Scope & philosophy
Hello there folks! On this page we will make a presentation of our newest responsive wordpress theme - Laboratory, so you will know better what you will be getting in case you decide to purchase it.
1) Responsive all the way
Accessibility and easy content reading on mobile devices - smartphones, tablets - became an important thing nowadays, so this time we went fully responsive with this one. Nuff said.
2) Strong but balanced features
Since this is business theme, we found it mandatory to come with a handful of built in shortcodes that are specific to this kind of projects. You can see all these functionalities by visiting the following links:
Please note that none of the above are page templates. We chose to make them shortcodes, because with shortcodes you have a lot more flexibility to use them anywhere in a page or post, and even combine them.
3) Using wordpress built in functionality, not bloatware
We didn't want to write tons of functions, create complex backend panels or page builders that will have an impact on your site performance. WordPress it's an awesome CMS platform and our scope was to make as much use of wordpress built in functionality as possible, such as:
- custom post types for portfolios and slider
- post formats that let you create standard, video, link and quote posts for your blog
- custom fields with key/value that helps you attach additional information to your blog posts
- the awesome new wordpress live customizer that was introduced in wordpress 3.4
- posts thumbnails for image resizing(no more timthumb that forces the user to work with folder permissions via FTP to make it work)
And even though you are not familiar with wordpress, this isn't a problem since the theme comes with a very well written documentation that explains how to set it up step by step.
Obviously if you feel that something doesn't work or you didn't understand a step from the documentation, we have an online forum were we offer free basic support for all our products.
4) So where's my blog template ?
Well there isn't one. Really. And that's because you don't even need a blog template to start with. All you have to do to setup the blog is to create a bunch of categories, attach a handful of posts to those categories and add the parent cateogory to the menu. And the blog is up and running. Simple to create and use, end user oriented.
5) Ok, but this theme does have some page templates, right ?
To keep it plain and simple, yes, there are quite a few, only the necessary ones:
Fullwidth is a template with no sidebar where you can use column shortcodes combinations as you wish to create a unique layout. The F.A.Q. page is such a great example, where we used 1/3 & 2/3 columns.
Homepage is just a fullwidth page, with the mention that homepage also includes the slider by default. We say by default because you do have an option inside the theme's panel to turn on the slider for all interior pages!
The sitemap... you might really need this for seo purposes. It's an important page from a navigational point of view that lists your blog & portfolio categories along with tags and archives.
And at last, a very nicely designed contact page with a contact form and address information.
6) Wait a minute, where are the so much needed portfolio templates ?
Well you don't need these either. Portfolios are created in just the same way as the blog, only that instead of going to Posts -> Add new, you go to Portfolio 1/2/3 -> Add new.
As for the rest of the story, they are just another bunch of posts that you create and group in categories under a parent category. The parent category is added to the menu, while the subcategories will appear in your filtering options.
So isn't it simple ? Yes it is and we are even more proud that we successfully implemented this system in our previous theme, Avantgarde.