CSSIgniter is a WordPress theme club that has 60 premium themes on offer. Their themes are available on an individual basis, along with the option of joining their club for access to all their current themes and any new items which are added during your membership term.
The CSSIgniter themes cover a range of topics and there is definitely something there for every type of project, whether it’s building an online store, a hotel website, a portfolio, or just a regular WordPress blog.
In this CSSIgniter review we will take a look at some of the themes that are on offer, see how easy they are to setup and use, and also take a look at their documentation and support provisions.
The CSSIgniter Themes
The 60 WordPress themes on offer from CSSIgniter cover a range of uses including:
- Creative professionals
- Business websites
- Bloggers
- eCommerce online stores
- Mobile app showcases
- New/magazine websites
- Conference promotion
- Photography portfolios
- Hotel websites
- Plus many more
To help you get a better understanding on what CSSIgniter has on offer, here are some highlights from their portfolio:
Coastline
Coastline is a theme for creative professionals and its one of the newest themes available from CSSIgniter. The theme makes use of a masonry grid layout with infinite scroll, making it ideal for anyone with a great portfolio or high quality images they want to showcase.
As well as the impressive design, with Coastline you also get access to the standard CSSIgniter theme features such as a shortcode library, a choice of colour variations, and access to the responsive support.
If you want to give your portfolio a suitable home on the internet then Coastline is a great choice.
Uberto
Uberto is a beautiful blogging theme that is based on the Bootstrap framework for a fully responsive layout. The clean and minimal design gives you a great opportunity to let your content – text, images, and video – really stand out.
Whether you are blogging or want to showcase your creative endeavours, Uberto has been designed just for you.
Corner
Corner has been designed to appeal to creative professional who want to showcase their agency, services, or portfolio. The clean and restrained design will really help your work stand out and ensure your message gets across to visitors.
You can really customise this theme quite easily thanks to the colour pickers on offer which let you choose from an unlimited number of options. The homepage can contain widgets, such as a recent work slider, making it a great way to show off the latest things you’ve accomplished.
Corner is a minimal theme that will appeal to anyone who appreciates clean designs.
Santorini Resort
Santorini Resort has been designed to showcase a resort or hotel in style. If you’ve been tasked with building this type of website then this theme, and its abilities to display large, high quality images, is a great solution.
The design is really well done and the responsive layout makes it easy for guests to book their stay on their mobile devices. The theme integrates with other booking systems, which take care of the reservation functionality of the site. Santorini Resort even features a weather reporting system and space for publishing testimonials from guests.
If you want a theme that looks as good as the hotel or resort you are promoting, then Santorini Resort is a great choice.
Mobilee
Mobilee has been built to promote and showcase a mobile app, although it is an adaptable theme, so if you like the design, it can be used for other purposes.
The design makes it easy to showcase screenshots and images from your app, all nested inside the silhouette of a mobile device. The theme makes use of a slider for displaying multiple screen grabs in one space on the site.
If you want to keep things simple and get a site online quickly to promote your mobile app, or other product, then Mobilee is well worth checking out.
If you are interested in viewing some of their themes being used on real life projects then the showcase section of the website features some great examples.
CSSIgniter Theme Features
While the individual themes have features specific to the purpose they were built for, there is a common set of features amongst the themes:
- Custom theme settings panel
- Selection of post formats
- Library of shortcodes (via plugin)
- Colour scheme variations
- Custom widgets
- Widgetized footer areas
- Demo content and widget settings
- Easily add custom CSS
- Translation files for easily creating a multilingual site
- Support through a private forum
CSSIgniter has also created two plugins which are used to add some of the functionality to the themes and the sites that are built with them. This means that if you do use these features on your site, and decide to change theme provider in the future, you can still keep those elements on your site intact, providing the plugins are still active.
Using the Themes from CSSIgniter
To test out the functionality of the themes from CSSIgniter, I took the recently released Uberto, which is described as a beautiful blogging theme for WordPress, for a test drive.
Once you’ve signed up as a customer, either for access to a single theme or all 60 themes, the themes you have access to can be downloaded from the member area of the website.
One nice feature I noticed right away was that you can download previous versions of a theme. This would come in handy if you ever need to access the original source files for backup purposes, or to roll back any changes you’ve made to the theme files in use on your site.
You can also quickly access the documentation for each theme and download the sample content.
Once the theme has been activated on your site you can either import the demo content, which in the case of Uberto includes posts and pages, as well as the widget configuration, or go straight to the theme settings control panel to set up the theme.
