Every time I start a new website, I always look around for that perfect theme. You know, that one theme that’s user friendly, has all the features you could want, isn’t too expensive and LOOKS GREAT!
Have I found it yet?
It’s too early to tell. The jury’s still out!
What I can tell you is that I am now on my fifth premium wordpress theme. Why? Because every theme I’ve bought so far has been lacking in some way. Lacking enough that I am willing to go through the process of familiarizing myself with a new theme once again – or maybe I’m just a glutton for punishment, but I don’t think so.
For the last site I built I used the Avada theme. Avada is one of the best selling themes of all time. It was pretty good all in all, but it has one major flaw. BLOAT!
Too many bells and whistles means too much code. Too much code means longer page load times.
Review of X Theme
For this site I settled on the X Theme. I looked at a whole bunch of themes and I even tried a couple of them, but I wasn’t pleased with the results. The reason I settled on X is because it’s packed with features and options but it doesn’t sacrifice speed. And that’s important.
You can expect to spend a bit of learning time up front before you can use the X theme to its full potential. I would recommend a day to read the documentation and watch a few training videos before you get started. It will save you from making mistakes and will make the process much more enjoyable.
I’ve seen a lot of posts marketing the X Theme as being the ultimate WordPress theme. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. It does have a lot going for it.
Flexibility
X has four stacks which are in fact completely different designs for a site. If that weren’t enough, each stack can be customized. You can mix and match from one design to the other. This puts a lot of design power at your fingertips without ever touching code.
In addition to stacks, X theme comes with a lot of shortcodes and plugins. There are shortcodes for pricing tables, growth bars, animated counting numbers, columns, buttons, and lots more. X even comes with a plugin to maintain all of your customization if you want to change the theme!
Bloat
Bloat and poor coding is common in premium themes. The amount of code required to provide tons of features can slow down a site and can often cause conflicts with other plugins.
X has a lot of features, but they only load on the pages where they are used. The total install package is only 5.5mb. Sites built with X theme tend to load very quickly even when contain lots of graphics!
Pricing
X Theme currently costs $63 US and is available for download on Themeforest. $63 is a reasonable price considering the features and plugins that are included in the theme.
As with most premium themes, you have to purchase a license for each site you use it on.
Conclusion
There’s a learning curve with any new theme. That’s not that big of a deal especially if you might end up using the theme on other sites.
I’m happy with X so far. It’s fast page load times makes it a clear winner over Avada which is currently the biggest seller on Themeforest. It’s early to say, but I may have finally found a theme I can stick with on any new site I decide to build.
X has excellent design, it’s easy to customize and it has killer shortcodes to make my blog posts look great AND it loads fast. What more could you want?