Nich Roach’s Elegant Themes, and they totally simplified my life online.
Hiring a web designer was also another option I have. I’ve done this before many times to the tune of $750 to $5,000. Let me just say, for that price tag I would rather do it myself. Especially since WordPress is a very simple to use CMS, (content management system) I wanted to find a design that was not only be stunning but that I could learn how to tweak and customize to be unique to my products and services.
Being a web designer myself, new sites are constantly popping up all over the web. When I design a new site I create it to be completely unique and professional. And that’s why I choose Elegant Themes for all my Premium WordPress Theme needs.
Elegant Themes – Premium WordPress Themes
Forget the ridiculous $200-$500 dollar price tag that you see on other WordPress themes or even membership sites. Elegant Themes will only cost you $20 per year. YES – That’s it, $20 per year for unlimited access to all Premium WordPress Themes, support forums, and video walk-through tutorials.
On average you will typically see 1 or 2 new WordPress themes released per month, which of course, members have free access to. Anyways, I’m gonna take a step back and use the rest of this post to showcase Nick’s work. Every design is truly a masterpiece worth thousands and they speak for themselves.
OnTheGo Premium WordPress Theme
- Four Color Schemes
- Optional Blog-style Structure
- Advertisement Ready
Deviant PremiumWordpress Theme
- Six Color Schemes
- Optional Blog-style Structure
- Advertisement Ready
- Smooth tabless design
Lumin Premium WordPress Theme
- Three Color Schemes
- Optional Blog-style Structure
- Advertisement Ready
- Smooth tabless design
Glow Premium WordPress Theme
- Four Color Schemes
- Optional Blog-style Structure
- Advertisement Ready
- Smooth tabless design
eNews Premium WordPress Theme
- Five Color Schemes
- Optional Blog-style Layout
- Advertisement Ready
- Widget ready sidebars
- Theme Option Pages
- Custom thumbnail images
- Smooth tabless design
This Is Bold Premium WordPress Theme
- Five Color Schemes
- Optional Blog-style Layout
- Gravatar ready
- Advertisement Ready
- Widget ready sidebars
- Theme Option Pages
- Custom thumbnail images
- Smooth tabless design
ePhoto Premium WordPress Theme
- Two Color Schemes
- Integrated Blog Section
- Optional Blog-style Structure
- Advertisement Ready
- Widget ready sidebars
- Theme Option Pages
- Custom thumbnail images
- Smooth tabless design
eBusiness Premium WordPress Theme
- Nine Color Schemes
- Threaded Comments
- Optional Blog-style Structure
- Advertisement Ready
- Widget ready sidebars
- Theme Option Pages
- Custom thumbnail images
- Smooth tabless design
Cherry Truffle Premium WordPress Theme
- Three Color Schemes
- Threaded Comments
- Optional Blog-style Layout
- Advertisement Ready
- Widget ready sidebars
- Theme Option Pages
- Custom thumbnail images
- Smooth tabless design
Live Preview Of Cherry Truffle
Pure Type Premium WordPress Theme
- Three Color Schemes
- Threaded Comments
- Optional Blog-style Layout
- Advertisement Ready
- Widget ready sidebars
- Theme Option Pages
- Custom thumbnail images
- Smooth tabless design
Basic Premium WordPress Theme
- Four Color Schemes
- Threaded Comments
- Optional Blog-style Layout
- Advertisement Ready
- Widget ready sidebars
- Theme Option Pages
- Custom thumbnail images
- Smooth tabless design
Cold Stone Premium WordPress Theme
- Three Unique Post Formats
- Threaded Comments
- Featured Articles
- Advertisement Ready
- Widget ready sidebars
- Theme Option Pages
- Custom thumbnail images
- Smooth tabless design
LightSource Premium WordPress Theme
- Featured Articles
- Advertisement Ready
- Widget ready sidebars
- Theme Option Pages
- Custom thumbnail images
- Smooth tabless design
eGamer Premium WordPress Theme
- Video embedding
- Optional blog-style layout
- Opera compatible
- Author rating system
- Featured Articles
- Advertisement Ready
- Widget ready sidebars
- Theme Option Pages
- Custom thumbnail images
- Smooth tabless design
eGallery Premium WordPress Theme
- Featured Articles
- Safari compatible
- Opera compatible
- Widget ready sidebars
- Theme Option Pages
- Custom thumbnail images
- Smooth tabless design
GrungeMag Premium WordPress Theme
- Social bookmarking ready
- Featured Articles
- Gravatar ready
- Thumbnail Resizing
- Two-teir Dropdown Menus
- Advertisement Ready
- Widget ready sidebars
- Theme Option Pages
- Custom thumbnail images
- Smooth tabless design
Influx Premium WordPress Theme
- Social bookmarking ready
- Featured Articles
- 4 Diverse Skins
- Widget ready sidebars
- Theme Option Pages
- Custom thumbnail images
- Smooth tabless design
Studio Blue Premium WordPress Theme
- Social bookmarking ready
- Featured Articles
- Advertisement Ready
- Widget ready sidebars
- Theme Option Pages
- Custom thumbnail images
- Smooth tabless design
Who’s Who Premium WordPress Theme
- Featured Articles
- Social bookmarking ready
- Ajax enhanced
- Advertisement Ready
- Widget ready sidebars
- Theme Option Pages
- Custom thumbnail images
- Smooth tabless design
Interphase Premium WordPress Theme
- Social bookmarking ready
- Flickr photo stream
- Advertisement Ready
- Widget ready sidebars
- Theme Option Pages
- Custom thumbnail images
- Smooth tabless design
Wooden Premium WordPress Theme
- Social bookmarking ready
- Site-wide search bar
- Widget ready sidebars
- Theme Option Pages
- Custom thumbnail images
- Smooth tabless design
Tidal Force Premium WordPress Theme
- Social bookmarking ready
- Site-wide search bar
- Widget ready sidebars
- Theme Option Pages
