Simply Skin

ColorMatic seems to me the perfect “skin” for your Wordpress. It’s very web 2.0, sleek, and potential for customization is so high that you morph this baby into something unique that you can call your own. And I imagine – customization shouldn’t be so hard to do: just slap on an shiny header graphic and done! Excellent use of rounded corners – no immediate graphics in the pages, elements are all in code. This is sign of good search optimization which I’m sure is attracting web owners and bloggers alike. The layout is semi-magazine with good emphasis on white space, ad placements and thumbnails. I think it’s the perfect skin because it not like a minimalistic frame that’s too bare; but not too much style either that it’s too distinct.

Did I say Morph?

Skimming through the theme features, it’s kind of hard to digest all the “Morphing” abilities this theme can do. I like the four possible layouts because judging from the screenshots – it covers almost all the layouts you ever invented for a magazine styled blog: e.g. Product Centered, Slideshow featured posts, Single – large feature, Small – large featured post. Another thing that is rarely seen in other premium themes is the color picker. I’m not just talking a stylesheet selector where you get to pick from a group of css styles but rather, enter your own values to personify your own color schema.

What the Designer Has to Say:

In our humble opinion, ColorMatic Theme is not just a “premium theme” – this would better be classified as a “super premium them” because of its multiple layout options, font changer, and multi-color picker.
I am such a fan of ColorMatic Theme that I decided to redo my blog design using it. In fact, using ColorMatic Theme, this new customization only took me about an hour. Not bad for a fully custom design!
It is SUPER EASY to customize ColorMatic Theme for your needs. You can select from four effective website layouts and use an UNLIMITED number of color combinations!

Full Feature List

* Pick any color, automatically! One theme can now be applicable to a wide variety of niches. Pick the background color, foreground, text color, sidebar color, and many more!
* Four (4) effective website layouts: Whether you need a business design, product-featured design, or a personal blog design, ColorMatic Theme has got you covered!
* Pick any color, automatically! One theme can now be applicable to a wide variety of niches.
* Powerful Theme Control Panel: Translation: No coding required. Configure your theme with incredible ease.
* Upload your logo with 1-Click: Forget the days of uploading your logo via FTP. Now, upload your logo with just one-click.
* Featured content sliding gallery (optional): Display your featured posts via an elegant featured content slider.
* Feedburner integration: Track your RSS subscribers and allow your visitors to subscribe via email to your blog.
* Built-in My Social Networks widget: Display links (and logos) to your social networking profiles, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Technorati, Digg and Delicious.
* Built-in Twitter widget: Display your recent Tweets and encourage your visitors to follow you.
* Built-in Flickr widget: Display your recent Flickr photos with just a few clicks.
* Built-in Blog Navigator widget: Display a slick DOM-tab style navigation to highlight your popular posts, comment, featured posts and archives.
* Basic SEO controls: Basic SEO controls allow you to fine tune the search engine optimization of your site.
* Automatic image resizing: Avoid resizing/cropping your featured post images. Just select your image, upload and blog.
* No custom fields – built-in post extras: Custom fields are a pain so we kicked them to the curb. Set your image thumbnail and featured image all within the post-edit window.
* Advertising management: Manage your ad codes directly within the Control Panel. You can display 125×125 block ads and 468×60 ads – all without third party plugins.
* WordPress 2.8 REQUIRED: Say hello to threaded comments, sticky posts, and all the other benefits of WP 2.8.

The Home Page

Traditional yet effective, you notice the home page simply contains a block of graphic above the fold. This graphic spot is used by many organizations to display their company message, motto or slogan. I have seen many themes that employ a slider in this same spot – but to many, its a little overkill. Sometimes you just want that regular static image – and many websites still do! Following this section is three containers with a single posts from three different categories. Another effective way to deliver your message, while complimenting the page layout.

The Inner Pages

I fell in love with the bread crumb style navigation found in the yellow bar above the content in the inner pages. Bread Crumbs is still very useful, and I feel is a must especially for websites with a lot of pages and sub-pages. The comments area, form and elements are also very well done. While the archive pages (shown below), is quite refreshing with excellent use of thumbnails for each post. I would like to see added spacing between elements – but overall, Triumph’s inner pages is a sure shot.

Features

* Two Column Layout
* Widget Ready
* Adsense Ready
* Threaded Comments
* WP 2.7+ Ready
* No Sidebars Template
* Links & Bookmark Template
* Sitemap Template
* Five Level Dropdown Menus

Javascript Goodness

From the Home page featured box section – you will notice the smooth transition of posts. The hover captions in the bottom is a nice added touch to it as well. Containers in the page all have the default toggle (+) and (-) symbol for the option of hiding and showing them. The sidebar contains a tabbed interface where you can switch from the latest news, popular posts and latest comments all in one constrained space. The navigation drop downs are also well animated, supporting child categories and pages alike. Finally, a scroll to top button located in the footer is a powered by javascript – which is a nifty little tool as well.

Other Goodness

The color schema used in the Elements is bold. Bold and beautiful! The shocking pink, muted greens and aqua blues is to a surprise, very well blending. Placed on top of a dark gray and black background – they all harmonize like a beautiful neon painting. The Comments template is very well designed, the form – quite original. One more thing I liked is the splitting of categories and archives into two columns located in the sidebar is excellent.

Features

* Widget Ready
* Adsense Ready
* Multi Dropdown Menus
* No Sidebars Template
* WP 2.7+ Ready
* Links & Bookmark Template
* Sitemap Template
* Minimize / Maximize Sections
* Featured Video

Elements is sold for $69.