CSSIgniter Theme Options Control Panel
The user interface of the theme settings is pretty close to the native WordPress UI, making it easy to use, while also helping it to integrate fairly well into the rest of the admin dashboard on your site.
Through the control panel you get access to the following settings, although these could vary depending on the CSSIgniter theme you are using:
- Upload logos and favicon
- Colour options: choose a colour scheme or set custom colours
- Display options: excerpts and featured image handling
- Archive options: number of posts to display
- Set up social media integration
- Google Analytics, Feedburner, and BuySellAds integration
- Add custom CSS
There isn’t a whole lot that you can do via the theme options control panel, compared to some feature-heavy themes out there, but if you appreciate simplicity and a lack of bloat, then these themes will appeal to you.
The theme settings panel also includes quick links to the support and documentation pages on the website for the theme you are using.
If you do choose to import the sample content, your site will be populated with a selection of posts, and other content, each with image place holders to help you get a better sense of how the theme works.
As mentioned, one of the common features shared by the CSSIgniter themes is the built in colour variations. These allow you to change the main colour scheme for your site simply by choosing an option from the dropdown menu.
The theme options for the CSSIgniter themes is easy to use and give you a reasonable amount of control over how your site looks. This is done without going into too much depth, which could overwhelm new users of WordPress.
Support, Documentation and Services
Each theme includes its own set of documentation which is stored online. The documents walk you through the setup process for the theme and explain how to use it, with more information on some of the advanced theme-specific features.
In the first instance support is offered via the members only support forums. Only customers can access the forums, making it a place to find questions that have already been answered or post your own issues directly related to the CSSIgniter themes.
The forums are divided into sub forums, with one sub forum for each individual theme. There is also a general section with frequently asked questions, testimonials, and suggestions for new themes and features.
When browsing the forums it appeared that the topics were responded to quickly with helpful responses being posted by the support staff. However, to test the service I did post a few questions that arose when installing and using their themes.
Both questions that I posted in the forums were responded to quickly by the support staff. In one case I was given the necessary code to make the changes I wanted, and in the other I was provided with a link to the relevant documentation on the website. I was pleased with the timely and useful responses in both cases, especially considering this took place on the weekend, outside of office hours.
CSSIgniter also offer a few premium services to help you get your site up and running as quickly as possible. These services include:
- Theme installation & setup: $49 one-time fee
- Theme customization: $99 one-time fee
- Theme design & development: $49 per hour
So if you haven’t got a WordPress site online yet, or don’t have the time to setup a new theme, these services are well worth taking advantage of for their time saving abilities.
Pricing
The themes from CSSIgniter are available on three pricing plans:
- Single theme: $39
- All themes (standard): $49
- All themes (developer): $79
With each plan, you can use the themes as often as you like, on multiple sites, including client projects.
All plans include updates and support for one year, after which time you can go on using the themes unsupported, or subscribe for another year in order to retain access to support and updates.
At the time of writing, the ‘all themes’ plans give you access to 60 premium themes. CSSIgniter plan to add one or two new themes each month. Any themes released while your membership is active will be available for you to download.
You can view the full details of the plans on the pricing page.
Conclusion
CSSIgniter has built up a large portfolio of premium WordPress themes that cover a good selection of uses and project types. The themes look really good and their designs are well suited to the type of projects they have been built for.
While the most popular themes at marketplaces like ThemeForest are feature-heavy, multipurpose ones that are often accused of being poorly supported, inefficiently coded, and resource intensive, it’s nice to see a team like CSSIgniter offering an alternative, with cleanly designed themes which have been built for a specific purpose, and that haven’t been weighed down with excess features for the sake of it.
The support provisions in place are good and it’s nice to see affordable setup and customisation services being offered to help users get their site up and running quickly without any hassle.
While WordPress can be easy to use, for new users, installing WordPress and setting up a theme has the potential to be a real time suck, and even a barrier to entry. For these reasons it’s nice to see a way to overcome this being offered for those that need it.
If you want a generic multipurpose theme, packed out with all the latest bells and whistles that you might not ever use, then these themes might not be for you. But if you want clean designs that have been tailored for specific purposes, then the CSSIgniter themes could be just what you are looking for.
With access to all 60 of their themes for just $49, and the ability to use them on any number of sites, including client sites, CSSIgniter is an affordable and practical option.
View the CSSIgniter themes today
