Elegant Themes New Theme Options Page
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Options pages are becoming a core part of WordPress themes, particularly in premium ones where the competitive edge it gives is an essential.
Back in June we looked over the state of theme options pages at the time and found a lot of good things were happening. They make working with themes much easier by removing the need to delve into any theme files or code.
Elegant Themes (Who we have reviewed before) are one of the top premium themes sites around and have just recreated their options page entirely.
This is a sponsored review, and as always, we’ll be focusing more on the design than the functionality to see what we can learn from it.
What Makes It Different?
The design of this page is stunning. It looks every bit as good as the theme itself, take a look and see (Click to see full size).
The vast majority of theme options pages and plugin settings pages try to mimic the WordPress admin panel design, with varying degrees of success. The result is rarely cohesive though, we normally end up with a few input boxes and a paragraph or 2 that stretch all the way across the screen.
ePanel (The name for this options panel) is very different to the normal WordPress admin design, but still fits in nicely.
- Color Scheme – The colors chosen suit the default admin background perfectly. They aren’t used in the exact same way, but the same white, grey, blue set is there and it looks great.
- Sidebar navigation options – As with the main WordPress navigation, the ePanel navigation is held in a sidebar on the left. No inconsistencies there.
But of course, it improves on the default settings page design in many ways:
- Stronger background colors – The grey and blue backgrounds could well be overpowering if the entire screen was using them, but with the white WordPress admin panel surrounding it, it looks great.
- Subtle gradients and careful effects – Every button and box is beautifully designed and always so easy on the eye. Few control panels on the internet look this nice.
- AJAX everywhere – The only time the page has to be reloaded is when you save your changes. Navigating using either the sidebar or the tabs on top is done with AJAX, which makes getting around all the different settings a much more pleasant experience.
- Help icons for everything – The little red circles (With question marks) you see in the screenshot above are all clickable help buttons. Every option in the panel has them, taking you straight to the information for that one option. Much easier than opening up an entire support document!
And of course, it’s using JavaScript to pop up gracefully (Shown below).
What About the Functionality?
The fantastic new design is what really caught my eye, but of course the functionality to back it up there is there as well.
Two of my favorites features are:
- Color picker – The Colorization page allows you to set the colors for 12 different aspects of the design, as well as specify a child stylesheet. At the top of the page though is a color picker to help you easily work out the hexcodes you want.
- Postinfo controls – This little tool lets you specify what info you would like displayed on your post pages. The fun part? You click the 4 options to enable/disable them. It’s just a very nice user interface touch.
Aside from these 2, all of the options you would hope for (and a few more!) are present. Things like FeedBurner integration, page navigation controls, and code sections for the head and footer are all there.
For more info on what’s covered, check out the Elegant Themes blog post.
Conclusion
The new options page looks great and it’s going to be a real treat for all current and future Elegant Themes customers. But more so than that, it’s a perfect example of how a settings page can be done well.
With so many plugins and themes trying to create a pleasant admin experience, maybe they can learn something from what has been done here.
Nick from Elegant Themes is in the middle of adding this options page to all of his themes. Obviously this takes some time to do, so he’s rolling out the updates in batches of 6 themes at a time. The first 6 are done now, and of course, you can expect all future themes to come packed with this page as well.
If you want to join the Elegant Themes club and get full access to Nick’s whole collection of 26 beautiful themes, you can do it for just $19.95 a year. That’s less than $1 per theme, so it’s hard to beat the value. The signup page is here if you’re interested!
So what do you think of the page? Is the entirely custom design a step up from the normal theme and plugin settings pages we see? Or will it get annoying if every plugin and theme starts coming up with their own designs?
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I think it get annoying if every plugin and theme starts coming up with their own designs. But for this one, the more amazing one, i haven’t see the details of it but it looks very awesome! :D
I think I’m the same. If every plugin started having it’s own mini-webpage for its options, it could get very annoying.
