I’ve been doing a bit of thinking lately about which of our themes & individual theme features are most valuable to users and I’ve come to a very simple conclusion: sometimes it is the least glamorous feature that is also one of the most valuable features.
I was specifically thinking of our “Custom Logo” function, which is included in every single theme and allows the user to quickly & easily replace the theme’s default logo with their own. No frills, no fuss. This isn’t a very glamorous feature and as far as usage goes, you’d probably find that almost all WooCommunity users have used it. The development that went into the feature is also minimal, since it’s not the most complicated function that ever needed coding. This obviously also means that support enquiries for this feature is pretty much non-existent.
Could this be the perfect feature? Maybe.
We’re not saying that we don’t believe in the more expansive, elaborate & complicated features which we include in themes like Listings, SupportPress & the likes. But in the search for which theme features are most used across the whole WooCommunity, simple may be best. Less perhaps sometimes is more.
What is your favourite WooThemes feature? What simple features do you think we should include in more themes?
40 Responses to “Sometimes Less Glamour is More Valuable”
SOOO hard to pick one favorite feature – I have too many. I’ll try and make it short.
Most of my clients require business themes, and I have enjoyed using (and seeing more of) the following…
* Subscribe and Connect
* Testimonials
* Team Page Template (VERY cool! Need LinkedIn used by 100% of my clients)
I could sure use the following…
* Placeholder (part of Framework?) presented to non-admins during maintenance/development (Currently use plugin http://tinyurl.com/2ebv65y)
Nice-to-Have…
* Theme Update Notification enabled
I couldn’t be more pleased using your products and support. Thank you for making my work more pleasurable.
Cheers,
Steve
I have to agree on the theme update notification.
With themes this advanced you really want to have the latest version of the theme and so far the only way of checking for me has to log onto my account and then compare the CSS versions.
It might have something to do with me having created a child theme but still. It would be nice to somehow get a notification when the theme is updated.
The notification poses a difficult question: do we want every single user to be able to simply click upgrade every single time a new version is available? Probably not.
Let me explain… Upgrading a theme means you’re overwriting all of the existing theme files. So if you made any changes you’d lose that and we’ve found that many of our users still modify the theme files directly. So we’re trying to avoid a situation whereby our upgrade process can cause a loss of data for users.
Regardless of how many checks & notices we put into place, some users will still click upgrade without realizing the full extent of what they’ve done. This means we’ll have to “please explain” to some really unhappy users, which is something we’re trying to avoid…
How about showing theme version and last update date beside theme name in User’s dashboard ? Instead of user clicking on view log for each theme.
This will help a little.
Also option to sort theme by release date instead of Theme name. It a pain to search the latest released theme in the list by name.
Only problem again is that users will still click upgrade without realizing the consequences.
Agree with all who want an automatic upgrade notification. Adii is right that some of those who make mods might forget to carry mods across on update. But even if a user who has made many mods updates manually surely they run the risk of overwriting their changes anyway.
Isn’t there a case for majority convenience ? Seems like most probably would prefer to have the facility. I am not a techie and the hassle (and fear) of upgrading manually probably means I will live with an outdated version.
My company http://www.agentpoint.com.au now has over 500 WordPress sites we manage, some of them woothemes templates.
TEAM TEMPLATES AND USER ADVANCED PROFILES
WordPress for some stupid reason still has outdated options in the profile page. My personal opinion is that the themes should definitely have a template for teams that is not too basic. As we move into the second decade of blogging many sites have multiple authors. In saying this…..
The User Template Update should include the following:
* Gravatar Image (option to choose size)
* Facebook Profile URL
* Phone Number
* Location
* Twitter Profile URL
* Google Plus Profile URL
* Linked Profile URL
* Biography
* * Posts from this Author
* * Comments from this Author
This template should also have a unique sidebar….
TESTIMONIALS
Testimonials is also very important for nearly all websites. The current one you have in themes is excellent, but it should link to its own template and work like a blog – remember many people have more than just couple of testimonials.
SUBSCRIBE = CONNECT
Must now include Google Plus
PRETTY PHOTO
This should come with a bunch of options, it is a really cool feature and for every site wed have to find a plugin to do this….
UPGRADING THEMES
Yes automatically upgrade themes, but also a critical factor are theme files that have been updated, displaying a warning possibly to say this file has been updated since last version before upgrading. Many times we manually edit files and have to create reminders for our developers.
Should keep you all busy enough
The team / user profile pages is something we’re playing with a bit (you would’ve noticed extended work on this in Empire) and I’m sure we’ll be doing some more innovation in this regard moving forward.
Great stuff Adii
Concur with Peter (re: list of wants and “Great stuff!”)
Can I bring up a feature that is missing?
Clicking on the Framework updates is great but all that it tells you is there is a new version available. It would be great to show the changelog vs having to log into our WooThemes account.
I concur with all of the above, and, as a newcomer to Woo Themes, trying to balance the opportunity/potential with the learning curve (so my clients don’t have to) I understand there are features available in some themes, and not others but they are interchangeable through the Framework.
I would like to see a matrix of what features are available and in what themes (assuming this doesn’t exist already) – especially the whole range of available Woo widgets and Plugins – and what themes they occur in.
This would be especially valuable in matching themes and features to client requirements.
Cheers, Damian
Features in our latest themes are pretty standardized. A matrix of sorts is however something that we will be looking at.
Would love to see a comparison matrix too – are subscribe & connect and Testimonials pretty standard across the themes?
