I recently started creating new website, and I decided to try new Elegant Themes theme called eBusiness. And this review will focus on my experience with the theme. This theme has 3 designs, each with 3 color schemes, and it allows both CMS and blog layouts. On top of all, it features very advanced options panel that allows you great control over the theme.

CMS Layout

CMS Layout

Features

Elegant Theme eBusiness is truly a premium theme,  rich with features and with excellent support. I will mention only few of the features, and for the rest check the official website via the link at the bottom.

  • Advanced control panel for theme management.
  • 9 color schemes with CSM and Blog layout. One additional page template without sidebar
  • Advertisement management supporting 8 different 125×125 banners and one 468×60 banner.
  • Support for new WP 2.7 model of threaded comments.
  • 3 sidebars used in blog layout.
  • Full PSD source files.
Options panel

Options panel

Theme Options

All options are divided into several tabs. Layout is used to control how your website will look like. Homepage tab allows you to set sliders and pages for CMS layout on the front page. Blog tab allows you to set thumbnails options, page elements for blog layout.

Plugin supports two types of navigation. Pages navigation is on the top and categories navigation is visible only in blog layouts. Navigation tab controls both navigation bars. Last, manage ads tab allows you to set banners and urls for them and also, visibility of ads sections on the blog.

Blog Layout

Blog Layout

Customization

One of the most important difference between this and many others premium themes I had a chance to work with is that this theme required very little changes to the theme code. As for the theme design, theme archive contains full PSD source files and you can use it to change colors and other elements. The only thing I have changed is logo. As for the CSS and layout, theme uses table-less layout.

Theme files and code are well organized, and easy to track what’s going on where. But there are few problems I will discuss later.

Further Improvements

There are few things I had problem with. Each of the theme options is saved as a separate setting/record in options table. And on top of that, the names of the options are wrong. I would like to see all settings saved as the array or object as a single record. Also, even if the options panel is powerful, it still lacks one very important thing and that are instructions. It would be great to see explanations for each option either as a separate PDF file or as in line elements on the options panel itself (I prefer PDF).

Theme also needs few more page templates for standard blog features: authors, archive or site map. Than also, more than 3 sliders on the main layout would be nice also. All three sliders are set through the theme options, but in my opinion it were be better that all tree sliders were actual pages.

Conclusion

Rating

Features9/10
Design10/10
Customization8/10
Administration8/10
Support9/10
8.9/10
Average rating: 8.9

This is really an excellent theme. And even with few problems I have pointed out, it’s one of the best premium themes I have worked with. Over the past few months I have tried few of the other Elegant Themes, and I had more problems with them in terms of customizations and lack of some features I needed then I cared for, so I never used one on the live website. All that problems are not gone, and this theme is really a big step forward. Looking forward for the other Elegant Themes.

Theme Homepage: http://www.elegantthemes.com/gallery/ebusiness/