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TheGem Theme

TheGem is a multi-purpose template, launched in August 2016 by Codex Themes, an Envato Elite author. Designed for both creative and business industry, it helps you create a beautiful online portfolio, multiple niche websites, and virtual stores. TheGem is packed with features, demos, styles and layouts, ready to transform any project plan into reality.

Design

A modern and minimal theme, TheGem was designed to help you build a professional website combining creativity with style. Responsive and retina ready, this theme is flexible and allows you to choose your page layout. Using a full width or boxed layout, merged with beautiful graphic elements, you can be sure your website will be unique.

TheGem has a custom plugin dedicated to help you import the demos on your site, giving you a choice between a full demo, a partial one and over 40 pre-built designs called Selected Concepts. I’ll leave it to you to discover your favorite combination and create a beautiful website using pre-built templates like Agencies, Apps, Construction, Architecture, Real Estate, Beauty, Creative, Gym, or Shop.

With TheGem you can adjust the logo size with a control button. For desktop and mobile, you can also customize the logo style with a dark, light color to be more visible when the header’s background is enabled.

Horizontally, in full-width mode or a vertical position, you can style the website’s main menu & header to be light or dark, changing the visual appearance of the whole page.

The footer area can be customized with an information box, color or image background, and widgets to make this section a dynamic part of your website.

This theme comes with six post formats to choose from: image, video, audio, quote, gallery and multiple custom post types. ‘TheGem Theme Elements’ plugin gathers portfolios, news, quick finders, clients, galleries, teams, and testimonials post types, accessible from the WordPress admin area.

When a website is built using media files and texts, typography is an important feature that goes hand in hand with creativity. From the Fonts Manager, the theme allows you to upload custom fonts in different formats like EOT, SVG, TTF, and WOFF. You can also use beautiful typographies from the Google Fonts set.

TheGem template is social friendly and comes with a dedicated section in the Theme Options panel. You can activate your favorite social profiles like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus, Vimeo, Youtube and so on.

Functionality

The Theme Options panel is intuitive, very easy to understand and use. From this panel, you have multiple choices to customize the General Options, Header, Fonts, Colors, Background or Social networks. With the drag and drop functionality given by the Visual Composer page builder plugin and TheGem Shortcodes, you will be able to customize your posts and pages with a large number of elements, blocks, columns, both on backend and frontend.

When creating a new post or page, you will get an additional set of customization options. These refer to functionality, but also to appearance. You can choose what widgets you want to display on sidebars and set up the header’s behavior on a particular page. You can also style icons from three available packs, add a video background, select a given background for header section or upload an image.

The theme comes with six pre-defined areas for sidebars. The Codex Themes author included over 15 custom widgets in the template, like The Gem Clients, The Gem Gallery, Picture Box, Project Slider and so on. Using the Visual Editor widget, you can add information boxes containing media files into sidebars.

To add beautiful slideshows on pages, you can choose to create them with the NivoSlider, LayerSlider or Revolution Slider plugins. This template also comes with premium plugins like Visual Composer, TheGem Import, TheGem Theme Elements.

If you plan to create a web shop, you will be glad to know that the WooCommerce plugin is compatible with this multi-purpose theme. MailChimp, Google Analytics, Contact Form7, Black Studio TinyMCE widget plugins are also included. With the free plugin ZillaLikes, you can show likes automatically and counts on posts and pages.

The theme package file contains a child theme, which can be enabled when a user wants to make code changes, without altering the main template.

