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This is the second review from the series ().
Now, you will be choosing a WordPress theme or WordPress theme framework that fits your development style and needs. When you make a decision, you will use your top choice as a base for building all your websites. If you don’t know yet why you should use any premium theme or framework, explaining how you can 10x your website development speed.
In this article, we will deeply review and analyze the X theme, which recently has been getting wide popularity among graphic and web designers. You might have seen their ads appearing in the web design community all over the place and wondered what’s the deal with this mysterious X?
While X is not officially titled as the theme framework based on theme functionality, it can be used as one. As I go deeper in reviewing the theme, you will understand how and why.
X is a much cheaper solution compared to its competitors, but the value and functionality you get for the price is amazing. X theme is here to disrupt the WordPress market loudly standing out of the crowd.
Currently X is the Number 2 theme on ThemeForest, but seeing what X has created, I am very confident this year that X will gain the No. 1 spot.
Table of Content:
Things to consider when choosing WordPress theme or :
*Note – before picking the X theme for review, I analyzed the top ThemeForest themes ElegantThemes, WooFramework, Thesis, OptimizePress, Themify, WpZoom etc.. I am reviewing X first, because I have read and heard so many good things about it.. If you are looking for more choices, we also recently made a collection of the from 2015.
While X isn’t called a framework, it is built as one. X might feel as a surprising choice to use as a framework but as you keep reading, you will understand why it’s worth giving this theme a try and why I am considering it the best WordPress theme of 2015.
For several years, Themeforest themes had a because most themes don’t use the best coding practices. Themes are bloated adding unnecessary code and making theme files and databases larger and slower than they should be. The situation has been improving but still it is the case with most of the ThemeForest themes. X stands out from the crowd because it is not only a very beautiful and non-coder friendly theme, but also has a clean code, amazing functionality, and good site loading speed. It does not clutter your theme with code you don’t want to use. In addition, X is very powerful in terms of functionality and customizability as well as great for professional web developers as well.
X theme was launched on December 2013 by Scott Marlow and Kyle Wakefield. After working for a year on X theme, they released it to the public one year ago. They don’t have a long background in the WordPress field like the Genesis founder but they are very experienced entrepreneurs. They came in the market with a fresh look to bring in innovation and change.
X theme has been built from a marketer’s perspective, which is what I like most about the X theme. Because in the end, no matter how beautiful your website is, what matters most is that your website gives you the results you desire and the leads to conversions.
[ctt title=”Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works. – Steve Jobs” tweet=”Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works. – Steve Jobs” coverup=”_0cH3″]
On 17 July 2014, they achieved the on Themeforest in just six months by selling $1,000,000+ worth of WP themes and achieving the fastest selling Themeforest theme status.
Currently, the X WordPress theme has been purchased more than 40,000 times and answered over 20,000 support questions (within Themeforest and their website). X theme definitely was one of the best WordPress themes in 2014, and has committed to do even better in 2015.
When I reached out to X theme founders and asked what is the single best thing about their theme, they responded with one word – SUPPORT.
Their theme is mostly purchased by designers and is even used by the Utah US government. It does require quite a bit of learning before you can utilize the X theme to its full potential. I do believe it would take at least a few days of studying to use maximize the X theme’s full potential. This is pretty easy, though with their thorough documentation and training videos.
As a not so technical person anymore (haven’t been actively developing websites myself for several years), I did appreciate that I could achieve all the functionality and visuals I wanted without touching code. All I need to do is just use their management panel and connect the pieces together. This power makes the X theme a great option for graphic designers to build powerful custom WordPress themes without an extensive programming knowledge.
Professional developers and web designers can choose to deactivate the visual components and work in code straight from admin section. No need to touch FTP, re-upload files, or setup local servers anymore.
Their knowledge base is very helpful including textual as well as video explanations covering basic and advanced customization topics.
Within the X dashboard, you get access to following resources:
X theme strong marketing focus is one of the biggest reasons why I like this theme so much. It’s not about just a pretty website, but it is about building a website that leads to results you want. With X, you even get basic marketing training to be a better help for the clients you serve..and be able to charge more since you now provide higher level help.
