StudioPress Themes Review

For my new affiliate site, I decided to use a premium wordpress theme. This is my first wordpress theme purchase. Until now, I have only used free themes and tweaked the free ones to suit my needs. This time around I decided to opt for a premium theme.

Rosalind Gardner in her Super Affiliate Handbook recommends Lifestyle theme from StudioPress. I have looked at what Rosalind has done with her site using this theme plus I also had a look at few other websites that use this theme – all beautiful and very professional looking. I agree with Rosalind that a premium theme have all the work done for you and they work the way they say they will.

Late December I bought the Lifestyle theme, installed it and played around with it on one of my other websites. I am quite happy with the purchase and falling more and more in love with the LifeStyle theme.

So, I decided to do Lifestyle theme review today….Here are some of the features / advantages:

• All StudioPress themes look good – professional, neat and cool
• The support is top notch – there are in-depth tutorials (both text and video). You get access to a free support forum. I actually tweaked the design a little bit (changed background colors, added a new logo, changed headers and the sidebar) – I was able to find easy to read and understand tutorials on all of these topics.
• All the images also come in the psd format. This is the source file format. So you can just open this image, make your changes, save it back in the right place, in the right format – and you are done !!!

  No need to start your images from scratch. StudioPress says that these psd files are specifically supposed to be of great help to all designers out there – I agree with them but you know what they are also of great help to people like me (people who don’t have a ‘designer’ bone in their body). I normally don’t know where to start when I have to create my own logo or image – but having a psd file made a huge difference to my confidence (and my skill).

• You can actually make most changes without touching the code – there is a custom interface that you can access from your wordpress menu
• The themes are developed for localization – the themes can easily be converted into your native language – I personally haven’t tested it – but from what I have read, looks promising
• The themes are all widget ready – So if you want to use wordpress widgets, it is as simple as drag and drop
• Uses latest features of WordPress – including threaded comments and gravatar integration
• StudioPress also has a list of approved designers and developers – so if you want more customization or a logo designed then you can look into their database and pick someone from there to help you out
• The themes are all optimized to rank well in search engines. StudioPress has taken special care to make sure the code is search engine optimized (with the help of SEO experts)

Purchase Options

You can buy an individual theme for $59.95. Studio Press has over 15 beautifully designed themes. So, instead of just buying one theme, you can also buy the entire package (all themes) for $199.95.

I decided to buy just one theme for now (lifestyle theme) – When you buy a theme, you get a coupon code, which you can use to buy the entire package at a later stage. You get a 25% discount with the coupon code and the entire package will only cost you $140.

Though today I only have Lifestyle theme, I will soon be upgrading my purchase and will be buying all theme package.

And one more thing, the package entitles you to future themes as well – so if a new theme is released after you have made your purchase, you get free access to the new theme as well.

There is also no restriction on the number of websites you can use your theme – this I found to be really good. Most premium themes actually restrict you on the number of websites you can use the theme on.

All in all, I am quite happy with my purchase – Like I said, I have made some changes to the theme (to suit my site) – and I was able to do them all quite easily.

Before my purchase I had read great reviews about StudioPress Lifestyle Theme but I had a double mind – even while I was making the purchase – I was not sure if it was the right decision, especially considering that there are so many free themes available – but now, I can honestly say that it was money well spent.

It has saved me heaps of time and effort – and has given me a professional looking theme – all without hiring a designer/developer.

Best,