Gold Wordpress is another premium that caught my eye. It caught my eye not only because it looks good, also because of its unique characteristics. The theme is designed by Sara P and is meant for a portfolio style website (using the Wordpress CMS capabilities) and a blog. I mentioned unique because many of the themes’ features I haven’t seen elsewhere. Let me explain:

The Look

The textures and the color schema used is superb. You will notice an array of gold and dark brown splashes all over the page which I think is done in great taste. The placing of elements: the post title, meta-data, post content, comments section is also good. The designer also did an excellent job in the styling of the fonts. The same Georgia is kept for the general font family; Varying only in weight (bold vs. normal), color (light vs. dark), and style (normal vs. italics). This subtle change in font styles is very effective yet keeping the consistency of the overall look.

Navigation and Slogan Area

I found the navigation bar on top of the page to be very striking: lined with jagged edges along with the page description directly below the physical page title. Another area I thought was excellent was the page header image and slogan. This is usually has to be customized in most themes, but in this case – it is required which enhances each page all the more.

Featured Content in a Portfolio?

Typically, featured sections are only seen in a magazine style layout. In Gold Wordpress, you get a content feature slider in the homepage and another in the portfolio template. This makes perfect sense because you also want that “wow” effect in both areas of your site. In addition, the theme includes the option to overlay your post thumbnails over the page. This is known as the “lightbox” effect. This is very useful for viewing the larger version of your images without refreshing the page.

I also noticed the post number slider in the bottom of the home page. This is the first I’ve seen of its kind – rather than the traditional “previous” and “next” navigation we all see in most blogs.

Gold Wordpress also includes a built in contact form. This is a huge plus because normally, you would have to create the form from scratch or install a separate plugin for this purpose. And we all know – ALL websites need some form of contact.

Special Sidebars

Lastly, I noticed that each page template contain a different sidebar. Now this is very untraditional because most designs only contain one common sidebar. I’m not sure if this is laziness in the designers’ part, or its basically general practice: to make the theme more standardized. In Gold WP’s case, a unique sidebar is designated to each page template. For instance, a “testimonials” sidebar is paired up with the “Portfolio” page. A “Contact information” sidebar is paired with the “Contact” template. Of course, there is a standard sidebar which goes with the other pages. But considering the assignment of unique sidebars to pages I think is very well thought of and great planning by the designer.

Options page and other features

Gold Wordpess comes complete with the layered .psd files for further customization. The theme has been tested in all major browsers and is search engine optimized. The code is well commented and documentation is included. Theme settings can be manipulated from the options panel – which allows you to do aesthetic changes without touching a line of code. Gold Wordpress sells for a very low $25.00 at Themeforest.net.