Craftyblog Theme Review

General design

The general design is like a magazine put on a table. You can see the dashed line surrounding the table, which makes me think about stitches. I guess that why the author name this WordPress blog theme Crafty Blog. Overall, the theme looks cute and catchy.

Other elements

The default colors of the demo are light blue and white. It's super cool and brings about the sense of freedom as you're looking at the sky with white cloud in a blue background. The texts are light grey, balanced with the background of the magazine and easy to read. Other small parts are pink, so sweet and lovely.

Pacifico and Raleway are 2 font types used here. I love the Pacifico as it's really as adorable as the general spirit of Crafty Blog. But it just appears with a small frequency in order not to make the theme too childish. The Raleway is mainly used to make it readable.

The header is simple without a header image. It looks spacious and well-organized. The logo in the center is outstanding and creative.

Under the header, the highlight posts are made to attract people. The large featured image of the latest post is shown with a box containing title and information. That's an effective way to encourage the reader to explore your post. These posts' information shows up only when you hover to save the space and spotlight the image.

Down to the body page, the sidebar is on the right side, under the highlight post. I really love the way the author design the sidebar and each widget. The bullet points to mark the line make it clear, straightforward and not glitzy.

The body layout is listing. No excerpt is shown, which is to draw people's attention to the feature image. The space between each element is large so that you can feel free and comfortable.

Single postOn a single post page, under the menu bar lies a full-width header image and it looks like a long ribbon. I love the fact that this image is faded to emphasize the page title. The content and every factor on this page just look as simple and airy as the general design. I can enjoy reading even a lengthy post without any complaint.

But I found 1 mistake with the automatic wrap text when using this theme for my review. It can be seen that the word Education is divided into "Ed" and "ucation", making the title not understandable.

The last words, there is no footer column in the demo, just copyright text put on a long box stretching out. That design is also aimed at simplifying the footer area.

Responsive

In different devices like PC, laptop, tablet, and smartphone, this theme is made to be friendly with all of theme. It means that the design is okay in all of the devices without any problem. You can see the example design of the theme by using ami.responsivedesign.is.

The 1-click demo import is not compatible with this theme. So if you want your WordPress theme look like the demo, you have to manually set it up. The color is already like the demo so all you need to do is choosing a header image, setting up the sidebar and header. I face no difficulty in customizing all these sections at all.

The author doesn't suggest any plugin for you to have more features at al. So if you want more, you should find plugins by yourself.

The number of custom features is restricted. But a perk of having few changeable sections is that a beginner like me don't have to think much about customization. Besides, all the manipulations can be done easily in the Customize.

To review this part accurately, I tested all the custom sections. The first and foremost feature is color. The author allows you to change only 3 sections to personalize your WordPress blog. And besides changing the background color of the table, you are able to upload an image and set it as the background of this part.

Looking at the Social linking section, you can see that there are only 5 designated URL. Thereby, you're not free to choose your own social linking.

When you insert the URL, the icon of this site automatically appears on the header. There is only 1 fixed position for social linking.

Except for the homepage, the chosen header image exists on other pages. You can crop it to any size for a perfect fit.

Rather than the copyright text like the demo, you can add 2 footer columns in the footer area. All the basic widget can be added to the footer columns and sidebar. As for the sidebar, you can't change its position at all.

These are all the custom features of Crafty blog. Other factors like body layout, header layout, single post, and archive post page can't be changed. But I think the default layout is good enough to use.

For daily use, I'm sure that even a beginner like me can master this theme in a few hours. You can create all the basic post formats here easily and they all look nice.

The blockquote has 2 styles: one is bigger than another. They are all put in a frame, looking unique compared to the normal text.

The gallery wraps your pictures in 1 album. The images are well-arranged even when they have different sizes.

The video is shown this way.

 

By using some special tools, I found out that this theme hasn't been customized for SEO yet. Hence, if you want to have SEO configuration, you have to search for a plugin. But the author doesn't suggest any plugin for SEO so it may be hard for a beginner like me to find a suitable plugin.

I used the most popular tool: PageSpeed Insight to check the speed of Crafty WordPress blog theme. The website speed performance on a mobile device is low. In contrast, the speed when you use this theme on a computer is far much better.

I couldn't find the documentation of this theme anywhere. Maybe it's just been launched recently so the author hasn't uploaded the documentation yet.

I also couldn't find the support system of Crafty Blog.