Hey @andrewderjackson
First off, thank you for trying the Kadence Theme. I do hope that you will consider my response to your review and provide more details about the claims you are making.
I take customer feedback seriously and so I want to do my best to address the two main points you are bringing up.
You said: “It’s not the same design as the screenshots”
If you are new to WordPress I understand how this could be confusing. Part of the requirements to have a theme listed here in the WordPress theme directory, when the theme is installed, a design with specific content can’t be automatically applied. The content has to be your own so the default design isn’t going to look like a screenshot until you match that with content.
This is not just the case for Kadence Theme, if you install any of the top 100 themes, not one of them will look like the screenshot when you first activate the theme.
There is a preview button next to every theme so you can see exactly what it will look like after you activate the theme.
See this screenshot for an example of where you can find that preview button: https://kadence-theme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/2020-11-16_12-36-01.png
To help make building a website faster and easier, we also offer an optional free plugin, Kadence Starter Templates that enables anyone using the Kadence Theme to build a beautiful website with just a few clicks. This can add some content so the screenshots you see in starter templates can be exactly how your site looks with a few clicks.
This plugin includes several industry firsts such as customizing the colors, site-wide, with one mouse click. We are serious when we say “Your Website Your Way”, which includes making it point and click simple to customize any of our templates.
Hopefully, that makes it a little more clear why your site won’t look exactly like the screenshot when you activate the theme as this is a requirement/restriction for all themes. However, we are trying to bridge the gap with Kadence Starter Templates plugin.
Next up, You said: “Nice code, but not one of the best. Too much trash in code.”
I am extremely surprised to hear this because it’s contrary to the feedback we are getting from the developer community. And this more than anything is where I hope you would consider responding with more details so I can perhaps improve the theme or explain what certain code does. I’m always all ears and more than happy to make improvements (which I do all the time).
I have paid performance experts to audit the Kadence Theme because I am really serious about performance. Kadence Theme is one of the fastest and most lightweight themes on the market. This is something anyone can test and get great results.
Kadence Theme has now been available for download here in the WordPress theme directory for 2 weeks and has over 20,000 users and almost 100 5-star reviews in this short period of time.
Also in this short period of time, many prominent blogs and websites have switched to Kadence Theme specifically because, in their testing, it’s the fastest and most lightweight theme, despite having advanced functionality with our easy drag and drop header/footer builder, deep integrations with the most popular 3rd party plugins, globally linked color palette, etc.
On top of that, unlike other themes you may have used, we don’t force our users to use a companion plugin which adds bloat. We don’t display any advertisements on our theme. We don’t modify the way WordPress looks or functions. We don’t nag our users with admin notifications. And we don’t track what our users are doing with intrusive data gathering.
We put our users first and we keep our users WordPress experience pure as WordPress intended.
I so appreciate feedback and I am very hopeful that we can help create a better experience for you.
All the best,
Ben
