Wordpress Theme Review and Updates

[rezzy]

Hello everyone,

I have been working on updates for a Wordpress Theme I sell, the Ministry Theme. I have several ideas about improvements, but I am not sure how those "improvements" would be perceived.

First, heres a link: Ministry Theme > Demo (http://ministrytheme.com/demo)

Additions I have been considering:
1.Administration Features- To allow easy configuration of a few things, that require manual file editing.
2. The current "tab" system is written using a custom system, I would like to migrate this to jQuery, as I believe its more universally accepted and tested. And it will allow a level of animation.
3. Improvments to the "drop down" navigation, right now its not as good as it could/should be.

Thats the things I see as needing improvement, any ideas? Or additions to the list?

[vangogh]

All three additions make sense to me.

1. Premium themes have been moving more toward admin panels since it can make things easier to their users. You and I might be very comfortable editing a file directly or finding and tweaking the right plugin for out needs, but not everyone feels the same.

I don't think you should include everything in an admin panel for your theme though. You should try to find out what your users want and what they have trouble doing and add those things. Give the users of your theme the kind of admin panel they want.

2. WordPress makes a lot of use of jQuery. It's already loaded into WordPress and so many plugins make use of it that it's likely going to be called and downloaded. It only makes sense to use it as opposed to requiring more code.

3. I'm not sure what you're specifically planning here, but I think it's a good idea to make the navigational systems in your theme as flexible as you can. You can't know in advance how everyone will want their navigation set up so if you can create something flexible enough to make most of them happy it's a good idea.

[rezzy]

3. I'm not sure what you're specifically planning here, but I think it's a good idea to make the navigational systems in your theme as flexible as you can. You can't know in advance how everyone will want their navigation set up so if you can create something flexible enough to make most of them happy it's a good idea.

This is just really a bug fix of sorts, it can be hard at times to get the drop down, links to navigate using them. Not a real modification.

[vangogh]

Oh. Is it in IE thing by any chance? IE6 perhaps?

The way I set up menus in WordPress is either wp_page_menu() or wp_list_pages(), though I guess you already know that having seen my post on wordpress drop down menus (http://www.vanseodesign.com/wordpress/how-to-create-a-dropdown-menu-in-wordpress/). I know I still owe you the post on the css behind it.

I use the suckerfish system (http://htmldog.com/articles/suckerfish/dropdowns/). The WordPress tags will produce the html you need. Suckerfish gives you the css and a small bit of javascript for IE6. I think IE7 is fine with the css alone.

What I've found is you need to adjust a couple of things for different versions of IE. In suckerfish you position the submenus to be off to the left of the page (left: -999em) and then set it to show on rollover (left: auto). The auto works great, though not for IE6 with the way I seem to style the subnav. I find I have to set the left value to a specific px amount or play around with the margin. Then I send the different values to IE via conditional comments.

Works for me. Maybe I'll work on the css part of the post for next week. I had an idea for another post, so I'll have to decide which I want to cover.

[rezzy]

Thanks Steven, Ill have to look into the suckerface system.

Ive noticed the issue across platforms, which is why I am interested in improving it.

[jamestl2]

Very Nice looking theme! I really like the jquery tabbed data feature.

Just a few minor things I'd point out are:

The Search Box - I don't think it really fits well in the position it's in, just sitting at the very top - center of the page. It looks kinda out of place.

Plus you include the admin options as a unique feature of the theme, so why not provide a demo of the admin panel? Or at least a list of the custom options you offer the users.

One other minor concern of mine would happen to be the footer data. Do you really need to have the same navigation links in two different places in the theme? Usually I'd reserve the footer for pages like Privacy Statement, Disclaimer, Copyright info, etc.

Other than that, well done!

[rezzy]

First off these are ideas to be implemented:


Very Nice looking theme! I really like the jquery tabbed data feature.
Currently uses a custom javascript code to enable the tabbed effect.


Plus you include the admin options as a unique feature of the theme, so why not provide a demo of the admin panel? Or at least a list of the custom options you offer the users.


Once this is implemented I will either have a screencast to show it or have screenshots of the admin side.



One other minor concern of mine would happen to be the footer data. Do you really need to have the same navigation links in two different places in the theme? Usually I'd reserve the footer for pages like Privacy Statement, Disclaimer, Copyright info, etc.


The reason I went with links, is because I have always consider links in the footer to best SEO method. I am I old fashion in this thinking?

[billbenson]

The reason I went with links, is because I have always consider links in the footer to best SEO method. I am I old fashion in this thinking?

Nothing to really back this up, but because so much recip linking was done in the footer, I would think links there have very little value. You might use if for redundant contact information and the likes, but I wouldn't put valuable links there.

As you are repeating your top nav, I see no problem with the way you did it though.

[vangogh]

The credit link back to your site will probably help as more people install the theme, though probably not as much as it might have a few years ago. But I think we're discussing the navigation links right?

Bryan the idea behind the footer links as far as seo is concerned is you want to use them if your main navigation at the top isn't search engine friendly. For example maybe you just have to have that Flash based navigation or some complicated javascript navigation that makes use of images. In those cases you want to add am html only navigation system somewhere else often the footer.

Another reason is if you have long pages placing navigation at the bottom might help your visitors since they won't have to scroll back up to the top.

As far as adding navigational links in your footer I wouldn't expect to see much of an impact with search ranking. Search engines are getting better at understanding what part of the page is content and what part is boilerplate. It's not hard to figure out those are just links you're pointing at yourself. They can help let a search engine know what your site is about and they are links, but don't expect any major benefit, especially if the links are the same as your main navigation.

[rezzy]

I just realized over the past few days, I have not been interlinking my sites. For instance, if someone found me through the demo, they wouldnt be able to get to the main site or the support forum. So I have been updating branding and incorporatnig links to the other parts.

[vangogh]

Better add those links in then. You do want your customers to find you :)