Now this is where X really shines. X looks amazing straight out of the box and you can duplicate their beautiful demos to achieve the same look and layout with just a click of button! That is pretty damn impressive!
You must have a Stack (how X refers to its 4 unique designs) selected to use X. Switching Stacks doesn’t just mean you get a new skin, it means you’ll get a whole new set of styles, features, and functionality specific to that Stack. For example, Icon’s unique fix sidebar is only available in that Stack because you cannot use it in any others. Additionally, Ethos’ magazine-type has features, such as Post Carousel, Post Slider, featured post display, and more, which are only available in that Stack.
[ctt title=”It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation – Herman Melville” tweet=”It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation @1stwebdesigner” coverup=”79maa”]
Then on top of that, you will be able to further customize a theme by creating a child theme to overwrite the styling of the Stack you use.
Hope this helps you to understand how Stacks work, Now, we can dive in deeper into the four main Stacks X has:
That’s a quick overview, but lets dive deeper now.
are multipurpose and best suited for small business owners who have a lot of needs. Maybe you want music, fashion, restaurant, photography, agency, video, portfolio, eCommerce, responsive, one page, BuddyPress, real estate friendly WordPress theme? X theme gives you functionality and the visual support to do it all.
Compared to Icon (which is best for light, clean and white designs), Integrity has light and dark, black theme versions and by default is more feature rich. This design sports big background images with parallax effects and possi. Integrity makes an excellent option for landing pages and one page websites presenting your product or services in style.
are great if you prefer minimal and clean style. There are 10 unique demos available, which basically means you get 10 different minimal website designs. Demos are incredible and once you find design you or your client likes, you can activate it with a click of button, add content, change visuals and you’re done.
Icon design is a good choice if you want a white, clean portfolio website design, modern and minimal shop or minimal blog design focused around content.
are built all around a popular flat design style. Use it for your blog, online store, or portfolio website.
Lastly, 3 are the best for busy news blogs and magazine type websites. One of their demos look extremely well for a photography or video site. No visual for this one, you need to check live demos to appreciate the design and power of visuals anyway! Go do it now, and come back when you are done!
Basically all demos showcase everything you can do with the X. Use it as a landing page, one page website, single column, 2-column, animation effects. I keep repeating myself – but with X you can do so much easily!
As a conclusion, it was really hard to review 4 main theme designs and their 33 demos because every design is truly unique. One thing about X theme demos is that most designs look great because of the great product images and photographs which can be a downside if you don’t have access to great looking images. Keep that in mind, when looking for a WordPress theme you will use to build website for your client.
If we would compare Genesis framework and the X theme in terms of price, X theme is 6X cheaper. But there is no option of buying unlimited or multi-site license which means you need to buy a new license for each website you develop.
X is using Themeforest from the Envato network to sell their theme which means you will need to follow the . Envato Market will generally only offer refunds if the item you purchased is broken, malfunctioning, or corrupt, or doesn’t work as described.
Now let’s explore what’s under the X theme hood and explore how easy it is to customize WordPress with X.
X theme has been built up using the latest, semantic HTML5 markup allowing search engine spiders to easily read different parts of content starts and ends. It also easily understands what the content is about.
X theme doesn’t have built-in SEO options but you should install Yoast WordPress SEO plugin for every WordPress installation anyway.
When looking at the themes in terms of SEO, the most important factor is site loading speed. We will explore how fast loading X theme is in the speed section, but keep in mind X has included lots of beautiful visual effects, retina support. If you want to use these features, you need to expect your site will take a bit more to load, for SEO focused sites Icon minimal designs probably will be the best choice.
All the X designs are fully responsive, 100% fluid, and retina ready ensuring that your website looks amazing even on high resolution displays.
There are icon fonts, optimized CSS, retina logo, and favicon support looking sharp on any device. You can also specify within theme settings what elements will be shown or hidden on different size screens.
X theme truly looks awesome on all devices and it is following latest web standards meaning it is HTML5 valid.
The biggest danger with security is when you don’t update WordPress version, themes, and plugins. With the X theme, you can choose to enable automatic updates for theme and plugins to ensure you are always up to date and possible bugs that come up are fixed fast.
The X theme is packed with customization options allowing you to use it as a fully functional website builder if you choose so.
