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Readable WordPress Theme — The first Medium.com like WP theme with great readability
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@alarick91 Could be. We released a basic version of Readable a little more than a year ago, but in last two months, we totally reinvented it.
We improved readability which is THE feature of Readable. We also added a custom made newsletter widget, so now content creators can collect emails from their readers. The home page got drastically changes as well with beautiful post cards users can move around in simple to use page builder.
So what is left of the Readable you bought a year ago is just a name and a trusted author behind the theme. Everything else has changed.
Andrew, kudos for observation! :)
@stoweboyd very Interesting suggestion! We will talk about it on tomorrow's company meeting. Thank you!
What about reading time estimate - would that be something interesting for you? The same feature Medium has.
@stoweboyd @jaka_smid +1 to medium-style sidenotes. I think reading time is less important, as this is more an aspect of discovery on medium (do I want to read this 20 minute article or this 2 minute one?), whereas with a blog my reader is typically coming because they were searching for something. It's neat, just not a super required feature (for me)
@etc I totally understand your position but like I said to the guy above.
Our audiences are small web design agencies and WP freelancers that set up websites, so the pricing model is dedicated to them.
You can still buy a monthly subscription and then cancel it immediately. The sites will work perfectly normal. The only two things you won't get after a month are support and updates.
So you will get 10 WP themes for only $20. If you need additional support after a year, you can extend your monthly subscription for another month. Bottom line you would still spend a lot less than if you buy a theme for a normal price on e.g. ThemeForest
E.T.Thank you for your feedback!
I think this is a very nice and readable WordPress theme. One of the most clear designs I've seen for WP. Good job!
Hi Jaka,
Love the theme! Do you provide SCSS source files with the themes as well (assuming you've used them to develop the typography setup). I'd purchase the theme right now if I could just take the post content CSS and apply it to my projects currently.
@thedotmack Yes, we provide also SCSS source files with all our themes. You will find post content in our _post-content.scss file.
Thank you, Alex!
PS: If you have any other question, feel free to ask :)
Loos really good. One question - what widget are you using in the demo for email subscribe boxes?
@ebrahimkhalil Thank you for your comment.
We are using our own MailChimp widget that is available for free on WordPress.org -
- https://wordpress.org/plugins/pr...
@ebrahimkhalil Go ahead and try Readable. It is
If you have any question regarding Readable, feel free to ask :)
Very nice typography and archive/home view with the card style.
Without enabling Disqus there is no Wordpress commenting at all?
I miss a full width option and hero image style option for the single posts view.
Plus extra options on the menu (mega menu style).
My current theme in my personal blog, which I am mostly happy with but always looking for a change: https://thecrazytravel.com/8-lug...
How does it integrate the builder? I own Elementor Pro and Beaver Builder and I like them better than PageBuilder by SiteOrigin.
Have you consider launching a lifetime unlimited ProteusClub? I could be interested.
@cataplines Thank you for your comment!
1. If you disable Disqus, there is a default WordPress commenting in the same style as the theme.
2 & 3. I know what you mean, but at the moment full-width hero image and mega menu are not on our priority list. We don't want to add every single feature because then we quickly get one of those fat, slow and bloated WP themes with a gazillion of features and terrible overall user experience. We want for Readable to stay as light and clean as it can.
3. Regarding builders - we made Readable highly compatible with Page Builder by SiteOrigin. Why?
- Because our current customers love it,
- because it is fast
- because it is reliable
The other day I have a chance to try Elementor and there are a couple of small things that I like there. Maybe in the future, we will make our themes compatible with other builders like Elementor as well.
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About the lifetime ProteusClub. We are not happy with this idea simply because it's hard to calculate how much support you are going to need/spend in the future. Edge case I'm afraid of: you buy a ProteusClub unlimited and then every week for 15 years you open a new ticket. It would be really hard to set up a fair price for us and customers.
May I ask you out of curiosity. How much would you pay for Unlimited ProteusClub?
Pablo, you are THE BEST. Thank you for your detailed comment!
@jaka_smid Cheers!
1. I imagined so, just to make sure since you had set up the demo with Disqus integrated (which is not common).
2 & 3. Fair enough, I would still love to see a more versatile menu. ;-)
3. Yes, I have used Page Builder by SiteOrigin in the past. Anyways, do you use it on your demo or you just recommend it using it for creating custom pages? If you allow to create a basic empty full width page it can be edited with the page builder of choice anyways.
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Fair enough. An alternative would be to offer lifetime updates and new themes and support only for the first year (and without the InMotion Website Hosting, to avoid piling up costs on your side). I have seen that on a few lifetime offers from other theme/plugin makers.
