Feed your WordPress Demons!
Are you a video blogger? If you are, then you should definitely check out TV.Elements. The TV.Elements WordPress theme is designed for those who primarily do video blogging. You can allow people to add comments or subscribe to your videos, which is cool in itself.
You get multiple sidebars for pages, category pages, and posts, and you can drop your META or Tag Cloud widget in there if you prefer. You can also add ads easy, which is great.
You can post videos to TV.Elements easily. You can try the demo here. This theme works with videos from several sources including Blip.TV, Flickr, MetaCafe, MySpace, Veoh, Viddler, Vimeo and YouTube. Besides, if you have FLV player available on your server, you can pretty much point to anything from this video blog theme.
This theme is compatible with WordPress 2.3, 2.5, and 2.6. We have not tested it below that but the good news is that it’s compatible with the latest WordPress release. You can purchase TV.Elements for $50 for one site. You can get the multi-site license for $125 (that’s for 5 sites). If you want to use it for unlimited number of sites, I suggest you get the developer license for $225.
TV.Elements is a beautiful modern WordPress themes designed for Video Bloggers only. You can easily change it and make it absolutely unique for your blog. Even at $225 (developer license), you still save yourself a ton of money and time and get an absolutely stunning theme.
MediaTricks has just released the smart Viva7 magazine Wordpress Theme today. I thought it’d be in order to put down my early thoughts on this great looking theme.
Viva7 which is dubbed as the “first smart Wordpress theme” comes with integrated versions of Viva ZOOM, VIVA CAROUSEL POSTS & VIVA CAROUSEL GALLERY along with new Viva Plugins – Viva Videos and Viva Events. We did have a piece on VIVA Carousel a few days back, but the other plugins are also premium plugins that have been included with Viva7 Wordpress template.
One thing that I like very much about this theme is the ability to change things without writing too much code. For instance, if you have a bunch of posts that come with images, you can upload your images just you would normally do with other themes and let Viva7 take care of the rest. Basically, Viva7 grabs the images from your directory and displays them in the Carousel and the gallery. It’s pretty amazing! You can do everything here with custom fields, but there are not enough good tutorials on custom fields yet, and you can’t expect to get this done as you would cheaply with this theme.
Customize!:
The theme also comes with a bunch of headers and options that you can use to customize your wordpress theme. Take a look here. But here is what blew me away:
The ability to have real site spots like more expensive enterprise CMS solutions such as Interwoven. Basically you can modify the spots on your page from the WordPress Dashboard easily. If you do any kind of Taguchi multivariate testing for your website, this is just an amazing addition.
Search Engine Friendly:
One of the issues with most Wordpress themes is that you have to go and download a bunch of plugins to make them search engine friendly. You can have the best Wordpress theme in your hand, but it won’t mater if you don’t get enough eyeballs on it. Well, Viva7 surprised me with their integrated Wordpress SEO optimization feature. You can define automated tags for your pages, posts, and everything else, and just set it and forget it. I’d say it’s pretty awesome.
Caveats:
No wordpress theme is perfect, and Viva7 is no exception. You get a very attractive smart Wordpress theme that does almost everything for you. But if you don’t like the design available, you pretty much have to do a redesign yourself. So for those of us that are picky about our own designs, then this might not work. But for 99.99% of bloggers, the design features offered are more than enough.
The Carousel and the gallery features are great and the fact that things get done automatically is awesome. However, we were not able to get external images to show up automatically in the gallery. You can download the images, and upload them to Wordpress and things will work fine. However, it would be great to have the ability to point to an external image and have it show up in the gallery.
Viva7 is a great Wordpress theme with customization features that I have not seen in any other Wordpress template. It’s search engine friendly and cheap. If you are looking for a magazine style Wordpress theme, then you should definitely give Viva7 a try. Here is how the pricing works:
Verdict: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Videoblogging is one of those trends that is catching fire these days. Videoblogging is becoming more and more popular as people spend more time consuming video online. Besides, there are things that you can only communicate through video and audio. Press75 has been known for having some of the best video blogging themes available on the market (I personally use TV.Elements for my blog. The good news is that Press75 has just released their best video Wordpress theme in “On Demand.” So let’s dig in and see what makes On Demand Wordpress theme special.