GENERAL
Item name TheGem
Category Multi-purpose
Type Premium
Author Codex Themes
Envato elite author Yes
Tested version 1.1.0
COMPATIBILITY
Content width Full Width
Browser compatibility IE8+ / Chrome / FF / Opera / Safari / Edge
WooCommerce Yes
bbPress Yes
BuddyPress Yes
WPML Yes
FONTS AND TRANSLATION
Integrated translation -
Google fonts Yes
Custom fonts Yes
Typekit fonts -
RTL support Yes
POST FEATURES
Video posts Yes
Audio posts Yes
Post templates 1
Post view counter -
Smart lists -
Social share Yes
Custom image lightbox Yes
Custom image galery Yes
Link post -
Lightbox skins 1
PAGE FEATURES
Page templates 150
Blocks 26
Widgets 20
Header styles 4
Footer styles 1
Masonry layout Yes
Mega menus Yes
Sticky menu Yes
Social networks Yes
Social counter -
Video playlists -
Instagram widget -
Custom Page Builder Visual Composer
Portfolio styles 3
Responsive layout Breakpoints
Blog layouts 13
Menu styles 4
Dual Sidebars -
Shortcodes Yes
Video slider -
OTHER FEATURES
Demos included 47
SEO optimized Yes
Custom Theme Updater -
ADS
Ad system -
Adsense support -
Custom ads -
PERFORMANCE
CSS file size 894 kb
Overall speed High
Performance documentation -
USER EXPERIENCE
Total ratings 206
User rating
Learnability Medium
DESIGN
Responsive design Yes
Retina ready Yes
DOCUMENTATION
Difficulty Beginner
Explanations Explicit
Explicit screen shots Yes
Video tutorials Yes
Search option -
Extra documentation Yes
PREMIUM PLUGINS
Plugins Visual Composer, TheGem Import, TheGem Theme Elements, Revolution Slider, LayerSlider,
VALUE
Price $59
Value for the money Very good

Performance

We have tested the TheGem’s default demo on different page speed tests, and the content loads with a high speed.

Thegem-WordPress-Theme-Pagespeed
TheGem PageSpeed

Downsides

Importing the demos might take some time, as the imports are loading quite slowly. The author also warns users about this.

Even if the theme is entirely compatible and tested with the WPML premium plugin, TheGem comes without a custom, built-in translation panel. You can find .po and .mo files in theme’s installation package and use an editor to work with them, or you can purchase WPML plugin.

TheGem Theme Review
Category: Multi-purpose
COMPARE
Price: $59
Poor
Excellent
Features
User experience
Documentation quality
Flexibility
Performance
Stability
SEO Friendly
Monetization
Code quality
Value
Conclusion
Codex Themes combines versatility and latest technology with elegant design, in an alluring template. The theme’s options panel and functions are intuitive, so that every WordPress user has the ability to manage TheGem with ease. With the rich documentation provided projects can now become real websites. The modern demos ensure that no matter what your website is about, it will look amazing.
Good for
  • Flexiblity, with aesthetic and modern design
  • Visual Composer with backend & frontend functionality
  • Plenty of custom post types
  • Child theme included in the package
Not so good for
  • Missing Typekit fonts
  • No post view counter system available
  • No custom Ad System or AdSense support
Overall score:
80%
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Lisa Jones
Editor-in-chief of WPion. 100% passionate about WordPress, Lisa is part time web developer and part time front-end designer. With a master's degree in computer science, she is specialized in CSS, HTML, JavaScript, MySQL and PHP. Lisa uses her knowledge and experience to offer you a complete analysis of WordPress most popular themes and plugins.

10 COMMENTS

  1. Hello dear! With so many options, the site still goes that fast? Now I’m using a free theme, but I need to use multiple plugins to get everything I want, and this slows really down my site. I want to invest in The Gem, but i’m concerned. The demo looks explosive and this review is really helpful, but I’m not sure what to do. My site is about photography and travelling. Can you help pls? Yours sincerely, Anne Jameson.

    • Hi, Anne! TheGem is a beautiful theme, with a quite high site speed. This measurement depends on many factors. In the first place, the website’s loading speed depends on an excellent host. Then, you have to optimize the site and the WordPress install. The final step is to upload a theme and manage your content, media files and the additional plugins.

  2. How easy is The Gem vs. something like Divi? I’m new to them both. Thanks! My sense of The Gem is that it has great functionality and I prefer the movement and features. Do you have any preferences?

    • Hi! People use the multipurpose TheGem theme on their websites, even on online Stores. It’s compatible with the WooCommerce plugin and you can see how the demo Shops look here – http://codex-themes.com/thegem/shop/. Just use the “Shop” dropdown menu to see more. Good luck with your project!

  3. Hi I’m making a website for a client who just wants to use the site as a product display and a place to go for information on his company. My question is, can you use TheGem to style product displays and not use any e-commerce of any kind?

  4. Designer was telling me to go with Avada that everything is always updated often unlike other ones. But I really love the Gem templates… should I just go forward with the Gem, or can I create something similar using Avada?

    • Hi Brian,

      Thanks for your message. If you love working with a template, then why change it? With Avada, you can design any website, as it is a multipurpose template, well supported and constantly updated. It really depends on what’s your website purpose. If you have a news-related website, personal blog, medical one, or others. Maybe you should test Avada too, and see which one suits your site best. Good luck with your project!

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