What exactly are you looking for in a WordPress theme if you’re a blogger?
A simple layout where your new posts will load; Social media buttons so that people can share your awesome new content; SEO friendly theme so that you won’t have to pay thousands of dollars to an expert to squeeze a bit more traffic from the search engines.
Well, it’s not like there aren’t themes matching the above-mentioned description. There are a lot, and I mean a lot, of WordPress themes to help you with your own personal blog. But the question is, which is the best one?
I have been using the products of one particular web agency for a while now. An organization widely popular amongst the WordPress users. A place where new WordPress themes and plugins are added regularly, and no, it’s not ThemeForest. I’m talking about MyThemeShop.com – the place for premium WordPress themes and plugins which are made specifically for us. At least that’s what they say on their website. And I do agree with that statement.
In today’s detailed review, I’m going to introduce one of their best sellers. A theme that will make your site load crazy fast and also press the needed SEO buttons to bring your content on the first page of Google.
I give you Schema:
One of the fastest WordPress themes online with simple layout and enough features to grow your audience.
In this review will reveal everything you need to know about Schema WordPress theme. Why you need it. How to install Schema. What are the main features of the theme and the whole process of the configuration. Let me know if you have any questions related to the theme. I’d be glad to help. Ok, let’s start reviewing.
This is my detailed review of Schema WordPress theme:
Who Is This Theme For? And Is It For You
If you’re a blogger, a person who sits down and writes most of the time, without constantly thinking about adding landing pages on your site, this theme might be for you.
Schema is mainly for writing. It has limited capabilities when it comes down to designing a landing page. In a way, this is good because usually, the more options we have the more time we spend designing stuff that eventually never go into production.
As a blogger myself, I must say that this theme has everything you will need to create your own personal website. Not only. The theme fully supports WooCommerce so don’t worry. You can still sell your stuff using the theme.
Installing Schema WordPress Theme
There is nothing unusual about installing the theme.
Firstly, you need to get the theme from MyThemeShop.com, get the theme and download the files on your laptop (because who uses computers these days). There is also a free version of the theme available for download from their website as well. You can check the free version here: Schema Lite. It’s a really nice way to test the theme before the purchase.
Ok, if you have the files of the premium version you can now open your WordPress dashboard and navigate the Appearance section. Click on Themes > Add new > Select the .zip file > Click Install now:
Activate or preview the new theme by clicking on the corresponding buttons:
The following pop-up will appear once the theme is active:
It’s basically a welcome message telling you where are the theme options located.
The first page you will see once you install Schema WordPress theme is the required plugins page.
How To Install Schema Required Plugins?
As I mentioned, once the installation of Schema is complete, you will be directed to a page where you can install few essential plugins.
There are two buttons on the page: Essential and Recommended plugins:
- Essential: Are basically the plugins that complement the already provided functions of the theme.
- Recommended: This section includes a dozen of plugins that are commonly used by people worldwide. Some of these plugins are
Yoast SEO; W3 Total Cache; OTF Regenerate Thumbnails. The rest are mostly plugins by MyThemeShop. The page is basically a upsell attempt to get their plugins:
The ones I’m going to install are the following:
- MyThemeShop Theme/Plugin Updater: Automatic updater for the theme and all plugins provided by MyThemeShop.
- WP Review: Install this plugin if you write reviews on your site and you aslo love to add ratings. This is the best review plugin on the market.
- WP Shortcode: Easy to use shortcodes that will help you easily build content for your posts and pages and turbocharge your blogging experience.
- WP Subscribe: Simple way to get more subscribers. It integrates with FeedBurner, MailChimp & AWeber.
- WP Tab Widget: A way to display popular, recent posts inside your sidebar.
All of the listed essential plugins. To install them all at once, click on the box at the end, select Install from the drop-down and hit Apply:
The installation will finish in a minute but you will also need to activate them. Select again all of the plugins but this time select Activate from the drop-down and hit Apply. The following screen will appear if everything is done accordingly:
The plugins are all in place, let see how this theme performs:
Getting Started With Schema WordPress Theme
Schema WordPress theme comes with a nicely designed control panel which is gathering all available features. The panel is accessible from Appearance > Theme options. The theme options menu will appear after the theme is installed and activated.
Let me show you what are the main features. I will start from the top:
General Settings:
From this page you can add your site logo in all different sizes: Regular logo; Favicon; Retina logo; Metro icon. The last is for visitors using IE 10. I don’t know if anyone is using this browser but you never know.
Scroll a bit and you can add your Twitter username and also add header and footer code inside your theme without having to mess around inside the editor section of your WordPress:
The last part of this page allows you to choose your pagination type. For those of you who don’t know what pagination is, let me explain briefly: When you have 20 posts on your website, for example, but your page is set to show 6, your visitor should be able to see the other 14, right? Well, after the sixth post the pagination kicks in and allows your visitor to go to the next page of posts. Most of the WordPress themes allow you to configure that. I personally prefer the numbered layout:
The other options here are AJAX Quick search; Posts on blog pages; Responsiveness, which should be turned ON always. Also, Right To Left Language Support for site owners who want their text to appear inverted.
Performance Panel
Schema is advertised as the fastest WordPress theme on the market. I believe one of the reason is the available settings inside the Performance tab inside the Theme Options panel.