What Impressed Me

There are so many things I can talk about WP Newspaper but I would like to keep this review short. One notable thing is the excellent use of “Impact” fonts for the navigation. This gives it that formal and “authoritative” feel for the newspaper. The designer did not need to use any images or javascript to achieve this effect. All done with good CSS and Font choice. Matter of fact – you will notice a plethora of font variations: like a printed newspaper.

Another thing I liked very much is the category pages. You will notice the latest news have a much larger thumbnail than the older news. This may be a minor thing to designers, but to readers – it just makes more sense. You want to make your latest news pop out, which is the purpose of the difference.

Theme Features

* Translation template which makes it possible to translate into any language easily.
* Automatic image resizer, which is used to dynamically resize photos for main page thumbnailing.
* Integrated theme settings page to tweak the layout through WordPress admin dashboard.
* Unique newspaper layout
* 2 different available header layout
* A nice ajax support for featured entries
* Built in Banner Management
* Built in Photo Gallery
* Built in Video Gallery
* Archives Tab
* Ajax tabs
* Search engine optimized
* Fully widgetized mainpage, sidebar and footer (29 widgetized sections)
* Ad Optimized

There are many options when you buy WP Newspaper Theme. Head on to Gabfire for more information.

Unique Features

* Geometric is a hybrid of a blog + portfolio and thus enables you to run both these as an integrated offering on one WP installation;
* A custom home page, which is completely widgetized and thus allows you to move different widgets (for blogging, portfolio & social profiles) around as you wish;
* A completely widgetized sidebar, along with 12 custom (Geometric-specifc) widgets that you can use;
* Ability to interchange between a left and right sidebar;
* Styling for both blog and portfolio items that are carried forth throughout the site (category, date-based and tag archives, along with search results); and
* The ability to publish all of your social profiles throughout the site; allowing you to connect with more of your users.

Standard Features

* Integrated Theme Options (for WordPress) to tweak the layout, colour scheme etc. for the theme;
* Automatic Image Resizer, which is used to dynamically create the thumbnails for the blog posts on the home page;
* Custom Page Templates for Archives & Sitemap
* Built-in Gravatar Support for Comments; and
* Integrated Banner Management script to display randomized banner ads of your choice site-wide.

Theme Features

• Use as a standard blog or use the customized homepage layout, as shown in our demo, that you can activate via our options panel
• As always, Irresistible is built on our very popular backend, which includes some non-standard, non-average customisation options
• Integrated banner ad management
• Seamlessly integrated video player
• Widgetized sidebar, with some Irrestible-specific custom widgets to allow you full control of what happens in your sidebar
• 9 different colour schemes to choose from

Disclaimer

This is a free theme and Woo Themes release it “as is”. They will not be offering any support to users of this theme who are not WooThemes members – so e-mails and comments requesting support will be ignored completely (comments will be deleted).

Unique Features

• Home page slider displaying latest posts
• Home page visual category boxes with javascript hover effects
• Attractive category archive template with images with javacript hover effects
• Dedicated blog category template and home page module
• 6 widgetized areas (4 footer modules and 2 sidebar modules)
• 7 custom Woo widgets; and
• 12 great colour schemes to suit your site identity

Standard Features

• Integrated Theme Options (for WordPress) to tweak the layout, colour scheme etc.
• Automatic Image Resizer, which is used to dynamically create the thumbnails for the blog posts on the home page
• Threaded Comments for WP 2.7
• Trendy drop-down menu’s for your main navigation
• Custom Page Templates for Archives & Sitemap
• Built-in Gravatar Support for Comments

Unique Features

• Home page image switcher to help promote your latest products
• Home page scrolling carousel dedicated to a specific category
• 6 widgetized areas (2 x left sidebar,4 x footer columns)
• 6 custom Woo widgets (Flickr, Twitter, Search, Feedburner, Most commented posts, Recent posts)
• 11 great colour schemes to suit your site identity.

Other Standard Features

• Integrated Theme Options (for WordPress) to tweak the layout, colour scheme etc. for the theme (screenshot)
• Automatic Image Resizer, which is used to dynamically create the thumbnails for the blog posts on the home page
• Threaded Comments for WP 2.7
• Trendy drop-down menu’s for your main navigation
• Custom Page Templates for Archives, Image Gallery & Sitemap
• Built-in Gravatar Support for Comments

Here’s what the author has to say:

I wanted to create a theme that displayed it’s content in a traditional way (similar to Basic), but with a bit more pizzazz! I tried to keep the structure clear and organized, while still maintaining a unique style. CherryTruffle is great for personal blogs and business blogs alike, and for anyone looking to give their blog a fresh and unique appearance.

Features Overview:

• Three unique color schemes – CherryTruffle comes with three different color schemes. If Default isn’t your style, try out the Blue, or Purple variations.
• Automated thumbnail resizing
  This theme utilizes timthumb to automatically resize your thumbnail images. Because of this, only one thumbnail images is required per post, despite the various thumbnail sizes used in the theme.
• Advertising management
  With CherryTruffle you can place 125×125 banner images in your sidebar and 468×60 ads to your post pages with ease. Advertisements are handled from within wp-admin, and can be turned on and off at any time.
• In-depth theme options
  CherryTruffle comes with an options page that features a long list of settings that makes managing the theme as user-friendly as possible.
• Optional blog-style post layout
  If you would rather not use the abbreviated post structure you can opt for the optional blog-style layout. When enabled, your posts will be displayed in full like a traditional blog.

Heres what the designer has to say:

The Sharp theme is a widget ready clean, crisp WordPress blog layout with 4 color variations that is easy to customize and use.

Template features:

• WordPress 2.6 & 2.7 Theme
• Easy logo change
• Sidebar Widget Ready
• Valid CSS and XHTML 1 .0 strict
• 2 columns tableless fixed layout
• 4 PSD files
• Easy customization

Sharp sells for $25 in ThemeForest.