“Market” is a new premium theme from Andrew of Astereostudio.com, which allows you to use your blog as an online store or marketplace. View the live demo here.

Via custom fields, you can enter a description, 1 large image with 3 smaller images, a price, and other information for each product or item. It also allows people to pay you through PayPal.

Installation

Market is actually very easy to install. I have a copy of it installed offline (on my computer). It took me less than five minutes to add the first product to the offline test blog. If you haven’t had any experience with using custom fields, which is easy, it might take you ten minutes to read the instructions and to add the first product.

Structure

I’m impressed by how close Market’s layout is to the 17 New Rules for Successful E-commerce Websites. Thanks to the function over form approach, Market is also easy for customers to use. Everything is clearly laid out and you’re not overwhelmed by all of the information for each product.

Function

Andrew integrated the phpThumb thumbnail generator for converting large images for each product, which saves a lot of time for the administrator or store manager by automatically converting the images to the right size without distorting them. Also, one of the product display features that I like is the ability to zoom in on the smaller images. Here’s an example of the zoom feature:

Minor Improvements

This is the first version of Market so of course there’s room for improvement, but the following suggestions are more like bonuses.

• An optional space for a store banner right above the products listing on the front page would be nice.)
• The single product page doesn’t have a direct page edit link for administrators.
• Although this theme is easy to install, I’d like to see extended instructions on how to upload images and how to grab the image locations added to the read-me file.
• And if possible, don’t make the this theme duplicate the smaller thumbnails in case the administrator uploaded only one small image.

Pricing

Market costs only $40 and you can use it on multiple websites.

Conclusion

Besides my suggestions above, I’m thoroughly impressed by Market. It’s compact, easy to install, and easy to use. I think it’s safe to say that premium is not just a marketing term for this theme.

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(This is a sponsored review. However, this theme had to go through inspection first.)

Unlike several premium themes already in the market, WP Remix is easy to set up by novice users. However, packaged with well over 20 layout variations, it’s safe to say Bhavesh made WP Remix for the developers to remix until their hearts’ content.

Preview this theme.

While it’s easy for novice users to set up, it isn’t so easy for the same group to realize the potential of WP Remix. Visit the WP Remix home page for several examples of remixes or skins of this theme.

Speaking of layout variations and the potential this theme gives you, below are some examples of the layout variations:

Optional Home Page 1

Optional Home Page 2

Gallery Page Template

Events Template

Data Table Template

Contact Form Template (This contact form is included with the theme.)

Pros

• Flexible design.
• Built for modifiation.
• More than 20 pre-made templates for you to play with.
• Nicely structured and commented CSS codes for you to learn the basic structure.
• Good author support.

Design

Design-wise, WP Remix’s minimalistic, but flexible design has some minor spacing, alignment, and cross-browser issues. Mainly, I think the font size for the main column is too small.

If you must use this theme with the default set up and styles then increase the font size.

Code and Structure

In the beginning, there were some invalid XHTML like an unclosed meta tag, which is trivial. Fortunately for the theme author, Bhavesh, he’s been going back and forth with me for several days to grind out the details. I’m happy to say the errors are all fixed.

If there was a Small Potato care and effort test, I’d say Bhavesh passed it. Everything I’ve pointed out, he’s been quick to fix. For example, I mentioned the style.css file was a bit large at 21kb so he cleaned up the codes and brought it down to 19kb. At least, my experience with Bhavesh should give you an idea of what kind of support you’ll get.

Main Con

My main issue with this theme is the use of free icons, images, and photos. Not because they’re free, but because they’re not referenced and I haven’t seen any licenses for them that says they can be distributed commercially. Although Bhavesh does warn you against using them for anything other than simple placeholders for presentation purposes only, it still bugs me that the sources are not referenced.

Just to be on the safe side, take Bhavesh’s warning seriously and replace those icons, images, and photos.

Conclusion

The downfalls are sourceless icons, images, and photos. But, those issues will be solved and you can easily work around them for the moment. Also, the author makes up for it with good support.

WP Remix has lots of potential and it’ll save you time if you find those layout variations useful. For a surprisingly low price, $55, this theme actually gives you more flexing room than most of the premium themes already in the market.

For novice users, I’d recommend this theme if you’re looking for a wide column theme or an e-commerce styled theme (if you combine the Home templates with the Gallery and Product Details templates.)

Ultimately, if you’re a theme author looking for good theme to base your projects on, WP Remix’s huge list of layout variations will come in handy.

Theme Information

• Author: R. Bhavesh (portfolio link)
• Description: “WP Remix, a WordPress powered master theme, is completely customizable, quality coded & comes bundled with many layout options that helps everyone create custom websites in minutes, saves weeks of time, maintaining top notch standards-compliant quality. Unleash The Power of Wordpress blog CMS! Many concepts, one theme!”
• Features list
• Techniques and Files Sources: The theme is plugin-free, uses Tabber from Barely Fitz and drop downs from A List Apart . All the icons are either self created or free, however, images included in the theme purely for demo purpose only and users cannot use those images and should use their own images instead.
• Licenses and Prices: $55 for each personal license and $155 for each developer license

Buy This Theme at WPRemix.com

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Showcase is a premium (paid) WordPress theme created to power a CSS or web design gallery, which is also ideal for managing online portfolios and photo blogs. If you want to use WordPress as a web design gallery, Showcase is the solution you’ve been looking for. Beyond its core features, it comes with 5 different color schemes and 8 layout variations.

Features

• Custom Layout / Design to Display Gallery Images - This is a very clean, simple layout made to allow lots of flexing room so you can modify and modify until your heart’s content.
• Hover Menu On Mouse Over - This is sort of a little toy that I added for fun, but it turned out to be very useful. You can style it the way you want to. You can re-position it to make it appear where you want it to. Not to mention, this useful little toy will be put your gallery above many CSS or web design galleries out there that are not taking advantage of hover menus.
• Pre-styled Sidebar Button Banners - If your gallery isn’t a personal photo album, more than likely, you’ll monetize it. So I thought, why not help you do that? I designed a block in the sidebar to display pre-styled button banner ads. You can read the readme.html on how to add it to your sidebar.
• Integrated Plugins: WP-PostRatings and WP-PageNavi - WP-PageNavi improves usability by allowing users to browse the gallery using page numbers instead of the default Next and Previous page links for every page. WP-PostRatings is another neat little toy, integrated just in case you want to allow users to rate each entry of your gallery.
• 5 Different Color Schemes - Along with the default white and light gray color scheme, Showcase comes bundled with four different skins that you can use to change the color scheme. As you can see, you can make drastic changes through simple modifications. Those four skins are only the beginning of what you can do with Showcase.
• 8 Easy to Rotate Layout Variations - Sure, color changes are cool, but that might not be enough. I understand it’s important to be unique. That’s why I made it very easy for you to use different layout variations. This is how you can separate your gallery from the rest of the galleries using Showcase.
• Valid XHTML and CSS - All core templates and CSS styles are valid. Of course, did you expect less from me?
• Widget Ready Sidebars - The right sidebar column is actually made up of 3 separate widget ready sidebars.
• Easy Single Right Sidebar Column to Three Bottom Sidebar Columns Conversion - Through only one easy CSS change, you can go from having one right sidebar to having three bottom sidebars.
• Search Engine Optimized Sidebar Titles

To Purchase This Theme

This theme is no longer for sale.

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