The settings available here will disable, or slow down certain elements of your site which will boost the speed. Let me show you these settings one by one:
- Prefetching: Basically, if a user is on the homepage, then a single page will load faster and if a user is on a single page, the homepage will load faster in modern browsers.
- Lazy Load on images: You can enable this both for your featured image and for your pictures inside your posts. This feature delays the load of your images and they are only shown when the visitor scrolls to them. Only this feature alone will give you a significant boost in the loading speed of your website.
- Async JavaScript: This is a complex concept for non-techies. Async does the following: Asynchronous code takes statements outside of the main program flow, allowing the code after the asynchronous call to be executed immediately without waiting. But you don’t even have to understand this. In short, this option should make your site load even faster.
- Remove ver parameters: The same as above. Too complicated to explain. Make sure to check your website once you enable this because it might not be compatible with some caching plugins.
- Optimize WooCommerce scripts: This is when you’re using WooCommerce for your store. Only enable this if you’re using the plugin.
Seamless Styling Options
What more do you need than setting a color scheme for your entire site and a site background? This page allows you to set the preferred color for your site.
The background image refers to this section on your website here:
Let’s add a pattern to see what will happen:
Well, I prefer the previous design. You can also upload a picture for your background or gradient color.
Header Styling on Schema Theme
The header is an important part of your website. If it’s designed right people will click through your site and stay longer on it, which is important for your ranking in Google and the other search engines.
Schema allows you to make a couple of configurations to the header section, which can help your visitors better navigate:
One of the options is to put your logo inside the menu bar, like this:
It’s something simple but doing this makes your site well-ordered.
The other option is to add social icons inside your other header. As you will see from the screenshot below, you can add basically any social media available:
Even though adding your Social media accounts is a common practice, it’s something I won’t recommend. This will make your visitors bounce from your site, and you don’t want this.
Social Sharing Buttons Included
There is another handy feature included inside the package of Schema theme: social sharing buttons inside your blog posts. To be honest, though, I don’t quite like the design of these buttons. They are so old school. You rarely see such buttons on sites these days. It will be a good idea of the guys from MyThemeShop update their buttons to something prettier.
Nevertheless, let’s see what are the options:
You can add buttons below, above or make them float. You can also enable these buttons on your pages. Lastly, you can decide which buttons you need on your site. The ones you don’t need, simply move to the right.
Creating A Landing Page With Schema WordPress Theme
As I mentioned at the beginning of my review, there isn’t really a way to create a landing page using Schema. This theme is mainly designed for blogging.
The closest thing you can do to a landing page is the following:
1. Disable the sidebar:
2. Use the shortcode functionality to separate the layout into pieces:
Press on the little cross, choose how you want to separate the page and press Insert:
Type what you want inside the text box and click insert again:
Fill the right half with the section that is stating “LAST”. Otherwise, it won’t fit nicely:
3. Add buttons
Press the little cross again to add a call to action button. Add the desired destination and make sure you put the button inside the first field you’ve added:
This is how the page will look like:
It’s surely not my best design but as I mentioned, this theme is not designed for creating landing pages.
Customizing Your Posts And Blog Section With Schema Theme
As mentioned a couple of times, Schema theme is mainly for blogging and the overall layout of the theme is for posting blog posts.
There is specific section inside the Theme Panel which allows you to make a couple of adjustments to your blog posts:
The options above are pretty self-explanatory.
When you scroll down you will see a couple of additional options:
- Breadcrumbs
- Show Featured image
- Highlight Author Comment
- Date in Comments
Leave all of them ON. Highlighting your replies when commenting is nice to make your reply shine:
Something else that will be handy inside your blog section is to add the subscribe widget inside your sidebar. This is one of the plugins we’ve installed in the beginning of the post.
Go to Widgets > Find WP Subscribe Widget > Add it to your sidebar. Choose your service and add the needed settings:
Press the Labels text to change the default message:
Once you save it it will appear like that:
This is how our blog section will appear, pretty neat, right?
What Is The Price Of Schema WordPress Theme
Schema is a premium WordPress theme designed by MyThemeShop and you can purchase it by visiting their official site: MyThemeShop Schema Theme. The price is $69, which includes all the features mentioned so far. They often have the theme on Sale for $59.
Schema WordPress Theme Pros And Cons:
Pros:
- Optimized for Speed.
- SEO friendly.
- In-built Review System.
- Subscription plugin included.
- Powerful option panel.
- Includes rich snippets in order to help search engines your site and rank you higher.
- Perfect for blogging.
Cons:
- The social icons included are kind of lame.
- It will be hard to create a landing page even with a drag and drop plugin like Elementor, for example.
Final Thoughts
I’m talking about speed throughout my whole review but I never got the chance to share some results.
Ok, let put schema to a speed test.
I will go to Tools.pingdom.com and I will add the site I’ve used to test Schema. These are my results:
Impressive, right. Keep in mind that this is the score without adding any caching plugins or code inside my htaccess file.
What do you think?
I personally think that this theme is well worth it. It comes with a simple layout but a massive potential to push your site to the first page of Google. If you’re a blogger who is having troubles with bringing visitors to your site, you should definitely consider using Schema. Besides the social media buttons, this theme has everything you need to get ahead of your competitors.
Share your thoughts about Schema WordPress theme inside the comments below: