Theme Name: Publisher WordPress Theme by Templatic  (Click on image or here to view theme)

Theme Platform: WordPress

Theme Designer: Templatic Themes

Theme Name: EM Wine Magento Theme  (Click on image or here to view theme)

Theme Platform: Magento

Theme Designer: EMThemes Magento Themes

Theme Name: EM Lingerie Magento Theme  (Click on image or here to view theme)

Theme Platform: Magento

Theme Designer: EMThemes Magento Themes

Theme Name: Announcement WordPress Theme  (Click on image or here to view theme)

Theme Platform: WordPress

Theme Designer: StudioPress

Theme Name: Driskill WordPress Theme  (Click on image or here to view theme)

Theme Platform: WordPress

Theme Designer: StudioPress

Theme Overview: This theme was created by Genesis Ninja, a theme development partner of StudioPress.  Besides the reasonable pricing of this theme at $24.95 (if you’ve already purchased the Genesis Framework from StudioPress) this theme is a solid layout and is fairly straight forward in terms of being a magazine/blog style of theme.

The Genesis Framework has a lot of ways to extend the functionality of a traditional WordPress theme but it does require you to understand web development and some coding if you are going to really open up and use the functionality and customize the theme to your needs.  Click here to have a look at this theme.

Theme Price: The pricing of this theme is very reasonable at $24.95 for the child theme and $79.95 for the Child Theme and the Genesis Framework if you don’t already have it.

Theme Creative: The theme is styled with gradient shading and the fonts are easily readable but the styling feels very general.  All around the design is okay but it doesn’t have that “wow” factor that other themes have visually speaking.

Theme Layout / UI: The layout and UI (user interface) of this theme it fairly intuitive and easy to use if you’ve worked with WordPress before however if you haven’t and this is the first website you are creating then you may have some issues getting everything launched without a hitch.

Theme Support: StudioPress offers a very comprehensive support offering for its themes with a forum that has a large user base all willing to help you.  Generally when you buy a theme the support for it is very limited but it isn’t the case here.  The other thing is that StudioPress is constantly rolling out tutorials and “how-to” type articles to help you customize your StudioPress website.

Today I wanted to showcase 3 WordPress themes all focused on real estate. Some of these themes I’ve reviewed on SpicyWebDesigners.com like AgentPress but others like Estate by WooThemes and Real Estate by Templatic offer some different ideas for people looking to buy a WordPress theme that they can use for their real estate based business.

Any website that is going to be used to showcase real estate is going to need a few things going for it including the ability to search, preferably that are related to real estate like price, bedrooms, location and the type of property.  So let’s check out some of these real estate themes starting with AgentPress from StudioPress.

AgentPress 2.0 by StudioPress

Price: $44.95 (without Genesis Framework) | $99.95 (including Genesis Framework)

Features:

• Sliding Featured Content Area - If you want to feature certain content on your website then having the slider header provides a way of creating a good amount of visibility for that content
• Theme is specific to Real Estate – There is a good amount of functionality that already exists to help people find what they are looking for in terms of searching for homes on your website including the ability to search by the number of bedrooms, property location, price and type of property
• Released Version 2.0 – This theme was one of the first themes that StudioPress built even before they sold the genesis framework.  This version will include an updated design which you can see below and the ability to do custom post types.  They are also releasing a plugin to integrate with IDX that will allow people to search properties in your MLS and it will allows the search engines to index properties from your MLS.

Click here to go to StudioPress for more information about AgentPress.  AgentPress 2.0 has just been released and is ready to buy today!

Real Estate by Templatic

Price: $89.95 (Standard) | $159.95 (Developer)

Features:

• Create a Multi-Agent Site – You are able to quickly build a Multi-Agent website with profiles when you choose this theme
• Google Maps Integration – You can use this feature to automatically generate Google Maps when posting a real estate listing on your website using Templatic’s Real Estate theme
• Paid Property Listing Submission Option built in- Allow users to pay and submit property listings on your website which could be a great option if you run a “For Sale by Owner” type of real estate business

Click here to go to Templatic for more information about their “Real Estate” Theme.

Estate by WooThemes

Price: $200

Features:

• IDX Integration – As mentioned above when i was talking about the StudioPress theme they both use the dsIDXpress plugin
• Multiple Page Layouts – This really lets you customize the look and feel of the website without a lot of coding involved because its all handled by the UI in the backend of WordPress and the theme
• “On Show” Properties – This lets you feature a property that a real estate agent is showing with a visual letting visitors to your website know that it is currently showing.

Click here to go to WooThemes for more information about their “Estate” Theme.

