For those who don’t know who Adii is, he was the grand prize sponsor for my RSS competition against Shoemoney. The winner of the grand prize was Keith Dsouza of Techie Buzz and you can head on over there and check out the shiny new theme TB is now running.
Adii normally charge $750 for a custom design theme but he also has some exclusive themes available at a much lower price point. One of them is the Premium News theme and Adii order this ReviewMe review to let you know that from now until midnight of December 26, the theme is available for 30% off.
One of the Best News Theme I’ve Ever Seen
From now until midnight December 26, you can pick up the Premium News Theme for only $70 (regular price $99.95) for a single-use license and $175 (regular $249.95) for a multi-use license.
Some of the unique features of the Premium News Theme include:
- Integrated “Premium News Options” to change colour scheme, homepage layout etc.
- Featured Posts panel on the homepage using jQuery technology to display and hide the posts
- Built-in Video Player to publish your YouTube videos
- Integrated Banner Management script to display randomized banner ads of your choice site-wide
- Pretty dropdown navigation
- Different homepage layouts and colour schemes to choose from
- Widget-ready sidebars
The built-in video player is an extremely nice touch. Video blogging is going to get huge and having a theme ready to take advantage of it will mean more money down the line. Videos can be toggle on and off through the WordPress control panel.
The theme front page serves as a portal for all the news story. It makes nice use of tabs and drop down menu to access sub categories. The inside page is a traditional two column layout.
Customizable & For Ambitious Bloggers
This is definitely a serious theme for the serious blogger looking to make money online. The theme looks extremely professional and is very easy to monetize with the buit-in banner management system. The theme has also been coded in such a way as to allow for easy customization and Adii has included a Theme Options tab to allow the user to make some choices from within his WP admin panel without changing any code. Some of the options include:
- 7 different colour schemes
- Control the layout of the homepage
- Control the amount of posts being displayed on the homepage
- Which categories to display in the highlighted areas of your homepage
- Integrate your Flickr & Feedburner accounts
- Banner Ad Management
Future Modifications
Adii is already working on two new modifications for the Premium News Theme (he posted about them here and here) and owners of the original version will be able to get these modifications for free if they pay an annual fee of $30 to $50. Updates to any of Adii’s themes are for free, but these are new modifications, which means you’ll receive a few more themes in the new year – all built on the original backend. $30 to $50 for another Adii theme is a very good price.
If you’re looking to create a news type blog and don’t want to pay Adii $750 to custom design one for you, then his Premium New Theme is the next best thing.
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{ 51 comments }
Well, it certainly is a nice theme…but I think I’d prefer modifying existing free templates….
…that is tru – edit free ones – or get a brain gardner layout – which is far better I think anyways
Maybe….But this is a great template too
Free templates only have so many options before you’re stuck with the same old theme everybody else already uses.
I totally agree. I have that problem at my hunting blog.
Why is “blog” in my comment an affiliate link. I don’t prefer for my comments to be used in that manner. A change in this would be appreciated.
For who can, making your own theme would be even better. Knowing to modify an existing theme means you are close enough to coding your own theme, but for those that don’t have those skills, purchasing a theme is not a bad idea.
I’ve paid out for the Premium News theme, and have been playing around with it on my test-site, although haven’t yet installed it on either of my active blogs yet (will do this in the next week or two).
I have to say, it’s both well designed, well coded, and fairly easy to customise (if you can customise any other theme, you can customise this one).
Whether it’s worth paying out for the theme really depends on the individual. For me, it was a great deal because:
(a) it was almost exactly what I’m looking for and, although it will require a little bit of tweaking to fit my site, it won’t take much work; and
(b) while there are a few magazine-style themes out there for nothing, none of them approached the quality of Adii or Brian Gardner’s work. If I’d used a free theme, I would have had to spend far more time customising it – time that I could better use to earn more than $70.
If there is a free theme out there that suits your needs, then you’d be a fool not to go for it. But sometimes paying for a theme can work out cheaper in the long run.
No unique is always best!
Editting free designs, isnt the way to go in my opinion.
Not Everyone knows how to edit free templates
which is better: brian gardner’s revolution or adii’s premium news theme?
adii is a great wp designers, and his premium theme is sure to rock you.
Seems like a good theme but a bit pricey.
I agree, only serious bloggers would buy it
Its hilarious now that 70 bucks is expensive for a design.
Damn that’s a nice theme.. I’m going to have to check it out as we’re looking for a new theme on my music blog, http://www.withtheband.com.au
I think you should go with it, as i think its nice clean and professional and if you don’t check the guys at http://www.uniqueblogdesigns.com they offers great designs for small prices
@ jalansutera & Iantrepeneur – Both my theme and Brian’s Revolution range has it’s own strengths. For example – I think Brian’s theme is easier to customize, whilst Premium News has a lot more features and a stronger backend. That said, it’s pretty much “either / or” whether you buy my theme or Brian’s theme – either way you’ll be buying a great theme!
@ Famous Quotes – Pricey!?
Come on, get into the Christmas spirit – there’s 30% off!
@ Matt – Hope to see your name on my list of sales over the weekend!
Solid theme!
@ Iantrepeneur – Why do you think Revolution is better than Premium News? Just asking – Brian and I are friends – and I just value some feedback!
