Are WordPress themes all the same?
There are many people that think so. For them, the templates present on the market have substantially all the same features, even if each designer strives to make them look different.
Honestly we can’t argue with that. In fact apart the aesthetic frills like typography, iconography, cromatic choices, patterns, etc., the interfaces of a website have -more or less – all the same structure. It is as if the navigator is channeled in a fixed path to explore the contents.
In terms of business, it works. And a thing that works doesn’t get changed. But how can we deal with all those who don’t know how to express themselves in the most common ways? What kind of solution can we imagine for those who need to comunicate in an authentic way, even through the pages of a WordPress site?
We started from these questions. And without changing our general offer, we decided to launch a new challenge -and for certain aspects also atypical – to our designers.
That is how Samarcanda was born , a responsive template different and curious… all to be discovered.
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Browsing its pages you can’t escape at a first, instintive, sensation of atypicity. Wide, but clean, well balanced and with a wise use of the space, but what mostly characterizes it is the horizontal scrolling. Move the mouse wheel and you’ll notice it!
Samarcanda is a different theme, made to enhance the artistic experience of the user, but also to achieve important goals of usability, such as the reduction of the number of clicks and the increase of the navigator’s concentration during the use of the contents (projects, portfolio, testimonials, etc.).
Like other themes of our portfolio, it is provided with an administration panel that allows you to manage easily the configuration of every single element.
As you can see from the picture above, in the configuration options of the theme (accessible from Appearance > Theme Options) there are three tabs:
General, for general settings.Sections, for the configuration of the blog.Premium, to switch to the advanced version of Samarcanda.Let’s start with the first.
In the first tab of the theme options we have 4 sections:
base options, where we can control/activate both the responsive function and the select type menu for mobile devices like tablet;general, to upload the favicon and to set a personal style, if you want;header, to upload the logo of the website and any description or payoff;footer, to configure the footer (two columned or centered). There’s also a box for the upload of the tracking code of Google Analytics.In the second tab of the theme options there are two sections: general and blog settings. In general we can set the sidebar on the right, on the left or decide to do without in all the pages different from the blog.
In blog settings, instead we can control the following:
Post layout, to set the sidebar (right, left or without) in the posts and in the blog pageArchive pages layout, to set the sidebar (right, left or without) in the archive pagesExclude categories, to exclude certain categories from the blog page or from the list of categories on the sidebar.Show post date, to show or not the date of the postsShow post categories, to show or not the categories to which the post belongsShow post author, to show or not the author of a postShow post number of comments, to show or not the number of comments of a postShow read more button, to show or not the button “read more” to the preview of the posts on the blog pageRead more text, to customize the text of the button above (eg. continuo).In the last tab of the configuration options you find all the information to buy the Premium version of Samarcanda. But we’ll talk about this later. For now, let’s continue our tour of the free version.
It is easily created through the custom post type of Samarcanda. You can add a post type for every service and then recall them all with a shortcode in a specific page (the page Services).
The services are shown with a horizzontal scrolling. The shortcodes are available in the documentation of Samarcanda.
The blog page of Samarcanda is the most interesting part of the horizzontal choice of the scroll.
Featured and Thumbnail – and every other block of textual and visual content -they’re like tiled in a silent path where the observer must not be distracted, but can contemplate and judge one step at a time with no haste and with the silky and smooth act of a scroll of reflection.
The featured images of the blog page are arranged vertically to the text.
A theme worth of respect must allow the Administrator to show the feedbacks of users and readers satisfied with the services, products or contents offered. Usually free themes don’t have this feature. Samarcanda has it.
There are custom post types for the testimonials and shortcodes to show them like a delightful brochure in open mode that put them one after the other on a horizzontal line typical of the theme.
The menus of Samarcanda are compatible with the Drag & Drop system introduced in the version 3.0 of WordPress. To create the main navigation menu all you need to do is drag the items to the specific area.
The theme is localized in English. Using the translation file released with the theme, you can translate in any other language.
Along with the theme, we issue a supporto file that helps you in the entire configuration process of the theme.
For obvious reasons, we can’t offer support to every user that downloads and uses Samarcanda, as it would be impossible for us to keep up with all the requests without penalizing our work, and we must also consider the number of users that follow us today and the possibility that this theme may also be included in the official directory of WordPress.
To report any bugs you can use the comments of this article.
As we anticipated above, there’s a premium version of Samarcanda for those who don’t want to have limits on the personalization of the theme.
