This is a review of the Canvas WordPress theme framework from well-known premium WordPress theme makers WooThemes.
A framework is a clean theme, ready for you to skin/customize with your own design preferences.
Why use a theme framework?
The benefit of a theme framework is that you start from a more or less blank starting point. If you were to “remix” a ready-made premium theme, from Organic Themes, Elegant Themes or WooThemes, the three major drawbacks would be:
- You’d spend too much time removing unnecessary/superfluous design ornaments and details.
- You’d end up with a slower website, because of the bloated code, typical of premium themes, due to excessive theme admin options.
- Your final website design would not be as unique and tailor-made as it would have been if you started from scratch.
You don’t wanna start ALL the way from scratch though! I used to create WordPress themes from scratch. While it does give a really lean theme, lightning fast loading, you also spend too much time repeating the same, basic code tasks over and over.
That’s why you should use a theme framework as a foundation for your theme building efforts. You save tons of time and get a great quality result in the end.
Well, onto the Canvas WordPress theme framework
I’ve previously used Canvas on a few projects, and while it’s a fair enough WordPress theme framework, I didn’t find it to fit my needs. But it may be just right for you. In this blog post, I’ll tell you what I see as the pros and cons of the Canvas WordPress theme.
This review is based on the latest version of Canvas at the time of writing, namely version 5.2.6, released yesterday. So rest assured: The review is as fresh as a ripe banana in Costa Rica:)
I must admit I’m not a big fan of the WooThemes design aesthetic. I find themes from WooThemes sterile, square and pale, to state it clearly. If you like the WooThemes look, but wanna DESIGN it yourself, Canvas is perfect for you though.
So ehm… Canvas is like a nudist WooThemes theme;-)
The need for speed
Code quality and speed wise, Canvas is about on par with alternative theme frameworks like Headway 3 and Genesis 2. It’s not as heavy as PageLines 2 (review) and not as lightweight as Responsive and Thesis 2 (review).
Pros of WooThemes Canvas
- If you like the WooThemes “look” of WordPress themes, but want a clean starting point – Canvas is perfect for you.
- Shortcodes galore: You can create columns with these, colored buttons, highlight text. Very convenient.
- If’ you aren’t very technical, Canvas will let you use the built-in design control panel to design your own website.
- Canvas is fully responsive and looks great on mobile devices like the iPhone, iPad and Android.
- A large selection of Google fonts are just a click away.
Canvas is WooCommerce compatible
Canvas being a WooThemes product, it of course works perfectly with WooThemes WooCommerce ecommerce plugin, that is the standard of WordPress ecommerce.
But what are the less charming aspects of Canvas then?
Biggest con of WooThemes Canvas: Layout limitations
When I’m designing sites for myself and clients, I almost always need to break out of WordPress’ dreaded “content + sidebar” paradigm. Sales pages, landing pages, product pages; all require more advanced, custom layouts.
WooThemes Canvas provides you with a few specialty templates to choose from: Business, Magazine and Portfolio.
The “Business” template basically gives you a slider above your content. In my opinion that look is becoming a cliché.
The “Magazine” template gives you a page with a grid of posts, with thumbnails and titles. Cliché but at least useful.
The “Portfolio” template is like a categorized gallery page.
There’s also a Contact Form template, as well as a few other basic ones. But that’s as far as your layout freedom goes in WooThemes Canvas. Want to add a box here or there? Can’t easily do that with Canvas. Unless you are willing to code.
You can use shortcodes to create columns in your content area. But you can’t as an example directly in Canvas (without writing custom CSS) style these columns as boxes with a light gray background color. In Headway you’d quickly be able to do such stuff without coding.
Canvas Child themes
Unless you just wanna use the built-in design controls, you should create a child theme. that will give you more flexibility when customizing your theme.
But remember: There’s no shame in being lazy and taking the easy path! Feel free to just use what Canvas has built-in from the get-go. It can take most people plenty far towards a good, solid website.
It does bring me to a personal caveat though:
Design controls and child themes don’t mix!
In my experience, it’s an annoyance to have both:
- Design controls available in the theme options +
- The need to create a child theme (with a style.css file).
It’s my experience, that such design controls often interfere with you own custom CSS code. Design controls add confusion to your development process.
In Headway, the design options (in Headway’s unique Visual Design Editor) are so versatile, that child themes aren’t needed. You do it all in Headway. And even when custom CSS is needed, Headway’s Live CSS Preview feature integrates that process. No interference. Zero friction.
But in Canvas, the design controls only take you so far. You’ll quickly need to create a child theme. At that point, you’d wish you’d chosen Genesis as the foundation of your child theme, instead. Much leaner, and no interfering design controls.