- Custom thumbnail images
- Smooth tabless design
Earthly Touch Premium WordPress Theme
- Featured Article
- Site-wide search bar
- Widget ready sidebars
- Random Articles – Homepage
- Custom thumbnail images
- Smooth tabless design
Quadro Premium WordPress Theme
- Site-wide search bar
- Widget ready sidebars
- WordPress 2.9 compatible
- Custom thumbnail images
- Smooth tabless design
ArtSee Premium WordPress Theme
- Social bookmarking ready
- Site-wide search bar
- Widget ready sidebars
- Theme Option Page
- Custom thumbnail images
- Smooth tabless design
Simplism Premium WordPress Theme
- 2-Tier Page Dropdown Menu
- Site-wide search bar
- Widget ready sidebars
- Custom thumbnail images
- Smooth tabless design
Blue Mist Premium WordPress Theme
- Featured Article Section
- Social bookmarking ready
- Site-wide search bar
- Widget ready sidebars
- Adsense ready
- Custom thumbnail images
- Smooth tabless design
Blue Sky Premium WordPress Theme
- Social bookmarking ready
- Site-wide search bar
- Widget ready sidebars
- Adsense ready
- Custom thumbnail images
- Smooth tabless design
Elegant Themes Standard Features
Most Elegant Themes have special features which I have listed above for you. But along with those each theme comes with a set of standard features. These include things like browser compadibility, PSD files, gravatars, ePanel options, and so much more.
• Widget ready sidebars
• Theme options page
• Custom thumbnail images
• PSD Files
• Valid XHTML + CSS
• Smooth tabless design
• Sitewise search bar
• Gravatar ready
• Firefox compatible
• IE8 + IE7 + IE6 compatible
• Opera compatible
• Netscape compatible
• Safari compatible
• WordPress 2.8+ compatible
Elegant Themes Features Explained In Plain English
Automated Thumbnail Resizing
The themes utilize timthumb to automatically resize your thumbnail images. Because of this, only one thumbnail images is required per post, despite the various thumbnail sizes used in the theme.
InDepth Theme Options
Elegant Themes come with an options page that features a long list of settings that makes managing the theme as user-friendly as possible.
Advertising Management
With Elegant Themes you can place 125×125 banner images in your sidebar and 468×60 ads to your post pages with ease. Advertisements are handled from within wp-admin, and can be turned on and off at any time.
Featured Articles Display
With the featured articles display you can choose to feature your favorite posts on the homepage.
Three Widget Ready Areas
This feature contains three widget-ready areas. The Business-style homepage has it’s own unique sidebar, and the footer is also widget ready.
Lifestream Integration
LightSource uses a lifestream plugin, and integrates it into the design using a javascript scroller. The lifestream is a great way to connect your blog with your other social media outlets.
Author Rating System
Elegant Themes allows you to assign ratings to each post you make. These ratings appear on the post page in a 0-5 star format. Each post that has a rating is also shown on the homepage under the “Recent Reviews” section.
Blog Style Integration
If you would rather not use the abbreviated post structure you can opt for the optional blog-style layout. When enabled, your posts will be displayed in full like a traditional blog.
Three Unique Post Layouts
Coldstone contains three unique post layouts. The default (Business), as well as Blog-style (which displays full-length posts) and Magazine-style (which displays the main sidebar on the homepage, and contains additional post/thumbnail variations).
Custom Video Interface
Videos are embedded into a unique javascript-power interface. This video interface adds various blogger-friendly features to your videos including easy social bookmarking, video rating, sharing, linking, backlighting and more.
Video Integration
With Elegant Themes you can add flash videos from your favorite social video network such as YouTube to your posts. This videos are display above each post on the post page. If no video is added, the video interface is removed from the post. (videos are optional)
About Me Section
Cion is geared towards more personal-style blogs. For this reason I have added an “about me” section on the homepage which can be altered from within the theme’s options menu. You can also designate a photo to be used.
Unique Gallery Display Format
eGallery has been customized to transform your blog into a gallery. Posts are displayed in a gallery-format inside a design that was built to draw focus to images rather than text.
Built-In Lightbox
eGallery comes with a built-in lightweight lightbox for all gallery images. Thumbnails on post-pages can be clicked to reveal a lightbox enhanced full view of the source image.
Elegant Themes Review Next Steps
Well, since you made it this far through this Elegant Themes review then you know by now that Elegant Themes is by far the best bang for your buck on the web right now. Not only do you get access to tons of super high quality WordPress Themes but you also have access to the support forum where Nick Roach will personally assist you in further customizing your Elegant Themes so they become a truly unique asset.
I have been a member of Elegant Themes for over a year now and couldn’t be more satisfied with what I got for a measly $20 bucks. If you’re serious about finding the best Premium WordPress Themes then check out Elegant Themes right now, you will simply love it!
Speak soon,
Matthew Neer
If you haven't got it yet, you may want to download this private interview with Frank Kern. Thanks for visiting!
Related Posts
-
daveanddawncook
