Feed your WordPress Demons!
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
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:
Vanilla Sky is more than just a movie. It’s actually a very attractive magazine style Wordpress theme. Vinalla Sky theme is designed to help you create a professional looking magazine site with Wordpress.
The theme is designed by Blog oh Blog, and it comes with:
What I like about this theme is that it’s very flexible. The slide show was very easy to set up and quite attractive. You also get a featured and popular post section to promote your top blog posts. And the drop down menu effect was quit cool.
Overall, Vanilla Sky is a decent premium Wordpress theme to consider if you are starting your own magazine style blog. It’s attractive, simple, and cheap too (you can see a demo here). If you are starting your new magazine-style blog, you should definitely see this
The good folks behind NattyWP have released another attractive magazine theme for the Wordpress platform. Mayones is a good looking theme that is designed for folks who want to own their own magazine site. You also get 6 styles with this theme and can customize it easily.
You can buy a single license for $45 or the developer license for $150. You can also sign up for a membership to access all the themes by NattyWP. Watch this space for a more complete Mayones review.
Demo this theme here.
Magazine Wordpress sites have been on the rise. There is no question that Wordpress makes it easier for people to manage highly complex magazine-style sites, and thanks to the Wordpress community there are lots of magazine themes available to the public. Vanity is another cool magazine Wordpress theme that allows you to create your very own magazine-style website fast.
Vanity is not only very attractive, but it is also very flexible, which means you can make changes fast and create your own unique version in no time. The theme comes in two colors (Pink & Aqua). What I like about this theme is the placement of the newsletter (RSS) box. As long as you can drive traffic to your website, you are going to get a lot of leads as it will be hard for folks to ignore your newsletter feature. Vanity comes ad ready. You can easily ad your Adsense or third-party ads to the top of your page and start making money from your website.
The Carousel article slider is very useful too. You can load up your top stories there and let your users slide through them. The stories include a passage from your original articles plus the thumbnail version of your images.
The meat of the theme brings you a lot of opportunities to provide value to your users. Not only you get to display your posts on the left side of the theme, you can integrate your videos and pictures on your sidebar. The middle-bar is designed to allow you to promote your sponsors and monetize your website.
Vanity is a fully-fledged magazine theme, which means you get everything you need to create a sophisticated site fast. Here is a summary of features that you get with Vanity:
If you are looking for a good looking theme to start your own magazine , you should strongly consider Vanity.
