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5 Premium WordPress Themes Which Have Definitely Nailed It

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Let’s face it, finding the perfect WordPress theme that fits your requirements can be a tiresome task. The burden of creating a great website is not limited only to the actions “purchase” and “transfer domain name”. Choosing the right theme to go with your site can be an exhausting undertaking and there’s a reason why. Sometimes, it’s almost impossible to discover a theme that suits your client’s ideas and makes a statement with a stylish appearance and user-friendly layout. WordPress themes, as any other product on the market, be it physical or digital, tend to suit only specific purposes, without paying better attention at the big picture.

Premium WordPress Themes: Great Design and High Functionality In A Single Package

Allured by the idea of quick success, most web developers endeavour to create digital products which fit a certain target group and focus either a clean code or deliver a great looking product with less flexibility. Yet, customization is one of the most important features of website templates and this leads us to our first pick.

Sk8ter

The Sk8ter theme is hands-down one of the most featured-packed WordPress themes that can be found in the digital marketplace.

Sk8ter theme

Source: http://templates-website.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/sk8tercoffee.png

The ability to change a theme’s appearance determines the make-it-or-break-it point for customers. Truth is, fixed designs don’t suit web developers for a number of reasons. Knowing that, the guys at AVA Themes have developed this theme to suit each and every requirement of the modern customer, starting from the necessity of specific customizations and delivering a web project which offers high functionality and good looks without making compromises on user-friendliness.
Sk8er is a multi-purpose theme which offers a bundle of features, from an extended amount of pre-made homepage designs, Bootstrap and Woocommerce to simplifying customization via a visual composer and offering more than 70 blocks which make modification easy as a breeze.

VIRA

The need of WordPress themes which aim at excellent performance and good looks has resulted in the creation of some of the most widely appreciated design products that can be found online.he need of WordPress themes which aim at excellent performance and good looks has resulted in the creation of some of the most widely appreciated design products that can be found online.

VIRA theme

Source: http://0.s3.envato.com/files/131843779/previews/01_banner.__large_preview.jpg

Vira introduces a whole new approach to creative web development. The sleek design of this fabulous one-page WordPress theme will make any web designer awe with inspiration. Vira is a gorgeous theme, created by a team of dedicated developers and it promises a 100% user satisfaction by offering a number of unique layouts.

Photome

Have you ever dreamed of created a website design that rather compliments photography instead of mindlessly shuffling gallery containers with the hope of more exposure. Truth is, photography requires space and having a stuffed design will only add to its complexity and move the focus away from the site’s main purpose.

Photome theme

Source: https://cdn3.colorlib.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/photome-fullscreen-photo-theme.jpg

The crew behind ThemeGoods has managed to take away the most important lessons from minimalist web design. They have built a photography theme which ideally blends the breath-taking beauty of photography with the humble elegance of modern minimalism. Photome comes with 8 demo pages and 50+ gallery templates which make customizing this theme a true delight.

Kalium

This gorgeous WordPress theme, found over the Envato marketplace, embraces and celebrates minimalism.

Kalium theme

Source: http://cdn.kaliumtheme.com/assets/img/agency.png

Created by Laborator, the Kalium theme features a clean design refracted through the prism of a unique concept. Laborator’s WordPress theme projects revolve around the idea of creating a periodic table of website templates, each of which represents a different concept.
What makes Kalium stand out from the crowd is the theme’s crisp design which features clean minimalism. The theme has a monochromatic layout and uses typewriter font to create the perfect minimalist appearance. The theme’s clean look is a perfect solution for blogs and portfolios. Kalium’s sleek appearance and simple style help great content shine.

Oshine

Seeking a multi-layout team with a beautiful interface and a multi-purpose functionality? Oshine has won a grand price in many theme rankings as being one of the leading website templates that can be found in the digital marketplace.

Oshine theme

Source: http://www.webcreate.me/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/oshine-best-portfolio-theme.jpg

Oshine offers 18 unique page template demos which combine different layout options. The theme uses user-friendly page builders and has powerful customization properties. The team at BrandExponenets has aimed at creating a striking balance between delivering high-end design and flexible functionality.Oshine has a unique design and offers limitless possibilities portfolio design. The theme comes with Master Slider and has great image sections, from parallax overlays to background videos.

5 Things to Look For in a Great WordPress Template

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With thousands of WordPress templates to choose from, it’s possible to find ones that are really good and really bad. But most of them are right in the middle, not good or bad. These tend to result in a site that doesn’t make a good impression on a visitor. In other cases, it can just result in a wordpress template that is a pain to use. If you’re looking for a great wordpress template out of the thousands that are out there right now, here’s how to separate the cream from the crop. [Read more…]

Top 12 WordPress themes and plug-ins for mobile devices

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Now that tablets are becoming mainstream and smartphones are getting better displays and faster processors more and more people are going to be browsing online with their mobile devices. If there was a time to make your website mobile ready it would be now.

If your website runs on WordPress it is as simple as selecting a theme or plug-in that will transform your website for mobile devices. Most themes and plug-ins will automatically detect if a user is browsing from a computer or mobile device and automatically serve the right layout.

[Read more…]

How To Add Support For Menus In Your WordPress Theme

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Are you running WordPress 3.0 yet? If so, you might have come across a nifty little addition called Menus. You’ll find it on your admin Dashboard in the Appearances section, and here’s a little screenshot of how it looks:

As you can see, I’ve set up a new menu named “Lorraine Menu” here, and added various things to it by selecting from the elements on the left side of the page: a link to Devlounge, links to some pages, and so forth.

Also of note is the message beneath Theme Locations that states:

The current theme does not natively support menus, but you can use the “Custom Menu” widget to add any menus you create here to the theme’s sidebar.

So how do I make sure my theme supports these new menus? There are two methods:

The Easy Way: Widgets

If your theme is already widgetized, you probably don’t have to do anything- especially if the menu is meant to go in the sidebar. A user simply needs to add a “Custom Menu” widget from the Widgets screen. If your design includes navigation elsewhere, just add another widgetized area in your functions.php and specific theme template (header.php or sidebar.php, for example).

The More Complicated Method: Native Support

I suspect that most WordPress theme authors will want to add native support for menus in their themes, though- and it’s really not that hard. Here’s how to do it:

Register Menu Locations. The first thing you want to do is add this code to your functions.php file. Let’s set up 2 locations for menus, making sure to replace the “menu-name” texts with your own.:
[php]
add_action( ‘init’, ‘register_my_menus’ );

function register_my_menus() {
register_nav_menus(
array(
‘menu-1’ => __( ‘Menu 1’ ),
‘menu-2’ => __( ‘Menu 2’ )
)
);
}
[/php]

Call Menus from Theme Templates. To specify where you want these locations to be in your theme templates, use this:
[php]
‘menu-1’ ) ); ?>
[/php]
and
[php]
‘menu-2’ ) ); ?>
[/php]

You can learn more about wp_nav_menu and the parameters it supports at the Codex.

And that’s it! It shouldn’t take more than ten minutes- more with styling, of course- to update your existing WordPress themes to natively support 3.0’s Menus feature.

Add A Facebook Like Button To Your WordPress Theme In 5 Minutes

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Blog visitors don’t always want to leave comments- which explains why the Facebook “Like” button has become so popular. Who needs to type? By simply clicking a little thumbs-up button, you not only announce to the world that you appreciate something, you get to track it on your Facebook account and share it with all your friends.

For WordPress users, adding a Like button to your existing blog is as simple as installing and activating one of the available plug-ins. For WordPress theme authors, here’s how to integrate Like buttons into your theme:

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