Review of Elegant Themes – The Good and The Bad

If you use WordPress, then you know by now all of the neat templates out there from Woo themes , Studio Press , Themeforest , and Elegant Themes. Today I wanted to review Elegant themes and share my experience with past templates and how to use Elegant themes.
To give you some background on Elegant themes here is an excerpt from the Elegant Themes site

I created this website to provide WordPress themes of quality and integrity. I craft my skins with a goal of simplicity and professionalism and strive to inject each design with a dose of modest elegance. I believe that your website is not just a tool; it is an integral part of your identity. My job is to respect each customer by providing attractive and user friendly WordPress templates that will help you achieve your online goals. Nick Roach

When I was in between themes over the course of this year, I found Elegant Themes and was delighted by the crisp design and added functions that were already built in. What I think new bloggers with no experience look for is a theme with already built-in features to take the headache out of trying to find those cool widgets later like:

Navigation Management
Element Colorization
Shortcodes
Search Engine Optimization
Integration Tab
Support Documentation / updates
Built-in Widgets

What I like most about Elegant themes is the way you buy themes. Most themes ask you to purchase 1 theme, but if you end up hating it later, you’re stuck with a theme you don’t want to use anymore and $70 out the door. Elegant Themes offers use of all of their themes for the low price of $39 versus $70 for 1 theme. It’s not to say that other themes not priced this way is bad, but this angle seemed more feasible for my pocket book at the time and I could try out various themes to find the right one for me. After you make your initial purchase you can get “full” access to download, and remove themes until you find the right one for you. ** I would advise that your blog isn’t live where your readers might get confused if you start changing your theme every 5 minutes**.

Elegant Themes provide themes for anyone with a:

Here is a tutorial on how to install a theme that I use for my other site:

What to look out for and my frustration with Elegant Themes

Not all WordPress themes are created equally and how you upload them to your wordpress backdoor can be quite confusing to a newbie. Some themes can easily be uploaded without “unzipping” the theme and you can get on with your life, but most nowadays require a few tools you might not be familiar with. You will hear the word FTP a lot and quite honestly, having to perform another task after you download a theme is quite cumbersome. Nevertheless, it’s something that you might hear a lot, but there is ways around it. Elegant Themes, does have a Support Tutorial with each theme, but like with all developers, some key information is always left out.

With Elegant Themes, it is quite easy to:

Download the theme
Unzip the theme
Upload the theme (located inside the folder)
Upload it in your WordPress Panel (now)

My advice to all newbies

Read the tutorial very carefully and don’t fly through it because you’re excited. You will miss some key factors and frustrate yourself even more. Elegant Themes does come with videos, but not for every question you might have. They offer aSupport Forum for anyone looking for additional help for each theme. Once you sign up, make sure you filter through questions “already asked” to find a possible answer to your question to avoid duplicating the same question.

Here’s the true problem

When you ask a question most times you get a reply back with a “vague answer”. I don’t know about you, but I don’t speak “developer code” and this most times frustrates users more. In a perfect world, giving step by step answers makes life so much easier and the buyer can actually get on with their life . Don’t you think? I have found that filtering through the forum has helped me and they offer a team of “moderators” to answer tough questions, but conversing with someone in another country can be annoying. I will add that you can email the site owner directly and he will respond. Note: Provide as much information possible and it helps eliminates the back and forth between you and the moderators. My review might sound like me just complaining, but I would rather prepare a newbie for some realizations then to pretend that it will all be “gravy”.Nothing kills “excitement” then frustration.

Giveaway! – Try Elegant Themes Out for 1 Year on Me!

I will be giving away a 1 year membership (unlimited access) to Elegant themes. To join just follow the simple contest rules below.

Not A Member? Join Elegant Themes

If you aren’t a member it is about time you head on over and see what they are all about. And if you love it please come back and let me know, same thing if you hate it.