Codeus Review: A Highly Customizable Multi-Purpose Responsive WordPress Theme

Codeus is a WordPress theme by CodexThemes and is available for download from ThemeForest. It’s billed as a multipurpose responsive theme which aims to be suitable for promoting any kind of business online.

While specialising and focussing on one type of website or audience can often produce a great theme that meets a specific need, multipurpose themes can be a good choice for anyone who needs a dependable theme they can rely on when building websites for a range of different clients or projects.

In this review of the Codeus theme we will take a look at the features you get access to and see how easy it is to setup and manage.

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Codeus Theme Features

For a theme to by truly multipurpose it needs to give the user access to lots of features, while also offering plenty of customization options. Codeus doesn’t disappoint in this department, making it easy to set your site up for a range of purposes. As the theme is compatible with a number of genre-leading plugins, this also helps with its multipurpose credentials.

To give you idea of the different types of sites you can create with this theme, take a look at this image of screenshots of websites created with Codeus.

Codeus comes with the premium LayerSlider plugin and the premium NivoSlider plugin which are both bundled as part of the theme. These sliders can be used on individual posts and pages, as well as the homepage.

As well as including a large number of shortcodes for inserting page elements such as buttons, pricing tables, maps and much more; Codeus also includes a shortcode generator. This generator allows you to create shortcodes which can be used to insert pieces of text or code you regularly use into your posts and pages, saving you from having to type them out each time.

This theme is also fully responsive to ensure it works just as well on a range of devices from desktops, to laptops, and tablets to smartphones.

When it comes to customising the theme for your site, you can choose from an unlimited number of colour choices, and a large library of over 300 fonts courtesy of Google Fonts. There is also a good selection of patterns and background images, as well as a set of over 200 built-in vector icons.

Although you can change the appearance of most of the individual page elements using the options control panel, Codeus also comes with two colour skins which allow you to quickly change the entire styling of the theme, from light to dark.

For those who want even more customisation options, the developers have included all the Photoshop PSD files of the images used in the theme. This means you can easily edit the images and customise them to better suit your site.

You also get the option to create custom sidebars which can be shown on specific pages, allowing you to display links to content that is relevant to what the visitor is currently viewing.

These sidebars can be populated with the default WordPress widgets and those that are part of any of the plugins that are activated on your site. As the Codeus theme also includes a selection of custom widgets, these too can be added to the sidebars. These custom widgets include:

• Picturebox: insert an image with a title, description, and link
• Product info: display a brief set of information
• Team members: display the team members custom post types
• Testimonials: display the testimonials custom post types
• Diagrams: display animated and interactive bar and circle diagrams
• Social widgets: Flickr, Facebook, Twitter,

Again, each of these widgets has lots of customisation options giving you a lot of control over how they look.

Codeus is also specifically compatible with a number of WordPress plugins including:

• WooCommerce eCommerce plugin
• WMPL / translation ready
• WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin

You also get free updates and support when purchasing this theme.

To help you get started as quickly as possible, the theme comes with demo content. By importing this content your site can be setup to closely resemble the demo version, allowing you to easily modify the existing content, and add more as needed.

The theme package also includes very detailed documentation which is all stored locally on your computer, rather than online, so you can view it without an internet connection.

Setting Up the Theme

Once you’ve uploaded and activated the theme, it is necessary to install the LayerSlider plugin. While this is a premium plugin, it is included with the Codeus theme so installing it is just a case of clicking on the install button to add it to your site. The theme also includes the premium NivoSlider giving you a choice of which slider to use on your site.

After the slider plugin has installed and the theme is ready for use, the options control panel can be accessed from the Appearance > Theme options menu item on the WordPress dashboard.

The developers of the theme have chosen to use a custom theme options control panel interface. It works well, looks good, and is responsive, while also not being too much of a break in the user experience from the rest of the admin settings of WordPress.

The main options cover selecting a colour skin or style for your site, with the options being light or dark. This is a quick way to change the overall appearance of your site without delving into the more granular settings for individual elements.

Other options under the general settings allow you to change the following properties:

• Theme layout: full width or boxed
• Identity: upload and position logos and set a favicon
• Advanced: add custom CSS and Google Analytics code

Through the rest of the control panel options you can also customise many other aspects of the theme including:

• Fonts: including each individual style using Google Fonts
• Colours: background, content areas, menus, buttons, and many more
• Backgrounds: upload an image or choose from a selection of patterns
• Drag and drop homepage constructor (more on this later)
• NivoSlider options: configure the slider
• Blog & News: configure the blog post display
• Footer: insert footer HTML
• Contacts & Social: enter contact details and social icons and links
• Backup: backup and restore theme settings for safekeeping

As you can see you get a lot of control over how your theme looks include being able to change the fonts and the colours of each of the different text formatting options on your posts and pages. This includes the paragraph text, headings, links, and more.

Drag and Drop Homepage Constructor

One feature of this theme is the drag and drop homepage constructor. This tool allows you easily define and organise the elements that are displayed on your WordPress site’s homepage.

Although you aren’t dragging and dropping the elements on the actual frontend page layout, by moving the blocks around you can change their eventual order on the page, as well as selecting which blocks or elements to show.

Each of the homepage blocks has their own set of options so you can customise them to suit your needs.

Importing the Demo Content

The theme also comes with all the demo content, apart from the images, that you would need in order to set the site up to resemble the demo version.

To import the demo content, it’s simply a case of going to the Tools > Import menu item and then choosing the WordPress option. After that, upload the included files and the content will be created and added to your site.

When I tried to upload the import files I got an error message ‘upload_max_filesize directive in php.ini.’ as the file I was trying to upload was too big.

To overcome this I opened the php.ini file in the php directory, and edited the following line to increase the maximum file size allowed:

upload_max_filesize=12M

This allowed me to upload the file, but as the import was running I received this error message:

Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 60 seconds exceeded in E:\xampp\htdocs\wordpress\wp-includes\class-http.php on line 1453

To overcome this, I edited the following line in the php.ini file and increased the maximum time to 3000:

max_execution_time=3000

Then I was able to import all the demo content. If this happens to you then try the above steps and if there is still a problem contact your web host for support as this is a problem caused by your site and web host’s settings, rather than the theme.

After you’ve completed these steps your site will be setup and ready for you to start adding your own content and customising its appearance.

Conclusion

Codeus is definitely a great looking theme and it compares favourably to the other multipurpose feature rich commercial WordPress themes out there that currently top the best seller lists on marketplaces like Theme Forest.

There is a notable amount of lock-in that occurs with this theme thanks to the inclusion of the two sliders, the shortcodes, and the custom post types, which are integrated into the theme rather than via a plugin.

However if the design and features of this theme appeal to you, then its multipurpose and highly customizable nature should reduce the need of you having to change themes in the future.

While this is a theme with a lot of features and elements, the demo content makes it easy to understand how it all works, while the included documentation explains each of the different features in an easy to understand way.

If you like the look for this theme and it includes all the features you need, then why not pick up the Codeus WordPress theme today.

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