WordPress Theme Test Drive: Customizr
|Wow, I like the free Customizr WordPress theme! In fact, I’m going to keep it on here for now, and maybe forever. The funny thing is, I decided to start a section called WordPress Theme test Drive, where I will review and test WordPress themes. The free Customizr theme was the first one I planned on doing a review on. But, while I was testing it, I fell in love with it! I have never seen so many options on a free theme. It has a very powerful back-end, with multiple layouts and color schemes to choose from. So, my first theme review may be my last! However, just to clarify, after I made some customizations through the options panel, I decided to make a child theme for any additional changes I make.
Customizr WordPress theme has a powerful options panel!
After installing the theme (on this site) the first thing we did was navigate to the options panel (appearance > customize). Right away, we are impressed with the choices. Each choice has multiple choices under it, making this theme one of the most powerful themes I’ve ever seen, and a free theme too:
Global Settings >
- Site title and tag line (already a WordPress standard feature)
- Logo and favicon (explains clearly what sizes work, and which file formats)
- Skin (16 color schemes to choose from with a click)
- Google Fonts (Choose a Google font from dozens, and font size with a click)
- Social links (add your social links from 12 popular social sites, plus your RSS feed)
- Link style and effects (choose smooth scroll for page bookmarks, hover effects, and if you want to open links in a new window)
- Tiles icons settings (easily add title icons next to your titles with a click)
- Image settings (lightbox, zoom auto scale, dynamic slider images and thumbnails)
- Responsive settings (check this box to enable responsive design)
- Authors (choose whether or not you want to display an author box under posts)
Header >
- Design and layout (choices for tag line display; logo left, right or center; 5 sticky header choices)
- Navigation (choose main nav and sub nav menus, and position them left or right, add hover effects and dropdown menu effects)
Content: Home, Posts >
- Front page (latest posts, or magazine layout)
- Blog design options (number of posts, full or excerpt, grid layout, alternate left and right post thumbnails, thumbnail shape square or expland on hover effect, thumbnail position left, right, top or bottom, rename page, archive, tag, page, and author titles)
- Single posts (thumbnail position and size options)
- Breadcrumbs (4 options for breadcrumbs usage)
- Post meta’s for categories and tags (buttons and/or text, whether or not to display on pages, posts or author pages)
- Paragraphs (all caps or not)
- Comments (choose small or large bubbles, bubble colors, enable or disable comments on pages)
Footer >
- Display a back-to-top link or not
Widgets >
- Right sidebar and 3 footer widget areas)
Advanced options >
- Custom CSS (add custom CSS code)
- Website performance (choice to use minified version of CSS code, and load images on scroll to avoid loading images right away)
Customizr Free WordPress Theme Review Summary:
Picture your five favorite WordPress themes. Now put all those features into one awesome theme. Then add more options. That is what the Customizr theme does. You have so many choices, I had only one choice (above) to show you all the options as I did. It has a powerful magazine template or go with a lot of different blog looking designs, from left or right sidebar to both. This is one theme you can truly make your own, without any need for code knowledge.
I highly recommend the free Customizr Theme. My favorite themes change from month to month. Right now, this is my favorite theme, and the best one I ever used. There may be better paid-themes out there. I wouldn’t know about that. I’ve never paid for one in my life. I always use free ones on my websites. This site is using it now.