It’s always an exciting day around here when StudioPress releases a new WordPress theme. Some people like to draw, or paint, or craft — I like to play with WordPress themes, what can I say. . .
Their latest, the Authority Pro theme, includes design elements and tools that make it easier to maximize conversions to meet your business goals. It’s an excellent choice for a freelancer or a solopreneur.
Here’s what StudioPress has to say about the theme:
“Authority Pro perfectly highlights your knowledge, years of experience, and acquired wisdom. Even if it’s early in your journey toward building expertise and trust, this carefully constructed design will accelerate how quickly your audience grows.”
After installing it on my sandbox site and playing around with it, I agree.
Please be aware, I found as I was doing some research for this post, that there’s another theme called Authority Pro which has garnered tons of bad reviews. It’s a completely different theme, from different designers. The theme I’m reviewing here is from StudioPress, which offers quality WordPress themes and managed WordPress hosting.
Colors
Personally, I find the default cobalt blue color a little overwhelming, so that’s the first thing I change.
Authority Pro lets you select the default primary color, which is applied to link titles, menu links, post info links, buttons, and more.
Here’s what changing the cobalt blue to a softer teal looks like.
I like it much better — what do you think? And changing it is easy peasy.
Custom Header Image
Upload a 600×160 pixel header image. This will only display at 300×80 pixels, though (the larger upload size is to maintain quality on retina devices). If you want a header image larger than this, you’ll need to modify the theme. (But honestly, with that beautiful hero image on the homepage, why would you need to?)
Authority Pro Settings
Go to Customize / Authority Pro Settings to select whether you want to display the hero image on the homepage, whether to display the featured image in posts and pages, and whether to enable the “intro” style on the first paragraph of a post.
Hero Image
The hero image area is the large spot just below the header. It’s the perfect way to draw attention immediately to your most important call to action, usually opting in to an email list or similar.
Enable it within the Authority Pro Settings / Basic Settings of the Customizer, then swap out the default text and image in Authority Pro Settings / Hero Portrait Section and / Hero Logo Section.
Intro Style
“Intro style” refers to showing the first paragraph differently from the rest of the article. Here’s an example:
If you like the Intro Style but don’t want to use it all the time, deselect it from the Authority Pro Settings, then apply it manually to specific posts.
Top Banner
Here’s another business-enhancing tool the Authority Pro theme provides. Top Banner lets you add a brief message to the top of the page. It will stay there until the reader clicks the X to dismiss it.
Sure, you could accomplish the same thing with a plugin, but I’m all in favor of doing anything you can to decrease the number of plugins used, so having it built in is a bonus.
Menus
Authority Pro theme supports three menus.
- Header menu displays to the right of the header
- Footer menu displays next to the footer
- Social menu floats vertically along the left-hand side of the page. Note that it’s not your typical social media menu which includes icons. You can certainly use it to provide links to Facebook, Twitter, etc., but you can also use it for a more standard menu, like this one.
Front Page
StudioPress’ most recent theme releases have all included a front page built from widgets. It’s extraordinarily flexible, and you can achieve very different looks depending on the number of widgets you place into each area.
Authority Pro takes this flexibility a step further. It includes 6 widget areas, starting with the Hero area discussed above. Below that are areas labeled Front Page 1, Front Page 2, etc. What’s interesting is that the configurations for 1-4 are different from Front Page 5, as these two screenshots show.
Widget area 5 is a little different.
Archive Page Description
This theme offers something a little unusual — the ability to create a description as well as a title for archive pages.
What does this mean?
Normally, if you go to a blog page, it says “Blog” at the top, then shows your latest posts, with the newest one at the top.
This theme goes a step further, letting you add a description.
This is an excellent way to get a better SEO ranking for a blog or archive page.
Pricing Page Template
If you sell a service, you’ll like this. Simply select the Pricing template style, then add your pricing table. The exact HTML you’ll need to create a 2-, 3-, or 4-column pricing table is available from the setup guide inside your StudioPress account.
WooCommerce
With WooCommerce and the Genesis Connect for Woo Commerce plugin, you can build a gorgeous online shop.
In short, this is a versatile, good-looking theme with plenty of options to enhance your branding and help you to convert readers into buyers.
Book Cover Templates
Included with Authority Pro are two PSD template files for book covers, making is super simple to create a beautiful cover for your own book offerings.
See a demo of Authority Pro here.
Note: StudioPress is one of my two go-to theme designers. If you click on the link above and purchase, I’ll receive a commission. (Your price is the same either way.) These commissions help me keep the site going, and help me keep my prices low.
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