Vivid Blog Theme Review

General design

If you are an energetic person, I'm pretty sure that the dynamic appearance will not disappoint you. Moreover, this theme looks so young and solid with straight lines used to create all the major elements. The author avoids using too many decorative elements in order not to mess up the design. He just needs some stunning, attractive features like slider, header image...to embellish this theme.

Other elements

The most contributing factor to the dynamic design of this WordPress theme is the color scheme. Not mentioning the popular combination of light grey, black and white, I just want to draw your attention to the scarlet elements. It's the scarlet elements that make this theme super prominent and energetic that leaves people strong impression.

The typography is the mix of both Serif and San-serif fonts: Lora, Oxygen, which is readable and beautiful.

The header area just takes a small place with all the factors standing next to each other. This simple header is to spotlight the amazing slider and header image under.

Well, here is the part that I can't wait to mention, the featured post slider. I guess that you can hardly find any free WordPress theme having such a unique and pretty style of the slider.

Similarly, the header image on other pages is full-width and also look very outstanding.

The style of the site is full-width but there is another container style. I see that both styles have different strengths and beauty. In general, they are all harmonious with all the elements of the themes.

On the archived post page, the posts are shown in 2 column-grid structure with the relatively large thumbnails. This design can considerably help the reader quickly scan and skim what you have in the easiest way.

Responsive

It's so fortunate that this WordPress theme looks good in every device so you don't have to worry about the responsive design. I also see no mistake in its display on a laptop, PC, tablet or smartphone at all.

Right after activating this theme, you can easily use and set up this theme. The only recommended action is installing and setting up Jetpack to have more features, which is also simple for even a beginner like me.

The superb thing of Vivid Blog is the one-click demo import to make your website look like the demo immediately. However, when I click the link to the demo data, it leads to a "404 not found page" at that moment. Hence, I have to manually set up my blog. Don't worry, if you already have the content, all you need to do is very easy. The color and header image already resemble the demo so you just have to set up the widget and slider.

After activating Jetpack, you should enable the sections like Like button, social sharing, newsletter,...which are some very important features of a WordPress blog and portfolio.

To customize this theme, you just need to stay in the Customizer and easily make some changes to your website. Plus, a lot of custom sections may satisfy you but also can confuse you. So I will indicate some sections that I think most important here for you to notice them.

The first thing that can change the whole look of your website is the color section. There are only 3 sections but it can dramatically give your website a totally different look. Besides the background color, you can use a background image to prettify your website.

Customizing color

Unlike the color, the typography keeps the default fonts. But the fonts are good to use so changing may be unnecessary.

If you don't want to use the default header from the demo, here you have the right to upload and crop the image to any size. The cropped image is fitted very well with the header layout.

Customizing header image

In the Theme Options section, you are allowed to change many sections for your website, but I think the interesting part lies in the Layout section. The layout can be changed from full-width to container style, or choose a different position for the sidebar. Just by clicking the symbol, the equivalent layout will be applied immediately.

Customizing layout

On the Front Page section, you should pay attention to the Main Slider and About Us as they are the most special features of this theme.

This section can be shown or hidden easily. The way you select the post is also very convenient. The search tool helps you quickly find the name of the post among your numerous posts. However, the number of posts in the slider is limited to 4 posts. I think that it should have more in order to make use of this stunning features.

Main Slider

Similarly, the About Us section has the enable/disable button and search bar to find a page easily.

The About Us section

Next, apart from the normal sidebar, there is an extra area for you to add widgets. Right under the latest post on the home page lies the Latest blog sidebar. The selected widgets are arranged as a list instead of columns as the footer columns. In the right sidebar or in the latest blog sidebar, you can find all the basic widget from WordPress theme and they all can be rendered properly.

Latest blog sidebar

To add the social menu on the header, you need more than 1 step. First, enable the header social menu in the Header Meta section, and then select the menu for social menu location. By choosing the custom CSS, you can add whatever site you want and the number is unlimited. Thanks to that, you can connect with your reader in various ways.

Social media-

Finally, I find a small matter in the Header Menu section when I enable the search tool. There should be a search symbol in the red menu bar, but it doesn't exist. Then I discover that this feature is only for the demo version. I think that they shouldn't put this option here to avoid confusion.

A search tool isn't available

It just takes me, a beginner, a few hours to get used to the daily using. All the post formats you may need for a blog and portfolio are available and here are some of my favorite formats.

First, the blockquote appears very distinctively from the normal text.

Blockquote

The gallery wraps your image in an orderly way although the images have different sizes.

Gallery

Finally, the full-screen video is so amazing like this.

Video

The SEO configuration hasn't been optimized yet so you have to install an SEO plugin yourself. However, it may be hard for someone not knowing much about technology like me as there is no recommended plugin for SEO.

I check the speed by PageSpeed Insight and see that the speed is medium. I think that it still needs work to be improved.

At the moment, I can't access the Instruction. Maybe there is a problem and I hope they will fix it soon.

As other themes from Themes Palace, you can receive help from the author in the support forum. There is a search bar to help you quickly search for the forum and find the related-topic.