Canvas caveat
Canvas inconveniently sits itself between two chairs. It doesn’t exactly cater to people who can’t or won’t write code. On the other hand, Canvas isn’t a lean, mean theme framework, like Genesis or Responsive. If I were to code a child theme from scratch, I’d not choose the Canvas WordPress theme. I’d choose Genesis.
So do I recommend the Canvas WordPress theme as your framework of choice?
Not really. I can’t see anything wrong with WooThemes Canvas. It’s just very average, like that dude at the office who’s nice and polite, but never drinks, swears or jokes. Bottom line: Competing frameworks offer you more personality and possibilities: Headway is currently the supreme choice on the market. But PageLines (review) will also give you much more flexibility than Canvas. If you just want a lean framework without help from a design options control panel; Genesis by StudioPress just came out in a fresh version 2.0.
If you have questions or comments you’re welcome to chime in!
rubencio says
I made this one in “canvas”. Hope you like it 😉
http://rubencio.com/
Oliver Nielsen says
It looks cool. Required much custom coding?
A Gold says
Great site, and thanks for publishing the comments. While WooThemes is a great idea and unlike many template companies, they actually support WordPress upgrades, there are a lot of technical details and considerations that are second nature to mid-tear developers, but not to more beginner users.
SO I appreciate their attempt, and I also appreciate this review and the associated comments.
Oliver Nielsen says
Thanks for the kind words!
And thank you likewise for commenting and sharing your opinion:)
Hazem Alhabbal says
It’s one of worst themes I’ve ever dealt with for the following reasons:
If you are not a php wordpress developer you can’t really customize in it.
I uploaded a .png photo & it got a boarded around it, I had to remove through coding
It has to be a white background, If change the color of the background (in my case using Visual Composer) then your .png photos will get a white square backgroung, and again you have to do coding in order to remove it.
You can’t move the Nav menu next to the logo, unless again through coding.
It’s not really friendly in case of the placement of the social media icons
It is so expensive!!!
The list go on, but I think the reasons mentioned above are enough to avoid using this theme
Oliver Nielsen says
I agree. And even as a code-savvy person, WooThemes Canvas is not a very coder friendly framework. It’s too bloated and idiosyncratic.
I feel WooThemes Canvas was made for people who want a naked WooTheme, ready for styling/skinning. No more than that.
I have a client still on Canvas – and I dread doing work on that site, honestly.
Cindy Johnson says
I currently have the canvas theme but I have having some issues with it. On the bottom of my “Main” page there is a piece of code that shows and I can’t figure out why or how to get rid of it. I have deleted and reinstalled it and it is still there. It looks like this..
// if (have_posts()) { $count = 0;
Any suggestions?
Oliver Nielsen says
It’s some PHP that isn’t getting parsed, ie. it gets output as text/html.
If you have tried reinstalling the Canvas theme and there’s no child theme overriding the original templates, it might be a plugin. Try deactivating all plugins and see if the problem persists. If not, then you can try reactivating each plugin one by one, until you find the culprit;)
I hope that helps?
Have a nice weekend
Oliver
dti says
I’m currently assessing Canvas so I appreciate your review. I’ll take a look at the alternatives you suggest as well.
I build a lot of basic sites with WooTheme themes. I don’t think child themes interfere with their theme options panels. I always use child themes for my sites and have never noticed a problem with theme options.
I don’t do extensive modifications (mostly CSS with the occasional modification of a header or footer file.) It’s possible that with heavier modification more problems could arise.
DTI
hase23 says
I like your review and also the replies. But it does not help me. I need to use the plugin woocommerce and the woocommerce subscriptions extension. But I am unsure which theme will work without any problems. I am sure canvas will work. But maybe I am getting into trouble by adding a forum and some other things I like to add. I am not able to code. So I don´t want to buy anything with I can not use later on. And I didn`t like the design of the other woocommerce themes. I would be happy for any idees.
Oliver Nielsen says
Headway works well with WooCommerce and WooCommerce subscriptions. I can say that for certain: I use them both with Headway:-)
PageLines 2.x has also worked nicely for me, when I’ve tested it with WooCommerce a few months back. I just spent 2 minutes to test how WooCommerce plays with PageLines DMS. Apparently no problems.
Now, all the above being said, If I were to build a very customized WooCommerce shop, I’d probably go for Genesis from StudioPress. The reason being that when working with Genesis, you create a child theme and edit the template files directly. That’s convenient when working with WooCommerce since it lets you do whatever you want, on a very deep level. Requires coding though.
