Could be so much better
By dccharron, 2014-07-25
via wordpress.org
I’ve used 2 other themes extensively, twenty ten and customizr. I tried the free version of Virtue. There appears to be no trial period to check out Virtue Premium ($45).
Took me a while to find the documentation. http://docs.kadencethemes.com/virtue/ Sadly it was out of date. Talked about Revolution Slider plugin. Many of the Theme Options in the docs don’t exist (Choose a Header Style, Choose How Many Menus Per Side, Enable Sticky Header to name but a few). Perhaps they are part of Premium as there is no distinction in most of the documentation.
Some Theme Options did not work (e.g. selecting sidebar1 for my Home page but disappears when Saved).
The “Virtue About with Image” widget (yes that’s the longest widget name I’ve ever seen) won’t permit HTML in the text. That would not be as much of a problem if the alignment and font size and color could be changed but they can’t (I suppose if I dig down far enough in the code I could tweak the CSS but it should not be necessary and can easily be handled by permitting styles on tags like span and p).
Five different positions for the menu and I didn’t like any of them. The location of the Primary menu did not match the documentation – I found it hard right at the top below the top bar – looked very lonely way out there. If you use just the Secondary menu, the vertical space allocated to the Primary menu is not collapsed (I tried setting the line height to 1px on the Primary but it still consumed the same vertical space). There is no option to put the menu under the Sitewide Banner, a common position on other themes.
There are many page templates because some of them provide functionality which normally requires an extra plugin (contact form, portfolio grid, etc.). Some of the names are not obvious and the documentation doesn’t provide any example of what they look like. You’ll just have to try them out. Creating a page is a two step process. First, decide which template you want, give the page a name and save it. Then when you edit the page, all these extra fields will appear that relate to the template you picked in the first step. These extra fields will not appear dynamically if you change the Template from one to another without saving first.
The inbuilt slider only works on Feature and Feature Sidebar templates. It positions the slider at the top of the page ahead of the title and there is no way to move it to another location on the page. The inability to move it around makes the slider rather limited especially if you don’t want it at the top of the page. You would end up using a plugin for most of your slider content.
I did not try the posts. The documentation seems much better on posts than pages as it provides samples of what the different posts will look like.
Overall, I was not impressed. It took me most of a day to try out this theme and, in the end, I didn’t really like it. It could have been so much better.
[Moderator Note: Please ensure that you are embedding links correctly in your post so that you do not turn it into one huge link. Link corrected.]
Vitue Premium (Amazing Theme & Fantastic Support)
By kimberlybatarse, 2014-07-12
via wordpress.org
Benjamin Ritner (the developer of the Kandence Themes: Virtue Premium) has redefined creativity, talent and customer service. The combination of the theme’s clean modern design, powerful options, and responsive layout are keys to successfully creating a beautiful website. Anyone who purchases the premium edition of the Virtue will be thrilled with the result, and will be amazed by Ben’s impeccable customer service! The addition of Woo Commerce features to this theme is another benefit to this tremendous package.
Simply stated, this is as good as it gets. I literally spent hours with Blue Host technicians, and spent days watching YouTube tutorials. These are all meaningful instructional components – but it was the guidance from Ben that made all the difference. Getting the demo content uploaded to the site gives the project new life. For those who want to take the next step – it is possible by achieve these wonderful results. I couldn’t be happier, and I cold not give Ben Ritner more Kudos. You have changed my perspective on website construction. I can’t wait to make the site great! A million thanks to you!