Historically we’ve stuck with a few elite premium WordPress theme developers. Long time WordPress developers, WooThemes, Elegant Themes, and Templatic no longer hold the ranks of few, however. They have been joined in recent months by a fury of other talented and up and coming WordPress theme developers that are bringing to market new and different designs.
ThemeShift is one of those new developers, and the theme we’re reviewing of theirs today is a whole new way to look at how business themes are make for WordPress.
When you get to the theme demo, you’re greeted with a bold featured content rotator that’s followed below with a grid layout of post previews. The overall look and feel is smooth, yet bold with a dark overall tone that helps the content really pop out. Included in the header is a slick j-query drop down navigation that really blends with the overall look and feel of the whole theme. Also included with this theme is a unique way to handle pages, with a main page featuring excerpts from all sub pages, displaying it in the same blog-style as the home page. I thought that was cool.
Of course, we can’t leave out ShortCodes. This is a new feature that’s been cropping up in premium WordPress themes all across the web. ShortCodes allow you to insert various theme elements that are build in by inserting a quick theme-specific code. E.g.: [ btn label="General Button" link="47" ] = 
Features
- Custom menus
- 4 color schemes
- jQuery image slider
- Action bar
- Custom home page
- jQuery toggle view
- Shortcodes
- WordPress 3.0 ready
- Custom background
- Widget areas in footer
- Theme options page
Pricing
Standard Theme Price: $53.25
Demo & Live Preview | Purchase License
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I know we’ve been talking a lot about real estate premium WordPress themes lately, and we showed a unique way to display a portfolio site using WordPress, and today we’re going to look at another smooth representation of what you can do with a photo gallery website using WordPress.
Elegant Themes is known for their, well elegant design style. They’ve been around for a while, so designing awesome premium WordPress themes isn’t new to them. DeepFocus is an elegant way to display portfolio images and whatever else you are wanting to display. The structure is broken down by categories, whereby you’d put your photography, design, print, etc. portfolio items in their respective categories. Then the individual items have their own dedicated page that you can have specific details on them about that item.
The presentation is smooth, yet simple. When you get to the portfolio category page, you are greeted with thumbnails of each item that has two options: to look at a larger version of the image right there, or click over to the more-information page. On the main portfolio category page, your view isn’t muddled up with sidebars, but they conveniently come back when you get to the item-information page.
Of course, there is a standard blog section where you can just blog to your heart’s content and standard page templates including a full width, no column layout.
Features
- Opera compatible
- Netscape compatible
- Safari compatible
- WordPress 3.0 compatible
- Five Color Schemes
- Gallery Section
- Threaded Comments
- Optional Blog-style Structure
- Gravatar ready
- Firefox compatible
- IE8 + IE7 + IE6 compatible
- Advertisement Ready
- Widget ready sidebars
- Theme Options Page
- Custom thumbnail images
- PSD files
- Valid XHTML + CSS
- Smooth tabless design
Pricing
Standard Lifetime Annual Membership: $39
Developer Lifetime Membership: $89
Demo & Live Preview | Purchase License
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The insanely affordable Elegant Themes has done it again with another theme release that has left me salivating to find a use for. I’ve always been a huge grunge fan – having lived out some limited dreams of being in a grunge band in high school – and have always admired the unique style (and skill!) that is poored into this type of design.
As mentioned before, Elegant Themes is just ridiculously cheap and has been told on multiple occasions that he could (and should) charge much more for his theme packages. What you get for his $20 annual pass is quite competitive and actually seriously rivaling what you would get spending 12 times that with his competitors. Of course, there is always two ways to sell anything. Sell at a premium price and move fewer units or sell at a low price and go for quantity. But I digress – onto the theme.
Like I was saying, the grunge of this theme is consistent and never lets up regardless of the elements. As you move through the theme, that feeling that everything is exactly where it was meant to be is confirmed over and over again. The repeating background is repeating at just the right spot, the header graphic gives me this urban sophisticated look while being youthful and playful all at the same time.
The graphics look as though they were all hand drawn, scanned in and implemented in a complex yet very cohesive design – and in fact, that is exactly how this theme was designed. The out-of-the-box thinking of this developer is sure to make him stand out from the crowd.
Features List:
- Opera compatible
- Netscape compatible
- Safari compatible
- WordPress 2.9 compatible
- Four Color Schemes
- Threaded Comments
- Optional Blog-style Structure
- Gravatar ready
- Firefox compatible
- IE8 + IE7 + IE6 compatible
- Advertisement Ready
- Widget ready sidebars
- Theme Options Page
- Custom thumbnail images
- PSD files
- Valid XHTML + CSS
- Smooth tabless design
Pricing
Unlimited theme membership for only $19.95 per year.
Demo & Live Preview | Purchase