But PagesLines and Headway will be just fine.
How to choose between the two? Headway gives you much more granular control over the design of your site. PageLines, even DMS, is a more out-of-the-box solution. Can be customized, but will require coding. Headway usually doesn’t, thanks to its Visual Design Editor.
Have a good weekend:)
Oliver
Leslie Nicole says
Thank you for this honest review. I’m trying to decide what framework to choose. I’ve used WooThemes and I do like a lot of what they offer, but don’t care for the designs. Same as you – too sterile. I’ve been looking and looking for a theme I like from a reputable developer and I’m going crazy trying to find exactly what I want. Which is why I was thinking of Canvas.
I know of the Genesis reputation, but honestly, I don’t much care for most of the theme designs I find for Genesis. Zigzag press has nice designs, but aren’t exactly what I want either. Perhaps I’m going to have to hire someone to do exactly what I want! I am considering Page-lines. I poked around at the Headway site a few times, and it didn’t feel like it was very clear to me, so wasn’t appealing. What do you suggest for someone who wants design options – mostly a very clean, elegant design, but doesn’t code?
Oliver Nielsen says
Depends whether you want something ready-made… or… a theme framework. The latter will always require more work (but will allow more room for customization).
Organic Themes makes some beautiful out-of-the-box themes, I think.
But all in all, I’ve never been able to settle on a ready-made premium theme. It just never fully resonates. I’ve also never had a client who could pick a ready-made theme, without requiring extensive customization to make it personal and fit the company.
Metaphorically, it’s akin to moving into a furnished apartment. It doesn’t feel yours. it doesn’t feel like home.
So there are no short ways home. But one can make shortcuts. For me, it means using Headway. For many solo entrepreneurs here in Denmark it used to mean Thesis. Now many are using PageLines. I’m quite excited to see what PageLines DMS which will debut later this month will bring to the market.
Leslie Nicole says
Thank you for your answer. I’ve spent all morning looking at sites again. Funny you should mention Organic. The new Seed theme is quite nice and has a lot of the features I want – tempting. I also ran across the Dynamik theme builder for Genesis which looks interesting. The hard thing about looking for a framework for just myself (not looking to build sites for others) is that I don’t have time to thoroughly try out every framework to find the best fit. I’ve signed up for your Headways lessons, so I may check that out. I am still tempted by Pagelines as I think it may do everything I wanted – although my first poking around at the back-end is very confusing. Anyway – thank you for your posts and reply. Helps to round out my information.
David M. T. says
Very fair review Oliver, Woothemes are the “play it safe” boys on the theme marketplace, they’re neither evolutionarily good nor particularly bad, I would put them above average though.
Canvas is pretty much the only useful theme, if you are a web designer who likes flexible frameworks, however as you pointed out, once you start pushing it, you realize it’s limitations and you have to make a child theme anyways, which sorta makes the heavy-duty theme options somewhat irrelevant.
WooCommerce is nice though, IF you know how to modify it for a clients needs, which isn’t always easy, you often have to force it to work so to speak, but when it works it’s a great extension.
As Cesar pointed out above, their customer service isn’t what it used to be, before I decided to move on, I had quite a few bad experiences with them, they were too pushy referring to their “paid modification service” even when I had minor issues. They also removed their affiliate program, for whatever reason, which didn’t help their case.
To be fair, there were a couple of their team members who did a great job helping me out, but overall it was inconsistent.
The Genesis framework is awesome, a perfect base to build sites from scratch, I only rank Headway above them because of their visual editor.
Cesar Falcao says
“As Cesar pointed out above, their customer service isn’t what it used to be, before I decided to move on, I had quite a few bad experiences with them, they were too pushy referring to their “paid modification service” even when I had minor issues.”
I’m glad David share the same view about woothemes’s support issues. Woo take usually 3-4 DAYS to answer your ticket. Last month I had to spend 150US in codeable.io because the lack of support from woo (man, that made look to other solutions from now on).
As a comparison, Elegant themes costs 79US (all themes and 1 year of support) and 2-3 hours to answer your ticket.
Oliver Nielsen says
Thanks for sharing that experience. I didn’t know that, as I haven’t used their support for years.
Support can be a real burden for a company to deliver, but WooThemes should have the money and skills to deliver great customer support. Sad that they don’t.
Cesar Falcão says
Very goo article. I like woothemes a lot (my site discerne.com runs on it themes and the Sensei LMS plugin), but as my needs for customization are increasing and I can only produce the simplest code, so I m looking out for a better alternative.
Another thing about woothemes is that their support became very annoying since their changes last year: very late first contact and very evasive answers.