After working on the Woo theme, Estate, for several days, I have come up with a few Pros and Cons.
Pros:
- Nice custom styles CSS setup. The folder is already set up for you and accessible from your WP dashboard (> Appearances > Editor). Just copy the CSS you want to change from the child theme (style.css), put it into the custom.css and play away. Your custom CSS will override the style CSS.
- Large number of options in the interface. Good for a savvy client or when you don’t want to go into code.
- Lots of free themes. You can purportedly pull pieces from any other child theme and put them into yours. (I haven’t tried this yet.)
- Clean look to all the themes. No crazy banners or buttons unless you want that.
- Different functionality to each theme. Some are ecommerce, the real estate theme has some very nice options, etc.
- Your own dashboard and sandbox to try out all the themes for free.
- Video tutorials. On the particulars of your theme, on WordPress in general, on Woo Themes in general. Not too long, about 5-8 minutes each.
- Custom Shortcodes. All Woo themes include these shorthand codes that allow you to easily add buttons, boxes, social buttons, columns and more to your posts, pages and widgets. You can type these right in the post or use the handy shortcodes button to grab them.
Cons:
- Difficult to get help. The support forums were just redesigned, and although they look pretty, and are broken down into themes, it takes a day to get an answer, and by then, you’ve figured it out. Also, I find either the forums are too basic or too advanced; for me I need “in the middle.”
- Videos. I know, I put this in the “Pros” section, but there are also some drawbacks to this. When you are looking for some very specific info on your theme, how much of a pain is it to have to re-watch a bunch of videos?
Summing up:
Woo themes are on the cutting edge of CMS use: the employ the Custom Post options, (indeed, they helped create it), which is a big advance for WordPress. This makes Woo a very powerful team to have behind you.
Purchase a Woo Theme from my affiliate:
Here’s the Estate theme custom designed for my client:
(We’re still in the temporary stages!)
