1
00:00:00,620 --> 00:00:05,600
In this video we'll go over premium themes and why it's worth paying a little bit of money to support

2
00:00:05,600 --> 00:00:11,650
the theme developers premium themes or those that have advanced functionality and display features.

3
00:00:11,720 --> 00:00:13,580
They also remain under development.

4
00:00:13,640 --> 00:00:18,740
As time goes on ensuring that they are always compatible with the latest version of Wordpress and that

5
00:00:18,740 --> 00:00:23,470
no security holes or breaking changes happen by the end of this video.

6
00:00:23,510 --> 00:00:28,340
You'll know about several resources for finding premium themes and you'll have some criteria with which

7
00:00:28,340 --> 00:00:31,030
you can rate themes to see if they fit your needs.

8
00:00:33,170 --> 00:00:40,730
The theme that we just activated called affinity from WordPress dot com I think qualifies as a premium

9
00:00:40,730 --> 00:00:44,260
theme even though it doesn't cost the money.

10
00:00:44,270 --> 00:00:51,440
The reason is it's backed by a proven development team at Automatic the same company that makes and

11
00:00:51,440 --> 00:00:59,300
is responsible for Wordpress itself and even though they've placed it in their WordPress dot.com area

12
00:00:59,480 --> 00:01:07,810
for theme's you can download it for your Wordpress dot org self-hosted WordPress site.

13
00:01:07,920 --> 00:01:15,210
What makes a premium theme premium isn't just that it costs money per se but it's that it's supported

14
00:01:15,360 --> 00:01:21,420
by a team of developers that are going to keep up with wordpress updates as well as make sure there's

15
00:01:21,420 --> 00:01:28,830
no security holes and that the site doesn't have any breaking changes as Wordpress updates and they

16
00:01:28,830 --> 00:01:30,630
come out with updates for the theme.

17
00:01:33,380 --> 00:01:38,870
Here's a theme demo that I have opened over here and this is what it looks looks like when it's all

18
00:01:39,080 --> 00:01:39,710
built out.

19
00:01:39,710 --> 00:01:46,670
It has some navigation down here that scrolls you to the proper place on the page but if you see the

20
00:01:46,670 --> 00:01:54,620
way that it works it's a beautiful theme that has a scrolling home page with different sections and

21
00:01:54,620 --> 00:01:57,920
fixed background images et cetera.

22
00:01:58,010 --> 00:02:01,870
You can really use this theme for any type of site that you like.

23
00:02:01,940 --> 00:02:13,460
And inside of let's say one of the interior pages there's also you know some great lay out here I think

24
00:02:13,460 --> 00:02:22,910
potentially under gallery they show some images the way that they have some alignment left alignment

25
00:02:22,940 --> 00:02:25,490
and full width images look great.

26
00:02:25,490 --> 00:02:31,430
And what makes this a premium theme are all these layout features but especially that there's a system

27
00:02:31,430 --> 00:02:38,000
in place that the developers have the ability to keep up with changes and make sure that the site always

28
00:02:38,000 --> 00:02:41,950
looks great even as Wordpress updates.

29
00:02:41,950 --> 00:02:46,760
So what about other free themes in the theme directory at Wordpress dot org.

30
00:02:46,840 --> 00:02:55,150
These are vetted for viruses and other things like that but they aren't necessarily premium themes and

31
00:02:55,450 --> 00:02:59,710
you have to make a judgment call on whether you want to use any of these themes at all whether they've

32
00:02:59,710 --> 00:03:05,470
been around a long time they're updated and whether they're going to be updated in the future.

33
00:03:05,590 --> 00:03:13,340
This is the resource that you get from any of your Wordpress dashboard pages under appearance themes

34
00:03:13,690 --> 00:03:20,860
and then add new From there you can do a search for themes for different types of themes and different

35
00:03:20,860 --> 00:03:21,700
features.

36
00:03:23,270 --> 00:03:28,720
And it's pulling from the Wordpress darg repository where I just was over here.

37
00:03:32,270 --> 00:03:37,370
You can see that there is quite a lot of them if you just pick one at random and look at the details

38
00:03:40,400 --> 00:03:47,860
you can see the number of stars the version number but there's not much more information about who the

39
00:03:47,860 --> 00:03:48,610
theme is by.

40
00:03:48,610 --> 00:03:55,320
You can link through to their own link but just because it's on the Wordpress theme repository doesn't

41
00:03:55,320 --> 00:04:00,200
mean that it's going to be an ongoing updated theme into the future.

42
00:04:01,250 --> 00:04:03,120
Now at Wordpress dot org.

43
00:04:03,260 --> 00:04:13,130
Under themes you can click commercial themes and this is a list of commercially supported GPL themes.

44
00:04:13,370 --> 00:04:15,620
Meaning it's the general public license.

45
00:04:15,620 --> 00:04:19,330
It doesn't mean that it must be zero cost.

46
00:04:19,340 --> 00:04:25,050
It really just means that when you receive the software it's not restricted to how you can use it.

47
00:04:26,150 --> 00:04:32,420
With that said these themes and the fact that they come from premium theme providers means that most

48
00:04:32,420 --> 00:04:37,970
likely they're going to be updated in the future and they'll keep up with updates instead of Wordpress

49
00:04:39,120 --> 00:04:41,820
So this is a good resource to look for premium themes.

50
00:04:41,970 --> 00:04:48,450
I've recommended a few more in the introductory chapters of this course one of which is studio press

51
00:04:48,690 --> 00:04:50,320
and studio press dot com.

