Finding a fresh new WordPress theme is a challenge and many bloggers soon learn that free themes aren’t necessarily free once you get around to trying to disable developer advertising or fix bugs with no support. If you want to be a professional blogger or have a business to promote using the most affordable and functional blogging software around, then considering a premium theme for your WordPress.org self-hosted site is recommended.

I found Mint Themes searching for an appropriate theme for a church. Keeping costs low for a non-profit was a desire but the free themes you could select from WordPress.org didn’t offer that much in the way of a professional looking theme for a church website. Fortunately MintThemes.com had a number of themes available for churches and musicians and at the time was advertising themes coming soon in other niches as well.

My experience with MintThemes is positive. It is a given that customers will receive theme instructions, but instructional videos and a support forum with activity? That is hard to come by at most theme sites. Developers selling WordPress themes and plug-ins generally promise support and updates but don’t deliver. However, after perusing the MintThemes site checking out and making your purchase is not a scary task.

I like that they are focused on certain niches and their site is not proliferated with hundreds of themes to preview. Their current theme offerings are:

Band Themes (include e-commerce capabilities)

Soundstage
Faded
Slipmat

Church Themes

Ezekiel
Moses
Malachi
Micah

e-Commerce and Business Themes

Armonico
Compra
Biznify

Food Blogger Theme

Foodie

Photography Theme

Photostore (includes e-commerce capabilities)

Portfolio Theme

Intro


Each theme includes a customizable Theme Options area in WordPress. Users can easily add text and images to display in appropriate places on the desired pages (home page and inner pages). Custom Post Types allow users to create special posts to display videos, photo galleries, events or news in an organized fashion.

The biggest challenge for most people wishing to create a site is trying to find what to do where. MintThemes.com offers a support area sharing videos and documentation. If doing it on your own is not enough there is also an active support forum. They don’t recreate the wheel and teach WordPress but you will figure out how to customize the recommended plugins to make the theme fully functional as displayed in the theme demo.

The forum responses show they are accessible and work to update bugs or add desired features to the themes as requested. Updates for themes are free to the user.

There is nothing truly negative to say, I guess one could wish for a specific niche theme. There are a few inconsistencies in if a user guide downloads within the theme .zip file. There are a few instances of typos or user error probably caused by copying and editing a document from one theme to another or one theme version to another. None of this affects the usability of the product or the ability to find the answers you need from the developers or other users in their forum.

MintThemes can be purchased for $79 at MintThemes.com for use on unlimited sites. Signup for the newsletter or follow them on Twitter and Facebook to be alerted during Buy 1 Get 1 Free sales…and sometimes Buy 1 Get 2 Free sales.

Disclosure
The author of this review was not provided with any free product or service but is an affiliate supporting a quality product.