But when it’s done this well, you just can’t complain… :D
Elegant Themes is something that I have been using for about 2 months now and I cant really believe that its up for just a bargain…
It sounds like you’re a happy customer then! I think it’s pretty impressive to see Nick going back through ALL of his themes and adding this. That’s definitely looking after long-term customers quite well :)
whoa wow! that’s a pretty neat n sleek feature that will add a lot of custom design to your wordpress site. Thanks for the post Sir Martin. I’m still working on the post that i’ll be going to publish here.
@ Melvin, hey kababayan. ehehe. Mabuhay ka! wow! three figure earner kana? talaga?
really good stuff….
WordPress can be used quite well as seen here
It looks really nice…
That looks awesome!
Elegant Themes is that I was looking for. Great! Why are such Themes not available for free? Ok, I know the time has been investigated to create such nice and powerfull themes. Thanks.
I use elegant themes eBusiness theme and was impressed with the old interface, but the new one… is stunning. As you say, it looks as good as the theme, and that’s saying something.
I’ve just switched over to the new interface and it is easy and intuitive to use, but just in case, there is plenty of info provided on the elegant themes site.
I love elegant themes and the new interface is brilliant.
Cool. I like the color. And the interface looks elegant. Thanks for sharing!
hi martin..
I’m aan..
Can you help me?
If you have a little time, give me an opinion about my blog. I want make shop store from affiliate. But, I’m just a newbie that only can learn and learn. Can you give an advice for my blog how to design it so it can comfortable for my visitor. See my blog on anzstore.
I’m so sorry for my bad english..
I’m waiting for your opinion and advice.
sincerely…
Ah, I know I probably sound extremely stingy but nevertheless: I wish the themes here were free. I am a student with barely any scraps of money which I need to spend on more important things. And as you would imagine, I have to sit here drooling over these amazing themes. While everybody else buys them. Not fair. Period.
On what I just posted: Look at this theme I just found: http://swiftthemes.com
Absolutely free, brilliant piece of theme. This is what I’m looking for when I think ‘high-quality.’ High quality means free.
@Robomaster… $20? That’s not a lot for access and use of all those brilliant themes.
Come on, cut back on the beer, miss a meal or two,start saving.
It would be well worth it.
Great post, Thanks.
Damn This is awsome !
does it also speeding lil bit the admin area in wordpress ?
Thanks for sharing, buddy. I will try it.
I have been using Elegant Themes “Influx” design for a couple of weeks now, and it’s the best $20 I have spent in a long, long time. @Robomaster, I literally took my membership out of my grocery budget, and it has already saved me hundreds of dollars in time and frustration and brought me visitors by allowing me to quickly and easily add content and images to my site. You can’t go wrong with the professionalism and support of Elegant Themes. (And no, I am not affiliated with them except as a satisfied customer.)
Nice Post… :)
Nice Post. :)
Thanks…
Elegant themes are awesome! Theme options like you’ve never seen before.
You are spot on there, and the help and advice is fantastic.
The only problem is… which theme to choose!
nice design!
Good one…!
Wow This is really slick. I like it alot!
I have been using these themes for 2 years now. But they recently rolled out this new admin options and I do not want to upgrade all my themes as I have customized them heavily. :(
I hope I find a way to deal with this… as I really need this ePanel.
I also somehow want the ability to make my changes Configurable in the same ePanel.
I will – on one fine day – start coding this – I Promise.
That will be a better day for me.
Ah, that does sound like a catch. Did you leave comments or anything to highlight where you made your changes? Might be a fair bit easier to copy them over then.
Alternatively, you could try getting a copy of the original theme you modified (Not the new version, incase it’s different), and then use a tool to compare the 2 files side by side and highlight any differences. That would show where all of your edits were :)
um Sorry ur theme had no button to reply so adding a new comment.
[quote]Ah, that does sound like a catch. Did you leave comments or anything to highlight where you made your changes? Might be a fair bit easier to copy them over then.[/quote]
Yes Comments are a must. Beyond Compare is must too. But Hell I feel so lazy :(.
Any ways My major concern is to add customized options to the theme option page itself. I hope the code for options is well commented.
Well I will start it soon. As soon as the next weekend. And then I will comment back.
Sorry about that, the comment reply button is the same as the original one (i.e. the one on your first comment). It’s a bit of a trick, but the idea is just to make sure the comment order stays correct (e.g. if there were 4 replies and someone clicked reply on the first comment, they’d be out of order then).
Might need a little tuning!
Ah, that does sound like a bit of a tangle. I suppose there’s no quick way around it. Let us know how it goes, good luck!
Wow that looks awesome, the amount of detail is outstanding.
Hopefully in the future every premium theme will have this.
Действительно круто.
This is a great review. I think this is a great tool for developing a website. Great theme also affect the friendliness of a website to visitors which is a must in every site.
Elegant theme has been one of my favorite premium theme. Good design and the price is affordable..
Great post, I like this tool, this is cool. It has great features that you can customize your theme. Thanks for sharing. I just have a question. Where can I avail this tool?
nice theme .. thanks for sharing .
to be honest, i admire the details. even the admin panel looks great and not boring. too bad it’s not free…lol!
I was thinking the same, but you know coding and designing is not that easy. Great stuff..!
great stuff!! customizing is easier now..
ya…
same comment mate..
how i wish good things were free :P
Is a really great tool but is not very well understood by most people and I think even us developers are only just beginning to get to grips with what we can do with it
As a elegant themes subscriber, I can say this theme panel helped me save lots of time choosing options, instead of doing the hard work of finding the code.
I hope more themes have at least a basic admin theme panel.
I actually think its quite refreshing to see theme developers including their own settings pages (as long as the coding is correct and works efficiently with normal wordpress settings).
Nick from Elegant Themes has done a somewhat excellent job for this. However there are a few features that some would like to see, such as in the advertisement areas; the only option is to add a direct image url and then the link code (you can’t simply add adsense code).
I am using some of the themes on my sites http://www.katskinner.com, and http://www.quickneed.com. They are very easy to set up, and the documentation and tutorials are quite easy to follow (if you even need to follow them).
That’s cool though i’m using woothemes right now but they’ve came in similar. Having cPanel is becoming more advantageous and most likely liked by many ( apparently)
I have read the other review. Great article. I also think that it gets annoying if every plugin and theme starts coming up with their own designs.
As a user of elegant themes , i cannot fault the theme options page , it really is a great little feature , well designed and easy to use . :)
The theme packages are good enough for a basic web page but my experiences over the past couple of months has revealed weaknesses in these themes extensibility. They are quite finicky and can be either difficult or impossible to customize, especially if you want to use widgets or plugins.
Elegantthemes has rudimentary support available through a forum with moderators. Unfortunately the number of resolved issues is dwarfed by those that are either ignored or given up on. This situation is hidden until after you have signed up for a and made your first $49 annual subscription payment.
I’m afraid that I agree.
The support is at best intermittent and the latest additions to the themes… short codes and template pages… do not render well in IE8.
I’ve also found that the load time for some of the themes is ridiculouslly long!
The themes look fantastic but let down badly by performance.
Great theme work thanks for sharing this article
I’ve have been subscribed to elegant themes for a while and overall they are great value for money however they have a few bugs that become apparent when you use them a lot. I just created a site using their Simple Press template and the close button on a lightbox image doesn’t work – fairly essential i’d say! For the most part, great templates that just need a little bit of fine tuning!
amazing themes, thanks for share.
I want this ePanel :p
Hands down, Apple’s app store wins by a mile. It’s a huge selection of all sorts of apps vs a rather sad selection of a handful for Zune. Microsoft has plans, especially in the realm of games, but I’m not sure I’d want to bet on the future if this aspect is important to you. The iPod is a much better choice in that case.
Thank you very much for this post, I have been good.
A greeting.
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