Hello, everybody. I’m Renata and I was kindly asked by Mohamad to write the first post in his series of articles reviewing Wordpress Themes. I’m a newbie in the beautiful world of blogging and I’m humbled by Mohamad’s invitation. I hope you enjoy my remarks regarding the Olsen Light theme. You are more than welcome to share your experiences in the comment section.
My experience with the Olsen Light theme
I’ve been using this theme for almost two weeks and fell in love with most of what it has to offer. While writing this post I’ve referred to Mohamad’s general article for this series in order to get an idea of what features you seek in a WordPress theme.
I’ll display my positive (+) and negative (-) remarks in one topic for each feature:
- Availability:+ It is free.
– It is only available for WordPress.org users. - Rating:+ According to WordPress.org, it is has been downloaded more than 10,000 times.
- Logo Picture:+ You can add a logo picture to both the top and the bottom of your homepage. All you have to do is go your Dashboard, and click on Customize, next to Themes.
– I can’t seem to do any image uploads to my blog when I’m using Google Chrome in my Windows HP laptop. Maybe you’ve gone through the same frustration. My current solution is accessing my Administrator page via the Microsoft Edge browser.
- Social Menu:+ It can be added as a widget to the sidebar, as in the screenshot above. One could also add it to the top and bottom menus.
+ A wide variety of social network options, including almost 20 of them.
– All fine!
- Featured Image:+You can read the post once you’ve clicked on the featured image. Extra info: the Read More function is available if you are displaying your posts’ excerpts in your Home. I believe it is more intuitive for readers to click on the Read More link than on the featured image if wish to keep on reading.
– Nothing bad around here. 🙂
- Menus:
+ You can create two different menus and place them at the top or at the bottom of the page.
+ In the widgets section it is possible to add a custom menu to your sidebar.
– I’ve created a few pages and I want them to appear only at the top of my homepage, right below my logo. However, it is currently located in both the top and bottom pages. I’ve tried to remove it from the bottom, but still can’t do it. If you have any tips on how to do that, I really appreciate it.
- Mobile version:
– It is not clear where to find it. - Guest Authors:– Unclear.
- Videos:– This theme doesn’t support videos in the header nor in the sidebar.
- Featured posts:
+ There are Jetpack’s widgets just for that. Jetpack is a plugin that is already part of your WordPress.com or .org website. You can place the widgets on the sidebar, which is in the right part, and show your Most Recent Posts or your Top Posts, Pages and/or media. They can be diplayed as text or text plus image.
– It’s not possible to display these widgets as a solo image.
- Extra features:* You can customize the Related Posts section title. * You can modify the pagination method. Two options are available: the previous-next scheme and the numbered links. You can’t use both.
* It is possible to add an Instagram photo slider to the footer.
- Moving to theme:
+++ It was simple. I downloaded the theme from this link and then uploaded it.
– Some features that were available in my previous theme were not available in this one or just didn’t appear, like my social menu urls. I had to write that info all over again and rearrange the About me and Top Posts widget.
Now, tell me, what has been your experience so far with the Olsen Light Theme?
Great advice thanks
I haven’t used that theme – I did switch mine a few months ago, and it was a great decision.
What theme have you adopted?
We’re using Rowling – we started posting at least a couple times a day a while ago, and it really works well for that (much better than what we had previously, which was just a continuous scroll of posts on the front page).
I also dislike the infinite scroll property, but some themes offer the option to disable it. I haven’t heard of your theme yet, nice to know.
Its best feature is letting people see all the blog posts on one front page and choosing the ones they want to read.
Definitely, Sarah. It’s something to consider. I’ve thinking about adding this feature to my blog. In that case, do you feel it’s necessary to have the Searchbox and the Archive widgets?
That is interesting to read. Seems that there are many who don’t like continuous/infinite scroll of posts on homepage!
I keep wondering what’s at the bottom. Not good on ppl who suffer from anxiety. Haha
Personally, I found it useful for viewers to read the older posts. Especially if the homepage contains summary of the posts (not the full text). Good point that will force me to reconsider this here too!
Interesting point, Mohamad. Never thought of it that way.
What a great idea!
Thanks!!
! Seems that there are many who don’t like continuous/infinite scroll of posts on homepage!
Lovely review even though i believe you now have to buy the theme…