The Recap

Depending on what you are looking for these three themes are solid options.  If you need something that is going to integrate with IDX they can technically all do it depending on the amount of development and time you have because the plugin is available indpendent of these themes with dsIDXpress plugin for WordPress.  But if you want something that is just going to integrate so that you can forget about it and focus on bigger and better things then AgentPress 2.0 and Estate are going to be your top choices.

These themes also offer a sliding component to each theme so that you can feature properties on your real estate which is great to see because in real estate as in real estate themes its all about “location, location, location” so you want your property listings where everyone can see them.

I normally write product reviews about themes and web technologies that can help you run your business or optimize a business process.  Today I wanted to highlight the Genesis Framework, a Framework that allows developers and designers ways to develop their own sites quickly, effectively and at a low cost using WordPress.  The framework technology was created by StudioPress in order to support and run the many ready to go themes they’ve created as well as custom themes developed by other web developers looking for a solid framework to use in their web development projects.

Now I could highlight the standard features that the Genesis Framework boasts from the fact that it is optimized for search engines, the fact that it offers great turn-key designs or that they have great designers creating themes but I would rather talk about the extras that they provide you when you use the Genesis Framework.  StudioPress developed a number of plugins to work with the Genesis Framework including Genesis Simple Edits, Genesis Connect, Genesis Simple Hooks and Genesis Simple Sidebars.  The key is that the developers at StudioPress want to keep it simple for people producing websites.

Genesis Simple Edits

This plugin requires Genesis 1.3.1 and higher

This plug-in helps you to edit three common areas of your StudioPress website running the Genesis  Framework including the post-info or “by-line” area, the post-meta and the footer area of the website.  Having this plugin allows you to make edits quickly without the need to touch the code and that is definitely a plus to using this plugin.

Genesis Simple Hooks

This plugin requires Genesis 1.2.1 and higher

The Genesis Framework uses the concept introduced by WordPress to add simple HTML, PHP and shortcode hooks into your website that won’t be affected when you update your website.  A “Hook” basically hooks into the existing functionality of WordPress.

Genesis Simple Sidebars

This plugin requires Genesis 1.2.1 and higher

This plugin for the Genesis Framework allows you to create additional sidebars that are placed into primary and secondary locations on your WordPress Theme quickly and without needing to touch code.

Genesis Framework Development Resources

StudioPress gives you proven tutorials to do your own development using the Genesis Framework from developing custom widgets and admin management to understanding WordPress Hooks in the Genesis Framework.  This is a huge benefit to working with the Genesis Framework and the documentation including tutorials is up-to-date and readily available to access and use.  Most theme developers out there simply cannot compete with this which really sets StudioPress and more importantly the Genesis Framework making it highly adaptable to your individual needs.

There are also a number of reference guides created by StudioPress including filters, hooks and shortcodes.  The benefit here is that there is a ton of pre-built functionality available to those web developers and people out there that are comfortable developing for WordPress that choose to work with this Framework.

Hook Reference Guide

Hooks are a valuable tool in WordPress development and Genesis Framework has leveraged this core functionality to work in a number of ways.  Here are a few hooks developed by StudioPress for the Genesis Framework.

genesis_title
This hook executes between tags and outputs the doctitle. You can find all doctitle related code in/lib/structure/header.php.

genesis_site_title
By default, this hook outputs the site title, within the header area. It uses the user-specified SEO settings to build the site title markup appropriately.

genesis_site_description
By default, this hook outputs the site description, within the header area. It uses the user-specified SEO settings to build the site description markup appropriately.

genesis_before_content_sidebar_wrap
This hook executes immediately before the div block that wraps the content and the primary sidebar (outside the #content-sidebar-wrap div).

Filter Reference Guide

Some really great filters that StudioPress developed into the Genesis Framework include…

genesis_seo_title

Default value: $title, $inside, $wrap
Applied to the output of the genesis_seo_site_title function which depending on the SEO option set by the user will either wrap the title in <h1> or <p> tags.

genesis_footer_backtotop_text
Default value: [footer_backtotop]
Applied to the back to top text in the genesis_do_footer function.

the_search_query
Default value: get_search_query()
Applied to the search query in the genesis_search_form function.

Shortcode Reference Guide

The Genesis Framework comes with a bunch of shortcodes ready to use out of the box when you buy the Genesis Framework.  Here are a couple shortcodes of interest.

[post_date]

This function produces the date of post publication.
list of attributes for this short code:

• format – The format for the date. Defaults to the date format configured in your WordPress options.
• before – Text/markup to place before the post date.
• after – Text/markup to place after the post date.
• label – Text to place before the post date.

