WordPress Premium Theme Framework Options for a Real Estate Website
The next Geek Build 2012 decision to be made is choosing a WordPress theme framework to build participants’ new sites on top of. There are obviously thousands and thousands of free themes floating around out there — but the support, code quality, and updates from the premium theme providers are worth their weight in gold considering the headaches of working with free themes.
Here are the leading premium theme framework candidates:
- Genesis (StudioPress)
- Thesis
- Headway
- Agent Press (Studio Press)
- Other??
Would love to get your feedback on these various theme frameworks from your personal experience(s) in the comments. Have you used any of these frameworks? If so, what do you like about each one?
If you’d like to write a comprehensive overview with pros and cons for one of the specific frameworks you’ve worked with, leave a comment or shoot me an email at drew at esmexecdesigns dot com.
Note from the Editor: Not sure what Geek Build 2012 is? It’s building a few real estate websites from scratch publicly with the help of the Geek Estate Community and overseen by an experienced steering committee. Read more about Geek Build 2012 here, or view all posts related to Geek Build 2012 here.
**Geek Build logo designed by Dominic Morrocco at M Squared Real Estate.
Tina McGee
Posted at 08:43h, 24 MarchHeadway was a nightmare back when I tried it, very buggy. The “leafs” wouldn’t maintain their layouts, and there was no way to select different layouts for dsIDXpress detail vs results pages like you can with a conventional theme. It’s been a while though, perhaps things have changed in the new release.
Art Hotes
Posted at 11:28h, 24 MarchI implemented Agent Press in May ’11. I like the visual appeal of the framework, but I have to say that it was not an easy upgrade when they phased out certain features and added others in their most recent version. I finally got my site updated with the latest release, but that was after about 24-48 hours of frantically scrambling to pull it back together! All-in-all… I love the visual appeal still!
One great transformation Studio Press made to Agent Press was to create Listings. In the past, you had to put your real estate listings in as Posts… now they are Listings, which separates them from the blog.
Drew Meyers
Posted at 11:30h, 24 MarchThanks for the feedback.
Did they give you advance notice on which features were being deprecated prior to releasing the upgrade?
Steven Hong
Posted at 15:32h, 24 MarchI like the new Headway, being a 2.0 user and now a 3.0 user. I only had trouble with leafs once, when I didn’t have my browser at 100%. I have built 8 or 9 sites on headway and it’s been pretty much smooth sailing. The new 3.0 grid layout is very easy to use, and easy to configure.
Greg Fischer
Posted at 16:38h, 24 March#genesiswp is great. out of self-interest and by doing no objective research on the others whatsoever – I vote to use it.
Michael Borger
Posted at 17:28h, 24 MarchI redid my site last October with Studiopress / AgentPress 2. I love it. I’ve had to do some moderate customizations but always found the support forums, well, supportive. I can’t comment on the others, but if I had to do a site all over again I’d use some child theme of Genesis in some fashion.
Joel Park
Posted at 16:09h, 05 AprilI’m totally agree with Tina, Headway is very buggy. I moved to Dottoro theme a few weeks ago and I’m very satisfied with it.
It has a ton of useful features and it also provides a visual editor similar to Headway.
Dottoro theme is not buggy at all and I like the options it offers.
Lexi
Posted at 09:07h, 04 MayDo you know someone who has built the Agent Press before? I need someone to build one for me. Thanks
Drew Meyers
Posted at 00:24h, 05 Mayyou mean a framework like agent press? or customize agent press to your liking?
Zeeshan
Posted at 12:26h, 06 Februaryneed a real estate theme where users of the web site can register
and post their own properties. If a user wants to post more than one
property s/he can do this by paying a small fee.
I do know that there are many WordPress Real Estate themes however I
still have not managed to find the one which suits my needs.
Zeeshan
Posted at 12:26h, 06 FebruaryActually need a framework on WP like this..
Drew Meyers
Posted at 12:45h, 06 Februarywhat’s the use case? why would someone to pay to submit a property? are you targeting an audience outside the US?
just pay someone to custom-build you something..