My favorite feature is Demo Content allowing you to pick one of the 33 design demos you like and achieve the same look in a few seconds (without images because of copyright reasons). If you don’t like to start website building process with a blank page, this is an excellent way to start quickly.
This is the view I get on Appearance>Customize WordPress section. I did deploy Integrity 1 demo on test site, which you can see in screenshot.
In the Customizer you can:
You can create and customize custom pages easily using the page builder. This is great for quickly creating one page layouts, landing pages, or custom home pages.
When creating new posts and pages, there is also the X short code button, which allows you to quickly add powerful functionality anywhere you want. There are 40 different functionality short codes you can add in all. Make sure you preview to understand why I am so excited about X built-in short codes.
Here are just a few examples of what you can add:
There are built by X which you can use to add more functionality to your website. Since X is built with marketing in mind, their plugins reflect that.
What’s a great thing about X extensions is that each of the plugin is maximally optimized to run as fast as possible within X.
For example:
There is more to the extensions than you would guess at the first moment.
Plugins:
X theme also has built styling support for popular plugins Gravity Forms, Contact Form 7, WooCommerce shopping cart, bbPress forum and BuddyPress social network. This means that these plugins will feel native to each Stack, right after installing them and you don’t need to spend extra time styling them one by one.
There aren’t really any third party plugins for the X theme yet but seeing how fast they are growing, I wouldn’t be surprised to see some in future.
Let’s check how fast the X demo designs are using Google Pagespeed, Pingdom and GTmetrix tools. What I like about X is that they seem to be doing with the beautiful visuals, functionality and animation effects they include in their themes.
When looking at the test results, remember that X theme demos have included lots of visuals, functionality to show off their theme, which is increasing the number or requests and page size.
For example Integrity theme demo has:
Keep these things in mind when previewing performance reports. If you would want to include all of the functionality and visuals, you will need to make trade-offs how fast your site loads. For usual website you would use 1/3 or 1/4 of all the functionality and visuals X has included in the demo.
Integrity Stack is pretty heavy because of the video preview on the background and large feature images. The request number is high, because of included JS effects, Woocommerce, BuddyPress, bbPress.
Icon achieved high results in the Google user experience loading pretty fast considering the page size is 1.8mb.
And finally here are Ethos Stack Results:
[ctt title=”Good Design is Good Business. – Thomas Watson” tweet=”Good Design is Good Business. @1stwebdesigner” coverup=”f2m9z”]
If you want to have beautiful retina images, video backgrounds and lots of animated sliding effects, you must consider page load time. It’s a gamble and you should decide how much visual effects you want to add. X designs are amazing and the big reason for that are high quality visuals and animation effects. You can customize within the X theme settings what JavaScript effects to use and which ones to leave out to achieve higher site speed or better user experience.
What I suggest is to look past all the animation effects and include just one or two of them in places where it really counts. For example, include animated video header, but then afterwards don’t add any more animation. Or go for simple clean pattern in background and then include some nice loading effects throughout the design. X theme demos are packed because they want to show everything you can do with their theme. But professional web designers will keep in mind that “less is more” and utilize built-in effects only in places where it counts.
X theme does a really good job by not adding unnecessary code to your theme for the features you don’t use. Use X with caution and don’t overdo the effects. It is a bit hard, at first I was taken too much with all the beautiful effects, but you cannot overdo them. Don’t include all the shortcodes, sliders, plugins you can – only include ones that counts and then your site will look great, load fast and look professional.
Finally, I reached out to X creators and got their feedback and suggestions regarding WordPress theme load speed. Kory Wakefield, X lead developer shared some really good tips in general and explained what they are doing to make X fast:
“While these speed tests can be a good indicator of things in general, there are certain aspects of their testing that we as theme authors have no control over.
For instance, they might convey that “all scripts should be moved to the bottom of the site” – however, we do not necessarily have control over this for numerous reasons:
Additionally, some of the items listed in these speed tests are not theme related at all, and instead have to do with server-side configuration:
For our X demos, we do not have any extensive caching setup or use any CDNs. This is done to show as “raw” a result as possible without all of this extra setup as many users do not take the time to do these things. However, with a little bit of proper server-side configuration these metrics can increase significantly to ensure things are running as smoothly as possible.”
