Lucid WordPress theme review
Most of my long-time readers would have known by now that I am a great fan of ElegantThemes and their creative designs. I find myself looking forward to each of their latest themes and being tempted to upload it into one of my websites.
When Nick announced back in June 2012 that he’s working on a new magazine-style theme called Lucid, I immediately sat up and began wondering if he was able to create a theme that is just as awesome, if not better, than the highly popular Webly theme. I was not disappointed. You would be just as excited too.
Lucid WordPress Theme
Now that I have gotten my hands on Lucid, I found that it is somewhat unique (in a good way) compared to the other magazine themes by ElegantThemes. While Nick did incorporate some similar features from his previous works, it gives a different overall view with its simplicity and bright colors.
Who should be interested in this theme? Well, even though it is labeled as a magazine theme, I am convinced that just about any websites can take advantage of this theme, from news and reviews to personal to even simple corporate websites. Just have a look at its features below.
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Layout
The first thing that draws you to Lucid is how clean and versatile the theme is. Just like what its name suggest, Lucid is a clear and clean WP theme. It is designed to allow you to upload lots of content in an organized format. So to you guys who had wanted to de-clutter your website for the longest time, you should consider Lucid.
There are 5 vivid color schemes that you can choose from, they are orange, blue, green, purple and red. But background remains white, thus the simple and clean feel. Font type and size are consistent and perfectly reflect a professional outlook.
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Responsive theme
In previous year, a responsive theme was just gaining popularity. Now, users expect new themes, especially premium themes, to be responsive by default. The ability for your theme to intelligently adjust itself to fit all browsers size is crucial as the number of mobile devices had increased exponentially in recent years.
A mobile devices-friendly theme can draw the line between high traffic and high bounce rate.
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Sliders
The homepage featured post and/or image is widescreen and comes with an interactive slider. The one thing I like about Lucid’s slider feature is that it allows you plenty of options. You get to adjust the image size in the slider, enable or disable auto rotation, customize the transition animation as well as determine the rotation speed!
The other thing I love is the Recent Videos slider. You get to embed 4 featured videos and when clicked, will be shown on the video player. Just click on the player to play it. How the slider comes into action is that you can have all 4 videos playing at the same time and get this, you can instantly switched from one video to another by clicking on the thumbnails. How cool is that!
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Social media sharing
Sharing of your contents via social media websites like Facebook, Twitter and Digg, has become much easier now. Thanks to the inclusion of social media buttonsshortcodes. Hence, there’s no need to download a separate social media widget, unless of course if you choose to do so.
In addition to the above, I also like the following features:
- The “Most Recent Articles” is pretty neat too. There’s space for an image, the title and link, date posted & number of comments as well as a preview of the post content.
- The main navigation bar has a sleek scrolling effect when hovered upon. Nice touch!
- There are 8 page templates including member login, gallery, 6 portfolio options and full width.
- The new corporate pricing table shortcode enables a hassle-free creation of a simple and straight-forward table to display and compare different packages’ features.
Advantages and Disadvantages of ElegantThemes
Advantages
- Very reasonably priced. The are two membership packages. The first costs only $89 per year while the other one costs only $249 one time. This is way lower than what most theme providers are charging.
- Each package allows you complete access to every theme (including future themes), updates and support. With 87 themes now, that’s $1.02 per theme per year!
- Reliable customer support. You can contact them through the forum, or send them an email.
- Loads of shortcodes for quick and easy website building and customizations.
- User-friendly yet powerful ePanel theme options panel.
Disadvantages
- Lots of themes made available and you are spoilt for choice. Warning: you may be spending lots of time trying to decide which of these great themes you want for your website!
Now, that’s a great theme from a fantastic theme provider. Sometimes, it’s not just the themes that determine your purchase decision. You should also think about the theme provider whether they are reliable and whether you are getting a good deal or not. These are essentially the reasons why Elegant Themes is always one of my most recommended theme providers.
This is another fantastic theme from ElegantThemes. Amazing design, satisfying options and a very reasonable price. Worth trying :).