Example:

[post_date format="F j, Y" label="Dated: "]

Output: Dated: October 20, 2010

[footer_backtotop]

This function produces the “Return to Top” link
list of attributes for this short code:

• text – Default: “Return to top of page”
• href – assign to which div this link is anchored. Default: #wrap
• nofollow – assign nofollow to the rel attribute in the link to backtop. Default set to true.
• before – Text/markup to place before the “Return to Top” link.
• after – Text/markup to place after the “Return to Top” link.

Example:

[footer_backtotop text="Top" href="#content"]

Output: Top of post

So, as you can see there is a ton of functionality that you can use to develop any website using WordPress.  The Genesis Framework is “power-house” for those of you looking for a great.  Let’s look next at what you are going to need in order to run this on your website and start developing websites.

Requirements for using Genesis Framework

Current Version: 1.4.1

Required WordPress Version: 3.0

Compatible up to version: 3.0.1

Cost

The cost of the Genesis Framework is $59.95 which is really reasonable considering that it is very extendable, allows web developers to get a lot of functionality for their web projects quickly and amazing documentation and reference guides to get the job done!  Click here to check it out and buy it today!

Overall Comments and Thoughts

This Framework isn’t definitely for “newbies”, however if you are comfortable working with WordPress, PHP and other types of coding you won’t have a lot of issues trying to use this on your next website or in your next website project.

Also, because you can leverage this framework in your projects the return on investment is high and it will cut down your development time.  This is a bonus for web developers and web development companies that use this to their strategic advantages.

In the end, it’s a great framework to use on your next website project so check it out today.  You won’t be disappointed in the Genesis Framework.

WooThemes is one of those website theme vendors that employs solid design talent, has an established following among developers and the general public.  As I write and publish this article the site is based on a WooTheme called “Bueno”.  WordPress themes until recently has been the focus of WooThemes development efforts but now they are starting to branch out into Tumblr, Expression Engine, Drupal, Shopify and Magento.  Today i want to showcase 3 themes that WooThemes has come out with for all you who are interested in seeing some interesting designs for the Magento ecommerce platform.

The Air Premium Magento Theme

This theme was created by Chris Rowe, a freelance web designer from Staffordshire in the UK.  Air is one of those classy themes that blend bold styling with a modern feel and it allows people who buy it the ability to style their Magento ecommerce website quickly and easily.  Okay, so let’s go through a few features that i personally think are worth mentioning.

The High Points of the Air Magento Theme

Detailed Product Pages

When i say detailed product pages i mean detailed!  The product page view allows customer to do a number of great things including…

• Rate the product’s quality, price and value (on a scale from 1 to 5)
• Review the product
• Add product specs like model number and other custom details
• “Add to wish list” functionality
• “Add to Cart” functionality
• “Email a friend” functionality
• “Add to Compare” functionality
• Show availability of the product
• The ability to add product tags to improve search functionality on the website
• And others

Search Widget Functionality

When you click on a product it can show a number of additional options that customers can search by including by manufacturer, price range and color.  If you happen to select a product when you reach the Shopping cart page you will also have the option to look at similar products that may interest you.  It’s very intuitively designed to present search options that most customers use today and it’s been well thought out.

Design and Layout

A lot of ecommerce templates and themes look exactly like that, an “ecommerce theme” that looks grid based and is cold and sometimes uninteresting.  The design and layout features add a little warm and sleekness to the look where the grid layout doesn’t look like a grid layout.  If you are looking for an ecommerce theme that can help you sell then this is a solid example of design where that is highly attainable.

Special point of interest: It looks like they’ve included a one page checkout.  My only concern is how customizable it is and how much coding is needed to change the functionality from a single page checkout to a multiple step checkout process.  Some people who run ecommerce websites prefer a multiple step checkout process over a single page checkout.

The Low Points of the Air Magento Theme

Cluttered Shopping Cart – The cart seems to have a little bit too much going with it including product comparison, coupon discounts and shipping estimation which felt was poorly added to the theme but it may be possible with customization to fix this issue.  When a customer has made the choice to buy and they go to the shopping cart page chances are they don’t want to see what else is for sale that they might be interested in.

How much does it cost?

Well here is the important thing about the Air premium Magento ecommerce theme is that it comes in a standard license and developer license.  The theme is actually really well priced at $60 for the single license (doesn’t include the PSD file to develop graphics from for your ecommerce website) and the developer license goes for $100 (this license includes the PSD file and it also allows you to launch on multiple websites too!  Pretty fancy!).

Now if you go and look around at what most theme and template shops charge for a pre-built Magento theme it seems to rank anywhere from $60 to a few hundred dollars for a Magento theme so this is right in line and the price is at a great price point for this theme!