[Michael]

I’ll preface this post with a caveat – I have been a user of Catch Themes for quite a number of years now, preferring them to most if not all comparable themes, and will continue to use them on some of my sites.

I have been asked to develop a website for friend, so am exploring options.

It appears quite a number of the Catch Themes date back a number of years.
Many (probably most) of those themes are still very useful, and undoubtedly work fine, but since they were originally created there has been quite some movement in the WordPress environment.

The changelogs don’t necessarily indicate to what extent themes have been updated to keep up with these issues. From a simple matter like deprecated html (now html5 is the standard) through to more complex things like the expanded capability of Gutenberg blocks, and compatibility (or not) with page builders (Elementor, Divi, etc) .

Let’s look, for example, at claims made by themes from other providers, and especially the ‘big 3’ Kadence, Astra and OceanWP.

Theme Features: Header Builder, Footer Builder, Custom Layouts (including page specific sidebars) , Custom Post Type Support, Global Color Palette, Color Options, Global Typography, Global Button Settings, Scroll To Top, Social Links, Mega Menu, CSS Pre-loading, Transparent Header, Sticky Header, Mobile Headers, Left logo header, right logo header, above header content, Responsive Controls, Breadcrumbs, SEO Optimized, Custom 404 page, WooCommerce compatibility.

Performance focus: No jQuery, low resources (eg less than 50 KB), quick loading, optimized code, self-hosted google fonts)

Integrations: Gutenberg, Elementor, BeaverBuilder, WooCommerce, Learndash, LifterLMS, Give, TheEventsCalendar, RestictContentPro, TutorLMS, bbpress.

I know that most of the ‘integrations’ listed (unsure about page builders) will be compatible with Catch Themes. The difference is that if Catch themes fails to explicitly indicate this they are at a disadvantage as far as people comparing various themes are concerned.

Ideally these things should all be achievable in paid themes without additional paid plugins being required.

Many also have numerous current quality tutorials on YouTube (or website hosted) to assist theme owners with building their site. This provides more exposure of the theme to the world at large.

I think if these concerns could be addressed, Catch themes would be more attractive to potential customers 🙂

The things I see as particularly important, which I have not found in Catch Themes, are:
* Global Color Palette with flexible color options and customization.
* Global Typography (including pre-loaded Google fonts rather than a selection of only 2 or 3 fonts)
* Custom 404 page (generic 404 errors look very unprofessional)
* Video Tutorials

Please feel free to correct me if I have made any factual errors, and of course let me know if there are new themes in the works that will have additional capabilities mentioned.

[Skandha]

@landyvlad: Hello there,
Thank you for taking the time to write to us. We will surely consider the suggestions you have forwarded and try improving on them.

Kind Regards,
Skandha

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