Editorial Theme Leaves A Lot To Be Desired

I’m back with another review and this time it’s about a new theme release, Editorial, that was pitched to us via our “Submit News” button. We love to get pitches like this, with PR and marketing collateral to boot, but that does mean that you’re opening yourself up to attention, both good and bad.

I guess that’s the price of being bold sometimes!

Moving right along; I don’t know about you but I’m a big fan of themes, well to be more specific, good themes.  I like good design.  It has to be well thought out, practical and beautiful.

I don’t want to go to your website and be assaulted with over-stimulation, ESPN I’m looking at you.  I want the content to be better because the theme elevates it.

It’s a pity when you read something really great but you can’t get over the crappy design.  Am I right?

Luckily Editorial isn’t overly abrasive on the senses.  It’s certainly easy to read and clean.  The pictures for each article are the focal points and the text seems to fit nicely. It’s a responsive theme, which is nice and it’s only 10 Euro (roughly $13).  Unfortunately this is where the good news ends.

Editorial gets boring after a few minutes.  I clicked through the demo and then wanted to move on.  Nothing kept me there.  It seems like just another minimal magazine theme, it doesn’t make me want to stay.

And if there ever was a theme that I wanted to use on themedemo.co this would be it.  I have NO idea what customizations are built into the theme.  How does it handle post formats?  What does it do with video? Am I going to have to create a child theme just to make it good? I know $13 isn’t much money but I’m not going to pay for a theme without knowing what it can do.

Also, I don’t like the commenting system, at all. When you go to leave a comment it takes you away from the article. Why?!

I thought the point of a demo was to show you all that a theme could become.  If this is the case with Editorial, I’ll have to save my money and say no thanks.

What it comes down to is this: Editorial feels like its trying too hard.  And when you try too hard and still come up short, its a recipe for mediocrity.

Feel free to disagree, but I won’t be switching themes anytime soon.