52
00:04:50,370 --> 00:04:56,940
You can see that these premium themes all exist and they cost a little bit of money you can get a developer's

53
00:04:56,940 --> 00:05:03,890
license to use all of these themes freely and they do depend on a framework.

54
00:05:03,960 --> 00:05:08,130
And we're going to talk about frameworks and child themes in the next video.

55
00:05:10,640 --> 00:05:19,130
A few examples of themes from Studio press based on the Genesis framework are those when you go to W.P.

56
00:05:19,310 --> 00:05:25,000
of course com the student resource page is one called parallax.

57
00:05:25,100 --> 00:05:32,600
And when you get your own sandbox site the first site that opens up for you is a Genesys Web site on

58
00:05:32,600 --> 00:05:35,880
the theme called parallax Pro.

59
00:05:35,890 --> 00:05:40,280
It has all these nice features nice dropdown menu up here.

60
00:05:40,510 --> 00:05:47,830
If you open an interior page it has some nice pull images that are aligned right and aligned left.

61
00:05:47,830 --> 00:05:51,480
It's got some really nice features and studio press and Genesis.

62
00:05:51,490 --> 00:05:54,100
Keep up with wordpress updates as needed.

63
00:05:56,460 --> 00:06:01,600
Here's an example of a client site that I did using the parallax theme.

64
00:06:01,620 --> 00:06:05,600
This is the lumber yard skateboard and snowboard shop in Breckenridge Colorado.

65
00:06:05,880 --> 00:06:08,270
And you could see there's a lot of similarities.

66
00:06:08,310 --> 00:06:16,110
They have their own style and including a premium plug in for an Instagram feed that shows how they

67
00:06:16,110 --> 00:06:24,650
can open up the Instagram photos into a light box display like this.

68
00:06:24,780 --> 00:06:32,530
That's just another example of a nice Genesis based studio press premium theme and other resource for

69
00:06:32,530 --> 00:06:40,180
premium themes is called theme forest on the Vado market the inforced has a lot of Wordpress themes

70
00:06:40,180 --> 00:06:48,300
in their repository for sale and some of the best ones and most popular are called the X theme and here's

71
00:06:48,300 --> 00:06:51,830
an example of the X theme demo.

72
00:06:52,110 --> 00:06:58,860
The themes and example of a premium theme that is a multi-purpose theme and has so many possibilities

73
00:06:59,220 --> 00:07:01,920
and even different extensions that they provide.

74
00:07:01,920 --> 00:07:10,590
It has a front end editing page builder and it's supported by a lot of different developers and you

75
00:07:10,590 --> 00:07:13,400
know that it's always going to work into the future.

76
00:07:15,410 --> 00:07:21,480
Another example is one called Proxima on the theme forest repository.

77
00:07:21,830 --> 00:07:28,190
Here's a snowboard coaching site that was done using that theme.

78
00:07:28,190 --> 00:07:36,400
It has a nice video based slideshow which can be video or still photos as you scroll down and you can

79
00:07:36,400 --> 00:07:43,940
see it's a nice premium theme with some of its moving CSSA pieces.

80
00:07:44,090 --> 00:07:50,510
Again a premium theme that if you look and do your research you know it's been used by more than 100000

81
00:07:50,620 --> 00:07:52,480
customers on this theme.

82
00:07:52,540 --> 00:07:58,300
And you can do your research there to make sure that the theme developers have been around a long time

83
00:07:58,330 --> 00:08:02,810
and are going to be keeping the theme supported.

84
00:08:03,250 --> 00:08:10,180
Just because a theme costs money doesn't mean that it's an actual premium theme that's going to be supported

85
00:08:10,180 --> 00:08:11,610
into the future.

86
00:08:12,160 --> 00:08:16,060
Here's an example of a site that I made using a theme forest theme.

87
00:08:16,060 --> 00:08:21,790
It's got these nice zoom rollovers in my display up here.

88
00:08:21,820 --> 00:08:30,070
These are recent posts and more recent posts come down here and it's an example of a nice looking theme

89
00:08:30,250 --> 00:08:32,950
that I bought on theme forest for this client.

90
00:08:32,960 --> 00:08:35,860
Again here is a nice Instagram feed.

91
00:08:39,790 --> 00:08:47,270
With that same premium Instagram plug in will go over later in this chapter another premium theme and

92
00:08:47,270 --> 00:08:54,680
plug in provider is WPA Dev and we'll be talking about them in a later part of this chapter as well.

93
00:08:54,860 --> 00:09:02,320
And here's an example of a premium theme that they produced on a framework that they made called upfront.

94
00:09:02,360 --> 00:09:09,350
It's a front end editing piece of software for Wordpress and it has this nice video intro at the top

95
00:09:09,350 --> 00:09:11,980
of the home page in one of their samples.

96
00:09:12,080 --> 00:09:18,590
And these are just some sample photos that are pixilated for file size but it's a sample of one of their

97
00:09:18,680 --> 00:09:20,870
premium themes at WBM udev

98
00:09:23,810 --> 00:09:29,090
this video was an introduction to premium themes and it showed that premium doesn't necessarily mean

99
00:09:29,090 --> 00:09:30,710
that a theme costs money.

100
00:09:30,710 --> 00:09:35,300
The best themes have modern features that are easy to implement but they also have the support of their

101
00:09:35,300 --> 00:09:37,390
creators on an ongoing basis.

102
00:09:38,500 --> 00:09:44,930
In the next video we'll go over theme frameworks for Wordpress and how child themes work.

103
00:09:44,950 --> 00:09:45,640
Let's do it.