Our team worked a lot to optimize this feature and to mantain a high level of performance with the ease of management for non-expert users of the code.
Here all the components/additional functions available in the premium version:
5 types of slidersBackground UploaderColor PanelTypography PanelContact formCustom sidebarTeamVideoPortfolioGalleryShortcodeWidgetHorizzontal BlogSkin darkImport/export404 customizableIf what makes the difference is often the way the contents get presented, in a theme like Smarcanda, based completely on the value of exposure, this becomes an essential feature.
The quality and the types of sliders, along with the possibilty to choose the most suitable ones according to the contents, make Samarcanda a tool of great professional autonomy.
But what are the sliders? Here’s the list:
Fullwithd SliderFlexslider with tool tipFlexslider elegantParallax sliderSlider elasticMoreover, for the pages in which users wish to use images to scroll for the background, the panel of Samarcanda also has an entire section for the background slider.
You can easily upload a pattern, an image or a color to personalize the background of your pages.
Unlimited colors for:
body backgroundheaderlogomenuheadingscontent sectionsPage meta (titles, descriptions, link hover etc.)Paragraphs and links in the sidebarfooterFor a best and more delightful typography of your pages, Samarcanda offers you the control of every element regarding fonts and dimensions.
Just open the toggle to discover the quantity of typography elements customizable with a couple of clicks. You can choose from over 600 fonts directly from the Google Font library.
You can create an unlimited number of contact forms, for all your needs, directly from the contact form panel.
You can have a sidebar different for each page, so that you can fully customize the communication and the experience of the mavigators on your website. The panel of Samarcanda includes, in fact a tab manager entirely dedicated to the sidebars.
The sidebars can be linked to the pages thanks to a select sidebar (dropdown) present in the editor of eache page.
To present in a more professional way your team, your company, your mission, exploiting the suggestive feature of the horizzontal scrolling of Samarcanda, we implemented a custom post type to create the profiles of all your collaborators or partners and show them in the About page thanks to a simple shortcode.
The same goes for the videos. A custom post type created specifically to edit videos in a few steps.
With Samarcanda you can have different types of portfolio, creating them every time you need to collect different categories of projects and works.
Moreover, according to your preferences, you can display them in mode:
Columned, with image above or belowBig image, showing only the image (big) on which, passing with the mouse, a hover gets activated with project information and links to the page.We can almost say that this is the creative matrix of Samarcanda, the section that more than others inspired the design and the choice of the horizzontal scrolling.
The theme allows you to manage the gallery through a custom post type. The choice is between two types:
title inside, the title appears in the featured image at the passage of the mouse;title below, the title is below the image.With a single click you can add elements of aesthetics, usabilty or contents to your web pages (video, sliders, buttons, tabs, etc). The manager is present in the editor of each page or post, but there are also some extracodes provided through the documentation.
With the installation of the Premium version of Samarcanda you also install a series of widgets (latest projects, testimonials, etc.) non present in your WordPress basic.
We have already seen in the free version that the images featured in the blog are displayed with a vertical cut respect to the contents. Now, with the implementation of the premium also the horizzontal cut gets activated, so that the user has an extra choice to differentiate his contents.
For lovers of the dark, in the general options of the theme you can easily pass from the light theme to the dark one.
With a simple click you can import our demo file and have in an istant your website exactly the same as our preview (you can then change the contents according to your needs).
The page is fully customizable. From the general options of the panel, in fact you can decide if and which image to make appear in case of navigational error, the text of the page and whether or not to show the sidebar.
With the Premium version, you’ll have all the support you need every time you need it. Just open a ticket. And the YITHEMES team will take care of you.
Even for the Premium version, the configuration is really easy, thanks to our tutorial videos that guide you step-by-step in the construction of your WordPress site.
Features, functions, layout options…it’s a lot of stuff that, as always, enriches our themes, but make the articles we write to present them a wee bit heavy. That’s why we always say that you do first if you visit the preview.
This time, however, be careful of the impact sensations, because it’s not the usual theme. The experience you’ll live will be completely different. Different and curious. But also curious and fast, to the point that we could summarize the concept of Samarcanda in a sentence like scroll and discover.
So Samarcanda is a different template, but with thousands of extraordinary functions that can make your company/personal website a suggestive place of great value.
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PS: we’re waiting for your feedback, we care.
PPS: in case you find a bug, you can leave a comment to this article, so we can fix it!
Tags: free wordpress theme
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