Socrates Theme Review

Joel Comm does not allow any product to leave his company until it meets certain criteria. First, it must be something that he would use himself. Second, it must be simple to use. Third, it must satisfy a need in the marketplace. That explains why his newest product has become very popular to the blogging community in a very short period of time.

Socrates, named after Joel’s dog, is a WordPress Theme designed to help the marketer make money from his own content. You see, after years of being the guy who taught the world about Adsense, Joel needed to create something that would help bloggers replace some of the revenue that was starting to slip away from their Adsense accounts. You see, as more and more PPC marketers are paying more and more for their clicks, the Adsense publishers are being paid less and less per click.

Fortunately, we were provided with Socrates from the people at Joel’s office, but don’t expect me to be a shill for JC. I love Joel, I think he is a great person, his marketing is very sound and he has helped many thousands of people become successful. The thing is, I am here to be objective about the whole Socrates deal… and just because I am a friend of Joel, does not mean I cannot be objective. Now that we have gotten that out of the way, let’s dig in to the Socrates package.

Download

I downloaded the Socrates Theme to my hard drive, determined to find something wrong with the process (I think I was working too hard at being objective at that point), but the download was smooth and uneventful. While the theme was downloading, I started to download some of the headers that Dan Nickerson, Joel’s right hand man, had found and uploaded.

Once I downloaded everything, I looked over the directions. Usually I don’t read directions… but remember, I was trying to be objective, and I knew I would find the fatal flaw to the theme in those directions. The dang instructions turned out to be very concise and they told me exactly what I needed to do.  I muttered a few curse words under my breath and went on to the installation.

Installing Socrates

The installation was as simple as telling WordPress where to find the file I had downloaded. I found it easily and within 125 seconds I had the Socrates Theme installed on my blog: http://socialneteffect.com/news/

About that time, I started noticing my server response time was beginning to slow down. I excitedly wrung my hands together and laughed with demonic glee, “I found it!”

Yvonne looked over at me a little perplexed. Seeing as she was not expecting me to be laughing or wringing my hands like a mad scientist, she also had a kind of scared look in her eyes that told me that I should expect a cold shower tonight… but I digress.

I waited until morning to continue my work as I was getting very irritated at the server, and my mind was still a little shaken at Yvonne’s response to my joy at finally finding a fault in this theme. So in the morning, I logged in to my blog dashboard and to my surprise, everything was working fine. Apparently, my server was having issues because another site on it was hogging resources or my Internet connection was having a “Dim House” moment.

Everything looked exactly like it should. I made changes to the blog layout using the step by step tools in the dashboard. It was very easy to use. After searching my hard drive for some additional headers, I ended up choosing one of the textured headers that came with the theme.

Next, I played with the Header Fonts. These had very few choices, but they covered the 5 major text styles: Tahoma, Arial, Times, Verdana and Georgia as well as a default Title Font. The cool part, though, was that you could control the size and color of the font for both the blog title and the tagline using separate controls.

Socrates

The Socrates Command center is laid out in 6 segments, each designed to help you accomplish a task. The Socrates menu item contains a link to the password protected download area and to the frequently asked questions page (FAQ). It also explains what each segment is supposed to do. At the bottom, they also included a feedback form in case of emergencies.

Layout

In the layout section, you are able to decide on the style of your blog. Do you want one column or two, column on left or right, wide column or narrow… or both. A form field for your Clickbank ID is located on this page to allow you to earn commissions from people who click on the Socrates logo and purchase the theme for themselves. You also have a choice of adding the leaderboard ad, a section immediately beneath the header and the widget area before the footer. One 220 X 90 segment is for your Twitter Link, Facebook link and the RSS feed from your blog. All you have to do is enter the URL for each one on the layout page and the theme will rotate these on the home page. They even added a spot for you to include your own products, too!

Navigation

The navigation tab gives your blog a lot of versatility by giving you the option of having your menu (nav bar) above the header, below the header or on the left or right of the area beneath a blog post. The navigation for each of these menus can actually be different, so that if you wanted to place some navigation links only on the bottom of your blog, you could. This is also useful if you are looking to link up some keywords for SEO purposes.

The way this is set up, each menu location has a radio button that allows you to turn it on or off. Once on, the list of URLs and the titles for them shows up below the radio button. You simply paste the links on the left column and paste the keywords that go with the links in the space on the right column directly opposite the corresponding URL.

Styling

By the time I reached this point, I had begun to think that Joel’s team had outdone themselves with this theme. I clicked on the Styling Link and there I found the first disappointment of the day. The Socrates Theme comes with 6 preprogrammed color schemes. I would have expected a larger number of these, but they stopped at 6. Of course, you have the option of customizing every color on the site, from the background color to the different navigation sections. Perhaps a future version would allow exporting and importing color schemes.

Header

This was the part of the setup process that sent me on a BSO (bright shiny object) hunt. I saw all the cool headers and I started searching my hard drive for more headers and soon found myself 2 hours later still not finished with the header, because I was still searching my hard drive.

Once I chose one of the headers that came with the Socrates Theme I was on my way again, and finished up very quickly once I figured out which font I liked best and the proper size for it. The fact that this theme is so customizable for various niche sites makes it very popular among the marketers. I saw lots of cool uses for it just during my journey through my hard drive as niche header after niche header came by.

Background

The final piece of the Socrates puzzle involves putting a background on your blog. You can choose a simple colored background or use images; Socrates is flexible in this way. It also allows you to repeat the image vertically or horizontally, both or not. When you decide to use one of the graphics in the package, you have a lot of potential for some exciting looking sites. Especially if you upload your own image.

So after setting up the theme to my liking, I am now ready to start writing some new content to bring in the visitors. Now I just need to find out how well the features lend themselves to getting me some sales, followers and leads. I do believe the only missing component is the space for an opt-in form. “Aha! I found it! I found the missing piece of Joel Comm’s Socrates theme!”

Note: The author was taken away by the men in white coats. All the while we could hear him shouting about wait until he saw Joel and how he would reveal this obvious oversight to the world. In fact, if you listen really closely, you can probably hear him cackling in the distance even now. We didn’t have the heart to tell him that you can easily add an opt-in form using a widget…

Micheal Savoie is a trainer in all things blog and social media as well as a video production specialist. His passion for helping people is realized by doing webinars and seminars to show entrepreneurs how to get more done while spending less money! You can find out more at http://easysellingsuccess.com

The Socrates Theme can be purchased by clicking on the link below (Author may earn a commission if you purchase – it will help pay for his therapy):

http://nexurl.com/themes

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