Photoway Theme Review

General design

This theme impresses users by its creative, modern and robust style. The author frequently uses straight lines and sharp shapes to build this theme. They bring about a daring and creative design that looks so perfect and well-blended.

The straight lines and shapes used in the design

Other elements

Besides the neutral colors like grey, black and white, this theme is embellished by the red color. They create a well-balanced but still very prominent and dynamic appearance.

Playfair Display is the family font for heading. It makes the heading so artistic and outstanding. On the other hand, Hindi for the body texts helps the content readable and solid.

The first screen area

The first screen area is the most eye-catching element of all thanks to the full-screen slider with the shapely curved line in the corner. Moreover, although there are many factors like the slide-out menu, navigation, menu...in this area, it still looks well-organized and tidy.

The front page contains many unique and beautiful sections like the masonry gallery, testimonial carousel, and the parallax sections. But my favorite part is the testimonial section. It's highlighted by the slanted background, becoming so distinctive and attractive.

Testimonial

The archive page has a masonry structure that arranges the posts in a very neat and orderly way. Also, you can select the other layout for this page and it will have different looks. Specifically, there is another list structure with two different styles  These layouts focus on your images more as they are larger, but I still prefer the orderly masonry structure.

The Archive Post Layout 1

The Archive Post Layout 2

The sidebar can be moved to the left, right or hidden on different kinds of pages. That helps you display things flexibly according to your purposes.

Responsive

The design looks pretty in all viewports without any mistake. I used this WordPress photography theme on my smartphone and tablet, and I'm very satisfied with the reasonable and flexible design.

The responsive design checked by ami.responsivedesign.is

There is nothing difficult to install and get this theme run immediately. The one-click demo import even allows you to quickly import the demo data and the setting in a couple of minutes. The process of importing data is simple and rapid, but you still need to set up some elements on the front page after that.

As for the manual set up, this WordPress photography requires a static front page in the Customizer and then set up the Frontpage template in the Dashboard. It's quite complicated to set up the homepage and the elements on this page, right? But things are simple, you just need to work with the powerful Customizer. As for the Instagram Feed, you have to search for the Instagram Feed plugin, install and set it up. That will take your time and I advise you to read the documentation carefully.

This theme covers all the outstanding features for your photography theme, or you can even use this theme for a business website.

The Instagram Feed is compatible with the Instagram Feed plugin. The author said that he already suggest this plugin in the Useful Plugin tab but I can't find it. Hence, you have to search for it yourself.

There are lots of custom features for you to personalize and carefully edit your website. They can all be done quickly in Customize.

For example, many color sections can help your WordPress site extremely colorful and creative.

Customizing color

There are so many menu locations that you are able to add diverse kinds of the menu from top to bottom. Notably, it's so easy to add the Social Menu without any limitation.

Customizing social menu

With the illustrations here, choosing a layout becomes so easy and visualized. All the layout can be rendered properly.

Customizing layout

All the elements on the homepage can be carefully edited or on/off. However, it's somewhat complicated to choose posts to show in each section. Instead of selecting directly the page or post, you have to insert the post ID. For example, this is how you customize the slider.

Customizing slider

The number of the slider is quite limited. You only have three items to show. Similarly, you only get four items in the Testimonial.

For daily use, I'm sure that even a layman can quickly learn how to use this theme to create and edit a post. All necessary formats are supplied and easy to use.

The allignments are all good on a page without sidebar. But on a page with sidebar, full-width and wide with alignment make your image, video or gallery...look so unbalanced.

Wide-width image alignment on a page with sidebar

Full-width video alignment on a page with sidebar

The blockquote is super pretty and unique with the decoration and different text styles.

Blockquote

After using some special tools to check, I found that this theme hasn't been ready for SEO yet. To have SEO optimization you need to install a plugin, but the author doesn't suggest any in the recommended plugins list at all.

I checked the speed by PageSpeed Insight, a popular tool to check the speed. The result is so great. This WordPress photography has excellent speed.

Website speed checked by PageSpeed Insights

Everything about customization is demonstrated in the form of a video. That's a good way to make it understandable. The other parts like installation and set up are step-by-step and simple to learn.

I can't find the topic for Photoway in the support forum now. Perhaps I should come back later.