The X Theme by Themeco is the second best selling theme on ThemeForest with over 114,300 sales, with my own purchase being one of them.
Innovative Design
Themeco released the X theme version 1.0.0 back in October 2013 and it quickly rose in popularity on ThemeForest to it’s current spot at #2 with version 4.6.0. It currently has over 5000 reviews with an average rating of 4.73 stars and comes with Themeco’s own page builder named Cornerstone and an entire ecosystem of theme extensions. At $64.00 it is amongst the highest priced WordPress themes in ThemeForest but is well documented and supported.
Integrity Stack
The Integrity stack is great for business sites with an all purpose design that could fit many needs. It has clean lines and comes with both a light and dark option. It has a custom blog design in either standard or masonry layout. Similarly, it has a portfolio section that is very clean looking with prominent social sharing icons. X theme’s shop section is powered by WooCommerce. One of Integrity’s featured options is the ability to have a transparent header for a high end look. Themeco has created 10 demos for the Integrity stack, each showing off some of it’s best features.
Renew Stack
The Renew stack is a flat design with no shadows or borders, although it may be just a little too flat for some tastes. Like Integrity, it has an integrated portfolio section with very simple and clean lines. The shop section is simplicity itself, well suited for newage or trendy product display. The background of the menu can be changed to match the site background for an interesting a clean look.
Icon Stack
The Icon stack is the X theme’s modern and minimal stack and it has a simple blog design and an integrated portfolio section. The shop section is very minimal and yet comes off just a little cluttered for my tastes. One of Icon’s features is the ability to change the background color for each post format type in WordPress. Make all your quotes stand out with a turquoise and your audio posts pop in melon if that is what appeals to you. The sidebar in Icon scrolls independently of the main site making Icon feel a little like an app.
Ethos Stack
The Ethos stack currently has only three demos but in my opinion it is the best suited of the stacks for a blog or magazine style website. It features a post carousel, allowing you to display the most recent, most popular or your featured posts across the top of your website. It’s blog design also has a magazine style layout and has real-time filtering enabled and the option to add multiple featured images. Show featured posts on your archive pages with the post slider feature. The custom portfolio is clean and distraction free and the shop in Ethos is slightly more traditional looking with an undercurrent of elegance.
Cornerstone
The X theme comes with Themeco’s own page builder called Cornerstone that is 100% front end. Make changes on the fly and preview them before you publish. All page builders seem to have their blessings and curses but with Cornerstone, I found that it’s main feature was both. All of the settings and elements are in a narrow workspace on the left side of the screen. This is great because it allows you to easily view your website page as you work on it but it can sometimes be a little cramped to work in, especially if you have one of those wide screen monitors like I do.
In the same way that the X theme has extensions, Cornerstone has elements. There are over 40 pre-built customizable elements ranging from custom headlines to feature lists to accordions to simple text areas. My only problem with these was that they were in alphabetical order in the design space, making them hard to find if you did not know what they were called (categories would work well) and of course, the most used text element is all the way at the bottom of the list. It would be great if you could drag and drop them into the order you want. Overall though, Cornerstone is a great builder.
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