For total beginners – you can easily build websites using one of the 33 pre-built designs and customize basic looks with the X visual editor and theme options without touching any code.
For amateur graphic and web designers – the X has been used a lot by graphical web designers who utilize the X’s functionality and flexibility without being hardcore programmers. We will be having an interview case study soon with a graphic designer who now creates powerful websites for her clients without being expert programmer.
For advanced programmers – the X is very extensive and has plenty of action hooks which you can use throughout the theme for making alterations. Heavy modifications are easily possible using “Views”, that break the theme up in smaller pieces. Think of each View as a Lego brick which can be used together with other bricks to build a more complex structure.
Learn more about X theme and available .
To conclude, it will take some time to learn how the X theme works. Right after installing the theme, I was a bit overwhelmed with all the functionality I had access. If you make a commitment, however, to spend time to read their getting started PDF guide and view their training videos, you will have serious superpowers in your hands in just a few days.
X is here to disrupt the market and aim for being the theme of 2015. It is an amazing theme, you can get with only $63 investment and use it to quickly build high quality and great looking websites for your clients.
We actually did interview with Dana, a professional web designer who scaled her design business by using X theme effectively. Learn how she did it and listen to the interview now!
If you are looking for links mentioned as well as transcript, here is an .
X Theme Video Review Real Case Study & Interview
What others are saying about X? Read other reviews:
Who is not for:
Read more about X theme features and view demos on their own .
What has been your experience with ThemeForest themes and more importantly have you tried X theme? Would love to hear your experience in comments section!
A little more than a month ago, Theme.co changed X with one of it’s biggest updates yet. Aside from overall bug fixes, they introduced a brand new interface which they called Cornerstone.
Cornerstone is unique in that it’s a completely front end site builder system enabling you not to look at the WordPress backend anymore. Instead, you see each page how it is in real time.
As an early adopter, I updated my theme as soon as I got the email about the update. Let’s just say I had a few issues at first, and so did much of the X theme community (the poor staff were probably up all night answering the same questions for the first 3 days). After using it for a month, however, I feel like I have a good hand on it allowing me to see some of its main pros and cons.
One of my biggest issues with X was that I found their version of Visual Composer much slower than the normal one. Themeco explained that it was because they would automatically save the page every few seconds. Luckily, they’ve completely changed that in the new update.
As someone who spent half of my design time clicking the “Preview” button, this was a godsend. I actually assumed that it would work similar to how the Customizer worked where it usually takes a few seconds until it reloads the page, but it’s actually instantaneous. The same also applies to their on page custom CSS and Javascript.
This goes hand and hand with instant changes. You can take entire sections and easily move them around. It is very different than the Visual Composer where you have to drag the entire section to where you want it and hope you put it in the right place. With Cornerstone, you can now rearrange a page in a matter of seconds.
Getting the design right on every device has always been an issue of mine. I actually felt they made this just for me. Continuing on with the instant page theme, you can now see how your page will appear on a PC, Laptop, Tablet, Mini Tablet and Smartphone. This pretty much takes away having to go to mobile device sites to test out your page. Not to mention, you don’t have to wait until the page is done to test it.
This is especially great for large sites that want a certain look and feel to part of their site. You can actually save blocks to be used for later. You can also use blocks and templates created by other designers as well as Themeco templates.
Downside though is that you loose access to Visual Composer.
I mentioned earlier that moving sections is really easy. The same, however, can not be said for moving individual blocks. It might be easy to move a block to an adjacent block, but if you want to move one block from the top of a page to the bottom, good luck. In all fairness, Visual Composer wasn’t good with this either, but at least you could take the piece and scroll down with the scroll wheel. With Cornerstone, you can’t do that.
This might not apply to people just getting the theme but coming from Visual Composer, I found learning how to use it pretty annoying. The basic stuff is pretty easy, since they have great videos on the site. My issues were some of the more technical things, which aren’t so obvious.
For example, I couldn’t figure out how to get a row to full width on a page. Coming from the Visual Composer, it was full width by default. But with Cornerstone it would default to part width. After opening up a ticket, one of the staff informed me that I could easily fix that by going to the “row” section in the sidebar, which can’t be accessed through the sidebar or through the front page interface.
