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I have been a customer of StudioPress for years. A client has decided to upgrade their site (still using old Platinum Theme) and I contacted one of the third party developers who have a current theme available- despite having features that are outdated and unsupported- to see if they had any plans to update the theme. I received an auto-reply stating that they will be out of the office Feb 14-21. Being that it is September- I guess that was all the answer I needed. I am increasingly wary of committing to a StudioPress theme knowing that current themes up on the site are not functional as demonstrated. Wish there was a way to know before going through the exercise of downloading and installing a theme just to get stalled at implementing the suggested plugins. Kind of discouraging.
I am sorry that happened to you. You should share this with StudioPress along with the theme developers name and theme. They should be aware of that.
If you can tell me what style you are going for, I can maybe put you in the right direction.
Need help with customization or troubleshooting? Reach out to me.
Hey Alexandria. I'm sorry to hear about your experience trying to reach out to the author of Simply. I just emailed them to let them know about the auto-responder and to check in on this thread / your outreach.
Sorry again for the lack of response there :/
Thank you for your replies. Ironically they have two auto-responders. One that references February- and the second that says “We received your email request and will do our best to respond within the week your request was submitted.” My world- even during a pandemic- doesn’t operate on that schedule. I am sympathetic to the challenge - you develop a theme, and various plugins float off into never-never land... I would calculate that as a risk if I were a developer and making a theme dependent on third third party items. The client I am doing a new website for - we did the last revamp (the one using the Platinum theme) in 2011 ... so I prefer longevity and fewer plug-in related potential pitfalls. Several of the “trends” of website styles are so glaring. I used the Lifestyle Pro theme for ages - and I see it is still available which is comforting- but a bit of balance between a good stable presentation and integration of some newer style seems to be the challenge...
Thanks you again for your comments. I am going to review some more themes today and maybe try another one.
Alex
If you're using Platinum as shown in the old archive demo, you can use Lifestyle Pro and customize it to look like Platinum. You would then have a full HTML responsive website if you do. Lifestyle has always been a favorite of mine. It requires very little by way of third party plugins. Just use the Genesis Responsive Slider at the top.
Need help with customization or troubleshooting? Reach out to me.
Hey Alex. I totally understand and will be discussing this with the authors of Simply. We definitely have requirements for theme support for Marketplace themes. It could be you're not going through an officially supported channel though, so it will be helpful for me to learn more here.
Thanks for pointing out the auto-responder! We found that and updated it.
Please feel free to reach out about anything not working about Simply Pro here: https://designbybloom.co/contact/. While we are not actively pushing out new updates to the theme, we do support our themes and will rectify anything that's not working!
Cheers!
Thank you all for the replies. For Simply Pro - the Theme itself is “broken” in the demo - Instagram widget is no longer “snap widget” - which is cited in the instructions but now points to a different plugin for Instagram- the demo doesn’t load even the plug-in that it links to for Instagram- gives errors throughout the page. When setting up the slider - to choose “display content in slider” and/or an excerpt does not work - choosing to have it appear in the lower left or right or clicking any combination of the options doesn’t work. I finally stopped there because I didn’t want to have to debug and recode a theme I had already paid for and just didn’t seem complete. Wasn’t curious about what else wasn’t working because I don’t have that kind of time. And it makes me second guess the other themes on the site - as I don’t want to go through the same process with something else. Not sure what the answer is. I do appreciate the community help - but at some point purchasing a product from StudioPress or a 3rd party with that level of errors / incomplete product isn’t something I can get away with in my work. I have seen themes disappear from the site over time for obvious reasons. I have always liked StudioPress. Just want to have more faith in the purchased product and less on back and forth in forums or with developers that might reply within a week.
Hi @alexandriat, I really understand. I have provided support for several third-party theme developers and continue to serve in that role for another developer at this time. Some themes are developed and configured to work in a certain manner. Themes are coded with plugins so they work in a particular manner based on the design of the theme. That would be the case with the slider settings not changing when you change them in Simply Pro. The slider on Simply Pro was designed to only appear as you see it in the demo. JT would be able to help you with that if you submit a support ticket to him as he suggested.
I'd like to make a suggestion - as you are doing your theme research, if you are looking at themes and see one you like, but may think "but I would change that to this or this to that", contact the theme developer and ask presale questions to see if "this and that" would constitute a simple fix or if that would be considered a "customization". I answer presale questions all the time. I think that would help you in your search for a theme that you and your client will be happy with. Another tip would be to review theme documentation (if available) a head of time. A lot of theme designers have additional "how to" tutorials and "snippets" for making changes to their themes. I also find this to be helpful.
Need help with customization or troubleshooting? Reach out to me.
Thanks, @anitac! That's a great way to put things.
We made our themes with a certain look in mind, so they're more limited in terms of design flexibility. But that's also what many people are looking for with our themes. Definitely feel free to ask about specific things you're looking to do in the future and I can help sort that out prior to purchase.
As for the instagram bug in the footer, I've found a solution for customers that want that feature in the footer! We'll be updating the documentation with a new plugin soon.
Take care,
JT
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