Yes, they are. Subscribe & Connect is included in the WooFramework and recent themes all include out-of-box styling. Testimonials are also present in all recent business themes.
Give us a shout via e-mail if you’d just like to make sure whether a theme supports either of those.
Testimonials in Canvas would sure be beneficial to those of us using it for business projects.
Cheers
Thanks Adii
My favorite feature… is the one I go to use when I am working on a site that has a non-WooThemes theme and go looking for it.
Custom CSS was the latest one. =P
The Custom Icon is a great feature. There are so many, either as part of themes or as part of the framework that I just wish I could find themes for everything I do that are part of WooThemes (right now, if you could absorb ComicPress, I would be so happy) =)
You can still add your own custom.css file to any theme.
These Themes and their features are the best available right now. Thanks so much for your hart work. You made my job as a blogger more enjoyable !
Thanks so much, always appreciate the kind words!
I really love some of your themes, like Canvas and Listings. One can build virtually anything with Canvas.
It would be great to have some more “fancy” shortcodes, like those offered by one of your competitors (hint: they claim to be “Elegant”).
Is there any template to show the features of your product / site, using a vertical menu at the right side of the template? I have looked for it (as a plugin), and still haven’t found it (It would be a nice add on, feature, plugin, template…)
Thanks for the great job you are doing.
Do you have an example site that has this? Shoot us the url, thanks Gerson!
One of my favourites is choosing the layout for each page – whether it has sidebars or not. That’s a great feature and I wish it was on every theme.
I don’t know what percentage of your users are expert coders, versus those like myself who might as well be labelled a non-coder
Rather than wade through the questionable quality of numerous Widgets in the market, I was hoping to find more WooWidgets and Templates that I could rely on to work with my theme (even if some were at an additional cost). It’s frustrating to see basic things like subscription options on another theme, and not be able to add it to mine easily!
Include a template that has a sidebar but no comments in the themes that have sidebar options. I did find a post on the forum for this, but it would be simpler if it were in the theme to start with. I can’t imagine it will take you long to add it to the zip package
Please make the forum search default to the forum I’m in, don’t make me dig into Advanced Options all the time to search within my Theme’s forum.
Thanks for listening!
Sandra,
Your second concerns for our forums will be greatly improved in our new backend system, hope it makes using our forums much easier.
One of my favorite features are the shortcodes, but sadly it’s the feature I use least because of incompatibility with mobile plugins, like WPTouch. I realize Obox just updated their mobile plugin to address this issue and someone whose name escapes me has written a plugin hack as well, but if the shortcodes could be included as a plugin instead of inside the framework I would use them a lot more.
I wonder if it’s possible to treat the Subscribe and Connect feature as a plugin as well. I like the new MailChimp integration in Canvas, but that hasn’t rolled out to the other themes yet. If S & C were a plugin, perhaps the wait time to include this feature would be non-existent.
Of course, I know nothing about maintaining themes and frameworks in an environment like Woo, so perhaps the plugin approach isn’t feasible.
Thanks for the suggestions David, always open to hearing what you’d like from us.
Hi WooThemes,
I’ve just responded to AppTheme’s dismal performance as of late (lotsa bugs, rubbish planning, poor communication etc.) and you got mentioned – more particularly your recent releases with FaulPress and SupportPress.
Again, I’m petition you to develop more app-driven templates (with a business-listing directory being top of the list – wink wink, nudge nudge).
Oh yes, if you want to read my comment over at Appthemes – here’s the link: http://www.appthemes.com/blog/vantage-update-and-other-news/comment-page-1/#comment-3431
I’d like to see the ‘Subscribe’ and ‘Connect’ feature able to accept autoresponder email signups rather than just RSS.
PLEASE! Make a rating system. So you can easily have a user include a rating with a comment. I would use this on EVERY site I create. Plugins jsut don’t cut it, and are not elegant enough. I know WooThemes would do an awesome job on this.
Post the idea to WooIdeas and we’ll consider it based on feedback.
– http://ideas.woothemes.com/
Thanks Alex.
Hi Ryan,
Just need a bit of help from you. I would like to change my comment response color like the green you are now using to respond to comment.
Where in the comment section would I make that change?
Thanks
Hi Adii and gang,
Just have to say how much I love using WooThemes.
The framework is by far the easiest to tinker around.
Themes are always simplistically elegant and functional.
Support is great and I love how honest you guys are with us.
As someone who’s still learning the ropes of web design & development, the ease of use is a great asset.
Keep up the great work.
Cheers,
CJ from NZ
P.S.: would love to see an update on WooComerce please..
Thanks so much for the compliments CJ, check back here next month. We’ll have some news on our E-Commerce themes.
I love the custom widgets you provide with each theme. They allow me to reduce the number of plugins that I have to add keeping my sites cleaner and faster overall. There is a lot of value packed into every theme!
I would really like to see a new video content type and related templates included with Canvas.
Ideally, I would something like what you have here:
http://www.woothemes.com/videos/
I have added it to ideas. Please vote here:
http://uservoice.com/a/4e4qU
I love the framework, and I think this is one reason I will be staying with woo in the future (you clever lot you).
- Tabbed comments/popular posts/tags – saves so much space.
- The built in ad slots – I use them for announcements not ads, works great.
- Being able to change the whole look of the site without touching the code.
- As I said the framework – takes out all the hard work – keeps getting better
Keep up the good work
I love so much new WooThemes framework and custom widgets!