Something around 150-200 USD for lifetime new themes and updates, with only 1 year support*. Or around 300 USD with lifetime support with only 1 year hosting sounds like a fair price. That's considering you are charging 99 USD for a year membership.
*Even if you give only 1 year support allow to report bugs, just no other kind of tickets.
If you are planning to keep releasing a theme monthly it can have its interest for some developers even if the support is only for the first year.
@cataplines 3. We are using Page Builder in our demo and if you want to recreate the home page, you will need to install a Page Builder by SiteOrigin.
If you prefer other page builders, you can install them and create a custom page from scratch. That works perfectly well.
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We had almost the same pricing as you mentioned above. But a couple of months ago we changed it to a subscription model.
Why?
It is hard for us to not knowing how much money we are going to earn the next month. We need to provide salaries, pay office, bills, etc. and that's MUCH easier if we have subscriptions.
We made some interviews with our current customers and a majority of them are small web design agencies and WP freelancers who don't care about subscriptions that much as long as they have unlimited support, updates and a new theme every month.
I understand your side, but we had to choose the best option with a sustainable business in mind.
Thank you, Pablo!
PS: I'm going to show your thinking to my co-workers because you have a good point there.
Jaka from ProteusThemes team here. @primozcigler and I are the founders of ProteusThemes and the makers behind Readable WordPress theme.
We have been in WordPress theme development business for over 5 years now. During that time, our customers have constantly been asking us to create a blogging WordPress theme that doesn't suck, but we always declined them, explaining that there are too many free blogging themes and too little demand for paid options. Boy, were we wrong :)
Then, at the beginning of summer, my girlfriend told me she wants to start writing a blog. In other words that meant: "Jaka, set up a blog for me!".
Since I'm working as a WordPress theme designer, it was a no-brainer I would use a WordPress with some clean theme.
The first day, I searched through a million of free WP themes on WP.org, but without any success. Maybe I'm too picky or professionally biased, but all I wanted was a clean, minimal WP theme, with good readability. I didn’t want my girlfriend putting a lot of time and effort into writing a quality content, only to be displayed in an ugly way.
The second and third day, I switched the search to premium WP themes. The result was no better. There were a lot of polished themes, with hundreds of features and pre-built demos, but they all lacked a good Readability. ALL OF THEM!
The fourth day, I had an epiphany. We, at ProteusThemes, should make that kind of theme! There has to be demand for that! I'm surely not the only one who needs a proper blogging theme.
The whole ProteusThemes team put in all the knowledge we’ve got in the past 5 years as WP designers and developers and built a beautiful WordPress theme, that doesn't suck at readability at all and it's simple to use.
We’ve put a lot of focus on big enough typography, good contrast, the right font combinations, the correct line-heights, the right amount of characters per line, proper kerning and enough white space around the content. On top of that, we packed the everything up into a beautiful, stylish home page.
I'm super excited to get your feedback. I would like to improve Readable even more. Good typography is a science on its own and nobody knows all about it. I know there are designers better than me here on PH, so your input will be much appreciated!
P.S. - The ProductHunt community gets 20% off with the offer code: READABLE20
P.P.S. - Surprise surprise. My girlfriend changed her mind. She doesn't want to write a blog anymore.
@primozcigler @jaka_smid Definitely achieved the goal of making something readable!
I had a bunch of questions, but found them mostly answered on the product page. I was in the process of setting a blog up, so will probably shell out the $20 and have a play. That's actually a pretty reasonable price for a paid theme.
Edit: It's actually $20/mo. That makes me a bit less excited.
@primozcigler @rossdcurrie Our audiences are small web design agencies and WP freelancers that set up websites, so the pricing model is dedicated to them.
You can buy a monthly subscription and then cancel it immediately. The sites will work perfectly normal. The only two things you won't get after a month are support and updates.
If you want to know anything else, feel free to ask :)
Thank you for your feedback, Ross!
PS: I'm glad our product page answer all your questions :)
@primozcigler @jaka_smid But you've had this theme on ThemeForest since 2014. Am I to assume you just made up this story?
For those not wanting to pay a monthly subscription, I created Medium inspired theme myself a few years ago because I wanted to incorporate opt-ins and other lead gen stuff.
I put it up for sale after a few friends asked for a copy. It's a one time cost of $47.
If you're interested, check it out here → http://go.wpmedium.com/vxXv
Worth mentioning, it's a very different approach to the same goal - so they're actually quite different themes in the end.
@michael_vo Thank you for such kind words! :)
If you have any question, feel free to ask!
Summer Bod 2020