I have been using WP for years. I love WP! It's a very easy to use platform to get a site up in no time. One of the biggest things I despise about WP themes developed by other developers is that most of the ones I tend to really like and want to use, have such a complex and poorly designed backend. I can figure things out fairly well. But sometimes I don't want to deal with needing to figure out something that should have been user-friendly from jump street. And I don't like being put in a position to have to look at the documentation and any videos on top of that to get a theme to work. My rule of thumb for myself: If I can't figure it out without looking at the instructions, then it's a waste of my time (and money if I paid for it) and I move on to find something else that is so easy to use I can create a site with it with my eyes closed. So to answer my own question to start off the conversation: Any WP theme that was not designed to be user-friendly on the inside is one thing I despise about any WP theme that fits this description. They still look great on the outside, but they need much work on the inside for any user to make their site look great, too, with that same theme. How about you -- what is the one thing you despise about any WP theme?
My pet hate is those "framework" themes. They always advertise themselves as incredibly flexible, easy to use and absolutely gorgeous, but you have to spend six weeks farting around with stuff to get it looking even vaguely like all the screenshots. So annoying.
Is it particularly about Genesis or Thesis themes? I just had a word about that with one of my clients and he said that Genesis is getting a lot of better reviews than the other. I'm getting a hunch that Thesis is becoming kinda outdated. We're about to set up a blog that reviews small electronic accessories (earphones, bluetooth wireless devices etc.) and are still pondering over which will suit better – in terms of user friendliness and creating an appealing design. If there's anything that involves a hell lot of coding and understanding technicalities, we might consider switching to something else. Sorry if my point/question is not related to this discussion.
Nah, I was thinking of construction kits and things like Customizr and Responsive. Even Suffusion makes my head hurt because there's just too many fiddly settings. If I'm going to put that much effort in, I'd rather build something from scratch, even though I suck at it!!
I just chanced upon some reviews of those plugins/themes you've mentioned above through G. What ya say is right ….. they announce themselves as something quite easy to set up. Even the screenshots are quite fascinating. But if it's such a pain in the a** to get even one thing going correctly, I think we better stick to using no skin at all, at least initially. I guess most of those reviews are sponsored.
The ones that look gorgeous in the screenshot, but then you install it and you have to fuck about with so many things and even install third party plugins to make it look halfways like it does in the screenshot, badly written php code everywhere, no fucking structure, having to trace a function through every god damned file in the entire theme to change something to make it support https. Just.... grrrr e.e I sort of hate WordPress.
chunk and junk of codes every where, Technically, wordpress is a bloated application. But It works. For small website you can install it and run with ease. But if you buy a premium theme, you better get the sample data files, so you can understand how they made it.
I just hate purchasing a Premium WP theme and then going, i'd rather just switch back over to a normal "free" WP theme and customize it to fit my needs. Too many glitches in some of these premium themes especially if one is to use any of the advanced features. That said, there are still PLENTY of excellent premium themes that are really battle tested.