In order to get to the row, you first have to click on the element, then you can to go the sidebar and click on the “row” breadcrumb. Only then will you be able to get to the row.
I have to say, I do like X 4.0 Cornerstone update. It was a bold choice by changing to a completely front end system, and Themeco is doing a nice job of it. It does take some getting used to and it still has few kinks to work out. But I trust Themeco to listen to their customers.
In fact, they’ve actually already made a few changes based on issues the community have brought up. For example, a big issue was that the text editor was too small for large pieces of text, after hearing about it, they made a modification to the system that allowed the text editor to stretch. Not exactly the most groundbreaking change, but the fact that they heard what the community wanted and responded is always a good sign.
I’m really excited to see what more they have in store.
If you want to see how the new X theme performs, you can . Now you know all about X-Theme and what it offers. We couldn’t resist but to share with you this great success story of Dana James Mwangi, who has build a Business with X-Theme.
The Podcast Episode with Dana James Mwangi
At first glance, Dana James Mwangi looks like the typical wife and mother balancing her time between her husband and kids. Unless you delve a little deeper, you will never know that this dynamo has an additional title under her resume – that of a business person.
A woman filled with laughter and positive energy, her smile and enthusiasm are contagious. There’s no hint of burn-out nor tiredness when you talk to her. Even in this short interview, Dana isn’t short of energy as she talks about her family, business, and most importantly, the using WordPress X Theme.
WordPress is awash with various themes web designers can use and build upon. For Dana, however, nothing else works for her other than the X. Her business experiencing a significant boost by just using the is proof enough of its functionality and versatility to meet the various needs of each of her clients.
What’s great about the X theme, according to Dana, is its ability to help her to customize and deliver high quality designs without eating up most of her time. Compared to other themes in the WordPress market, the X is more intuitive allowing her clients to update their own websites. This lifts up the burden of doing everything, even the simplest task, for her clients.
In short, she is able to have time for everything without jeopardizing her career and family. In her own words, the X theme is not as complicated to work around and build a website with but not easy enough to be boring to a web designer.
Dana has a lot to rave about the X, but what really got her was its exceptional customer service unexpected from a company of its size. Just like its features and settings bringing satisfaction to its customers, the customer service of the X makes you feel like they are part of your team, which is very crucial and important to business. They give you a feeling that they are always there for you permanently any time of the day.
Unlike other theme designers who leave you hanging to figure out how to solve a problem, the team behind the X answer properly and provide good answers. This is reflective of the company’s goal which is to understand all the custom projects being built using the x theme and in so doing they will be able to help you support the development.
Aside from the amazing customer service support, the X Theme also provides a number of video support which help you set up the theme from the beginning to using the customizer to modifying your site. Then, there’s also the support forum which provides relevant answers within a short period of time. Furthermore, members are given access to an extensive written documentation that carries the answers to any possible issues they might encounter. This is a very great alternative just in case the videos won’t suffice.
Dana James is not the only web designer who uses the , but she is surely one of the most vocal advocates of the X. To further prove her point and show her trust on the theme, her personal and business websites have been built on the X. However, if you visit them, Cheers.com and danajamesmwangi.com, you won’t suspect that they are using the same theme because they are extremely unique and different from each other.
Asked why she would readily recommend the X Theme to any web designer, she provides two reasons – one on a design perspective and the other on a business perspective. She said that the X is ideal for a business person because it is the only theme that grows with you. You can start from a one page to multiple pages and never worry about support. For a designer, the X theme is great because it allows you to bring your designs to life without any restrictions.
[ctt title=”Great ability develops and reveals itself increasingly with every new assignment ~Baltasar Gracian” tweet=”Baltasar Gracian: “Great ability develops and reveals itself increasingly with every new assignment.” coverup=”vU0dr”]
Each web designer has different preferences which allows them to express their talent. However, it is also wise to choose or prefer something that is dynamic – something that grows with you. That is what is all about – already using HTML 5 and CSS3, it gives the assurance that it will continue to develop and provide high-end functionality your site demands. X has done it with Dana and X can also do it with you and your business.
Now it’s your turn, share your thoughts about X-Theme and maybe how you build your business?
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