Design: I am sure you have heard of love on the first sight? Well, On Demand is absolutely incredible looking. You get a featured video section with the ability to flip videos by clicking on the left or right arrows. In addition, you get a category section, where your users can search for their favorite video posts based on your defined categories. The “sideblog” on the sidebar allows you to point to your non-video posts, which I think is great. The dark/light contrast of color on this theme makes it an incredible videoblogging theme. Let’s say you want to run a movie trailer blog. You can do so easily with On Demand (check out the sample site here).
Functionality: like other video themes by Press75, On Demand comes with a host of features for video bloggers. You can import posts from high definition video services such as Blip.tv or Vimeo. In addition, your users can rate videos and your highest rated videos show up in your right sidebar (see picture below). Of course, this theme is widget ready and compatible with the latest Wordpress release.
Cons: This theme is great looking and comes with a lot of features, but no alternative CSS is provided unlike some other premium Wordpress theme. In other words, you will need to either change the CSS yourself or hire someone to do it for you if you want a drastically different look. In addition, we would have liked to see the videos zoom out and play on the same page rather than opening up on the new page. That can however be fixed with minimal coding.
Pricing: On Demand comes with three different types of licenses. I do recommend you signing up for the developer license if you plan to change and reuse the theme for your clients:
Verdict: 4.75 out of 5. The theme is great looking and a must have for new video-bloggers. There are a few small areas that can be improved but nothing that should stop you from getting this theme. Considering that lifetime updates are included, we wouldn’t be surprised to see this theme get improved further in the near future.
I have been around Wordpress for quite some time so technically I have seen most there is to see with Wordpress plugins and themes. But you’d surprised how creative some of these Wordpress developers are. In fact, Wordpress development is a mini industry of its own these days.
Arthemia is one of the most good looking magazine Wordpress theme that I have seen. The blend of colors and fonts that are used on Arthemia makes this a very good option for people who are looking for an ready-to-use magazine style template.
You a featured section on the top right of your theme which allows users to skim through your posts. In addition, you get to define a headline (just like any magazine does). In addition, you can show your categories in a very colorful manner. You also get a seperate section for your latest video posts and random posts at the bottom of your theme, which is useful if you are into video blogging too.
Major Features:
So you may ask. What makes Arthemia different than other magazine themes available for Wordpress. The answer is really simple. Arthemia is built with user convenience in mind. The designers have made the theme so you don’t have to make major changes to the PHP or XHTML code. That is a very big plus for non technical bloggers.
Feedburner & Analytics:
I have seen themes that come with feedburner integration which is very convenient. But Arthemia goes beyond that by integration Google Analytics into the theme so you can just enter your access code through the dashboard and forget it. Sure. You may say it’s not a big deal. But a lot of folks have trouble getting the code implemented on their sites, so this feature is extremely useful in that regard.
Adsense & Banner Management:
You can’t just blog for free and the designers understand the pain that some of us have to go through when we are stuck with themes that cannot easily fit Adsense and other type of banners. These guys make it easy by specifying a banner space at the top of the page. You can just set it and forget it.
Cross Browser Compatible:
I have tested this theme on multiple browsers and I haven’t seen any major issues so far. I can’t tell you how many times I have bought themes that look good on Firefox and IE, but not good enough on Safari and other browsers (you can add Google Chrome to the list). But Arthemia passes the test in that regard.
Price and Fees:
There are no support fees for this theme, so you can rest assured that your investment is guaranteed to work by the designers of this awesome theme. At the same time, the theme is offered with three different pricing tiers:
Due to the nature of sites that use Wordpress, many start-up owners often settle for a Flash or a more static platform than Wordpress. But with launchpad, now you can pre-launch a start-up or an online site without too much fuss.
Launchpad is not a mind-blowing theme. It’s a very simple free Wordpress theme that allows you to put a squeeze box on your start-up page to gather people’s email addresses. It is very well designed, and its license allows you to do as you wish with the template. What I like about launchpad theme is the fact that it fully integrates Feedburner. You can just enter your information in the Dashboard and bam! You have Feedburner on your theme with no code to copy.
One thing that you should be careful about is publishing posts using this theme. Your posts will not be shown on the front page, but the RSS feed reader allows access to your published posts to your subscribers. Make sure you have something other than hello world or “this is a test” as your published posts.
The theme is for free and is GPL licensed. It’s not for a fully-fledged blog, but if you are running a start-up and want to go through a pre-launch before coming out, then you may want to consider LaunchPad Wordpress theme.
