WooThemes has taken the cake again releasing a new theme with new functionality found nowhere before. Diner, one of their latest themes allows restaurant owners to take needed functionality on their website by the reins and control creative, much needed elements in the easy to use WordPress interface. Diner is a premium WordPress theme from WooThemes.
When you get to the home page, you’re greeted with WooThemes iconic simple design. The look and feel is smooth, modern, almost understated. For some, this look will be perfect, for others, it won’t work at all. But, it’s not the look that draws you to this theme, it’s the infrastructure built in. Here are some of the really cool features WooThemes has built right into this theme:
Dynamic home page – you can customize the layout with all sorts of varying items of interest, including a content slider, a location map, reservations calendar (more on that in a bit), locations map (integrated Google map), specials section, from the blog section, and more.
Menu – using this new theme, you can completely manage all your menu items right on the site. Using Custom Post Types, WooThemes has kept it creative in the way you can put in new menu items. You can put in all your menu items, and they’ll be listed on your site on the front-end in a table format. You can upload a thumbnail image and set the price and on the front-end, users can rate the dish.
Reservations – users can make reservations and come back to view or cancel their reservations in the future. In the back-end, you can see the reservations made so you can honor them for your customers. You can set the hours of operation, how many tables you have, how many are seated at each and interval of time between table reservations. This is really cool.
All-in-all, this theme offers flexibility never before found in WordPress when it comes to using it as a restaurant website platform.
Pricing
Single License: $70
Developer License: $150
Single License Club: $125 upfront and $15 per month
Developer License Club: $200 upfront and $20 per month
Diligently releasing monthly premium WordPress themes, WooThemes’ latest release is a simple, elegant theme that brings you back to the roots of blogging. This theme features all of WooThemes standard features, including a comprehensive Control Panel, auto-sizing thumbnails, and custom page templates. Also included with this theme (like all their themes) is the Woo Framework.
The best part of this theme is its price: FREE.
This particular theme features a few new features WooThemes has just released including a new sidebar manager that allows you to ditch the traditional WordPress sidebar for something more custom, Custom Shortcodes, 4 alternative styles, custom widget areas, custom footer area, and custom typography.
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" ] =
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.
Continuing to maintain their clear superiority in the premium theme development world, WooThemes has upped the ante with an improved backend framework that improves efficiency and makes it easier for you to customize your shiny new premium WordPress WooTheme.
Per the WooBlog:
As we have mentioned in the last week, we’ve been working on a new version (2.0) of the WooFramework, which we’ll be releasing with Optimize tomorrow. The integration of WooFramework 2.0 with Optimize, serves as the public beta of the new framework and we’d like to fix all of the possible bugs first, before we integrate it into all our older themes (all 54 of them).
So all of our subscribers who will get access to Optimize tomorrow, will have the opportunity to play with the new options panel & framework. For the rest, the following preview video will have to do the trick…
I’ve gone through the video (below) and am anxious to dive into working with the framework. I never really like the accordion style set up they had before, but it was easy to get along with because they give you so many customization options to work with. The new layout and functionality is sure to be a huge hit.
Looking for that special theme, but know that deep down inside you’re really just an indecisive perfectionist? Have a fickle client that changes his mind like he changes his son’s diapers? How about that new site concept that you’ve been dreaming of that you just can’t nail down that perfect look? Woo Themes 5 for 1 Christmas Premium WordPress Theme sale is just the answer you’ve been looking for.
It’s no secret that Woo Themes is by far one of our favorite theme developers around and this is the opportunity to get your muggy paws on 5 of their themes for the paltry price of 1! With individual premium theme prices normally in the range of a very worthy $70 per, this makes an excellent holiday special and gives you an opportunity to cash in on some of that creative desire and hold a stock of some sweet WordPress looks.
If you’re more of a club kind a’ guy/gal, no problem. Woo Themes is offering a schaweet 20% off all club memberships – whether you be a user or developer. What are the benefits of being a club member, you say? If you are someone who is constantly building new sites using WordPress whether for clients, yourself or friends, a club membership allows you to have unlimited access to ALL the Woo Themes premium WordPress themes. This is perfect since they come out with a sweet new design each month.
Committed to bringing you two new themes every month, WooThemes has done it again, bringing a smoothly designed, feature-packed theme good for anyone who wants to have the coolest looking site out there.
The Mortar Premium WordPress Theme from WooTheme is a slick design with a multitude of customization options, including varying layouts from 1, 2, 3, or even 4 column layouts. I love the design of this theme. For years I’ve been following PSDTuts and the design style of Collis Ta’eed and have grown to love the simple use of gradients, shadows and borders. The Mortar Premium WordPress Theme gives me that same consistent feel of quality in simplistic, yet well thought out design.
Built on the popular JQuery layout plugin Masonry (Source code here), the home page arranges blog posts vertically then horizontally to make sure there is a neat grid of posts with no spacious gaps between them.
The home page and archive page also have the option to arrange the posts in 1, 2, 3, or 4 columns giving you complete flexibility with your layout.
A completely widgetized sidebar with 2 custom widgets included in the theme packaging. No third party widgets required.
8 amazing color schemes to choose from!
Drop-down menus.
Integrated Theme Options (for WordPress) to tweak the layout, colour scheme etc. for the theme.
Threaded Comments for WordPress 2.7+.
Custom Page Templates for Archives & Sitemap.
Built-in Gravatar Support for Comments.
Integrated top banner ad space, which can accommodate both image banner ads or AdSense embeds.
