CarListings Theme Review

General design

This theme just focuses on displaying your product information so the design is not an important factor. But overall, this theme has a bright and clean look with a straightforward design.

Other elements

Light grey and white are two dominant color, just like most of other themes to make the template readable and clean. Besides, some read elements will highlight special parts. This palette is just adequate and quite "safe" to use. But if you want more creativity, it's impossible as there is no custom color for you. Similarly, the typography is fixed with the Open-sans family font, a legible and popular font. However, sometimes I find the small grey texts in the blog cause eyestrain.

The header is simple and airy. Each element is on a separate tab that can't be messed up. The featured post slider can embellish your website, but you should choose the image with a dark color. Why? Because as I said that the color can't be changed so the white text of the featured post doesn't get along well with a bright-colored image as I did here.

Texts on the featured post slider

The blog page has a list structure with a default sidebar on the right. There is nothing to complain about the blog and single post page as it's friendly and easy to read.

Similarly, the car finding section on the homepage is well-organized, informative and sleek. Then, you will be surprised by the view mode of this section, which allows your customer conveniently switch from a list to a grid view. These views are all reasonable and nice without changing the image's ratio aspect.

Two view mode of the Car listing section

Responsive

Even when you zoom in, zoom out or switch to a mobile device, you can see the beautiful design of this WordPress theme without any mistake.

The responsive design checked by ami.responsivedesign.is

After activating this theme and all the required plugins, you have to choices to move on: manual set up or using one-click demo import.

Using one-click demo import is so rapid and easy that you need only one click after activating the One-click demo import plugin.

If you choose to manually set up, it's a bit complicated to install and set up JetPack and Auto Listings plugin.

To create a new list, you need to go to the Listing tab and make one. The user interface here is intuitive and clear that you just need to insert your information into the fields without short code. Although there are a lot of fields and forms to fill in, it's not difficult at all.

Creating a new listing

Finally, I have one note for you: this part is created by using custom code so you should use One-click demo import to have it if you are not a coder.

CarListings uses Jetpack to support featured content, social menu. When you connect to Jetpack, these features, as well as a variety of other tools, will be available.

The listing feature of this theme come from AutoListings plugin and Meta Box plugin. If you want to learn more about Meta Box plugin, you can read this post.

The theme customization before and after installing two required plugins are very different. But overall, it's not so difficult to customize this theme and the Car Listings plugin.

If you don't install the required plugin, Car Listing can be used as a simple theme with just a few basic custom features, which can be managed in the Customizer. For example, the static homepage only has one hero image with a Call to Action section like this. You can easily change the image as well as some texts here.

Customizing Call to Action

When you choose the latest posts to show, it will turn to a simple blog. With JetPack, there are blog options for you to quickly manage all the minor elements of your blog.

Customizing blog sections

And JetPack even enables you to choose many featured posts by selecting a tag post. Yet I find no way to eliminate the content of the featured post on the hero image, which is such a disadvantage of this theme.

Featured post slider with the body content

Besides a sidebar, you have two more areas to place widgets: the left and right top bar. Along with all the common widgets from WordPress, there you have another custom widget from the author to add contact info. Generally, all the widgets can be rendered properly.

Custom widget from Car Listing

Then, I will move on with the Customization after installing these required plugins. Here you have a Homepage section on the Theme Options section that allows you to add filter options. These options will help your customers find their desired car in a minute. You can even choose up to 4 columns of this section, so awesome, right? But first, you have to create a new listing in the Dashboard as I indicated in the Installation and Set up section.

Customizing listing section

Now with the Auto Listings plugin, an Auto Listing widget exists on your listing page. Yet this time, you need to use shortcode to add the search table like this.

Customizing search box widget using custom shortcode

As a specialized theme for car selling, I think that you should know how to manage your car listing with the Auto Listing plugin. As I mentioned, there are a lot of steps to create a new list and fill in the forms, but you don't need to be a coder or a professional user to do it.

As for other post types, this WordPress theme still owns all the standard features without mistake.

For example, the blockquote and drop cap are so big and prominent.

Blockquote and drop cap

This is the beautiful gallery that displays your image in the nicest way.

Gallery

You can also easily embed videos from popular sources like Youtube, Vimeo or upload your own.

I verified SEO by some tool and the result shows that this WordPress theme still needs more steps to get it totally optimized.

The amazing thing about this WordPress theme is fast speed. Your experience will never be restrained as it's super lightweight.

Website speed checked by PageSpeed Insights

This WordPress theme is well-documented so you can easily find all you need to install, set up and customize, even add the complete shortcode for the search box.

You can use a free ticket system to call for support but it might take up to 7 days. To have a quicker response, you need a premium support plan or extension.