A number of people have asked me about the theme I use here at WPDude, so I thought I would write up a review of the theme and let you know how it works, where to get it from and how much it costs.
Ice Cream Dream The Premium Theme
Rhyme in a post sub-title cool, The name of the theme I use is Ice Cream Dream and it was developed by the very funny and lovely Nick Cernis over at WordPrezzie
Click here to view more details (damn right it’s an aff. link I love this theme)
Quanta Costa (as they say in Italy)
When this posts goes to press, Ice Cream Dream costs the very reasonable sum of $89.
When trying to decide if a premium theme is a good investment, I like to use the following equation.
- Can I do graphic design – no, buy a premium theme.
- Do I want a more unique theme than the run of the mill blog – yes, buy a premium theme.
What Configuration Options Do I Get
The theme comes in 5 colour combos of mint, raspberry, vanilla, chocolate and strawberry (thats green, pinky red, beige, brown, and red for those of us not into artsy-fartsy language). There is also a custom option so you can set your own colour scheme.
There is a neat logo and banner changing option to simply upload images. You can change the top logo, the dude on my site and the banner, the notebook.
Lastly there is a very good option to set a custom property pointing to a thumbnail image.
What Makes It So Cool
It was developed for one type of business blog, the blog wanting to sell a single service or product like my coaching service.
It has a highly visible call to action so you can direct visitors to your goal page or your offering. It is simple and unfussy, and it works, I write blog posts, people come to my site, see the hire me badge and bingo I get work.
None of This Developers License Shite
Sometimes when you buy a premium theme you buy per domain, Ice Cream Dream does not go in for this type of nonsense you buy once and get to reuse the theme as many times as you want.
Other theme developers are asking for multiple purchase or selling an inflated price developers edition.
Where’s The Downside?
If you want more than one prominent call to action on the front page you are going to have to code it up yourself. This theme is also shite for anyone wanting to sell ad space. This is for people selling their own services not “yet another” banner ad.
You will need to be able to resize or obtain images that are 240 pixels wide for the thumbnails shown on the front page. Do you have a graphics package that can scale images?
Nice After Sales Support
On a number of occasions, I have requested support from the team and it was very good, in particular when I asked for some new images. It was paid support, but the costs was very reasonable and the excellent Hayley got me my updated images in zero time flat.
The documentation that comes with the theme is very comprehensive and you should have no problems getting the theme up and running.
While I am Being an Ice Cream Dream FanBoy
WPDude and and WordPrezzie sitting in a tree kay-eye-ess-ess-eye-en-gee
Nick Cernis also has a couple of other excellent offerings, his excellent and very funny ebook Todoodlist and his not very often updated blog, but still very worthwhile read Put Things off, consider an RSS subscription, then wait for quite some time until his next excellent missie hits your reader app.
Go On Buy It You Know You Want To
You can see more about Ice Cream Dreams at WordPrezzie.com