@ Jalansutera – Both my theme and Brian’s Revolution themes are great and has different strong points: Brian’s Revolution is easier to customize, whilst Premium News has a few more features and functions. Doesn’t matter which one you buy – you’ll be buying a great theme anyway!
@ Famous Quotes & Money Talks – Pricey!? In your opinion, what would’ve been a fair price for the theme? And you are right – as John mentioned – the theme is definitely aimed at ambitious bloggers, looking to make a buck online.
@ Matt & Joshua – Glad you like!
Brian gardner’s is good and yours is also good….but brian offers it for 99.95 dollars(introductory offer)…now that is a very competitive price…
I’ve got the exact same pricing scheme as Brian…
Plus, you can now get the theme on a 30% discount as well…
You gotta spend money to make money. Best of luck in getting your cost of review back and then some.
> Addi
hope you didn’t think I was disrespecting you
I just got use to the revolution and your right it is easy to manage – yours also more web 2.0 very interactive, which I kind of done on my end with brian’s – if this has came out prior to Brians I would have probably grabbed it – since it has the interaction that I like.
like you said both has strengths – I just got use to a lot of brians work – that is all – great work!
No worries Ian!
I fully understand and you can’t imagine how I wish that I had beat Brian to the punch and released Premium News first… 
According to me Techie-Buzz is still using the old theme. Am I right John?
That is right, Keith has reverted back to his old theme for some reason…
Not bad, definitely looks like it could give Revolution a run for it’s money.
I have to admit that is a pretty nice theme, I am having a news site redone right now in fact.
Great theme, I like it.
A small legal matter – The entire theme is based on wordpress, which is open source and provides users rights that specificaly do not allow anyone to limit those rights in any way. Although the price quoted of 249.00 for multiple uses is wirtten, there is no law preventing someone from using the 99.95 version (or a free version if they can find it) as many times as they want. If you buy a copy, you are legaly allowed to use it, distribute it and resell it as many times as you want and in fact if the author tries to say you cant, he is no longer allowed to sell or distribute it because he himself will have broken the license by trying to restrict its use.
He can copyright his images of course, but if they are included in the download “package” along with the code, and aren’t sufficiently “set apart” from the core code itself, they also fall under the open source license and he forfeits the copyright he wants for the one already in place. The license small print is worth looking into as a designer, or else the first savy guy who buys a cheap copy can and will resell it for less. When creating anything based on an open source application its important to know what you can and cannot do to protect your work.
GemViper – I’m not going to pretend to know everything about open-source licensing, but what you’re saying sounds like complete BS. If this is indeed true – why has Automattic (for example) not said anything? I’m definitely not the only WP designer out there charging for my Premium News Themes… Plus Automattic has announced a Theme Marketplace of their own, where any designer can sell his designs. Mmm… I think I’m thus pretty covered.
I’m glad you’re not pretending however before publishing anything more you need to learn those rights.
I’m not saying you can’t charge for your work, you can.
I am saying, based on the license this theme is issued under as I write this, that you can’t restrict the work once its purchased. It’s based on an open source application that has a non-ammendable license and reproduces code found within that application.
If someone wants to give it out for free after buying it under that license, they can. I’d suggest changing the license type asap or distinguishing the code from wordpress.
(don’t take offense – i’m saying look into this quick before its too late, you do need to know)
So what license would you thus suggest?
Lets move this to email adii. What i’m saying only applies to distribution, anyone who has created a theme for themselves and hasn’t distributed it, this doesn’t apply. Most people buying a theme will guard it like gold, but with blogging becoming ultra popular thats no longer the case.
email sent adii – for anyone else interested in GNU license ruless – http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
Pay special attention to #10 – paragraph 3. Also notice that #7, A through F, tells you what you ARE allowed to protect and how. This stuff is important people, how else will bloggers rule in 2008 ?
Oh wow, that’s a beautiful theme. I was getting ready to have a designer build me a blog for $150 but I love this theme. I think I just might buy it this week. How easy would it be to customize it? I don’t need anything major, just maybe adding a few things like “recent readers” “top commentators” and such. Also, my blog is going to be about finances, cars, health, etc. Would you guys recommend this theme? I guess the category of the blog doesn’t really matter right?
Glad you like!
The theme was coded to be customized and you should be easily able to do the basic customisations (like you mentioned). With the Theme Options tab and the fact that the theme is widgetized, it definitely makes your task even easier! 
There are so many themes that I want to get, I’m having a unique blog designs semi redesign done soon… now I want this one too. Might be time to move some more blogs to wordpress …..
Techie Buzz has a very basic theme!
I am offering free blog redesigns myself, with unique list images, comment styling & headers. All designs are xhtml and css validated.
Here are some of my happy friends who have changed their design with me:
+ Bloggrrl.com – Pagerank: 4, RSS Subscribers: 440
+ KingNomar.com – Pagerank: 4, RSS Subscribers: 175
+ RobNeville.net – Pagerank: 4, RSS Subscribers: 60
(rob neville has not uploaded the design yet.)
Check my blog to see if you are eligible:
http://www.turkhitbox.com/design/custom-unique-wordpress-themes-for-your-blog.html
Still, it’s a hefty price to pay, there are premium templates out there selling bundled packages for 1/2 the price..
Nice template though..
This is too funny because just yesterday I was looking for some premium themes and found this on Google.
And I have the same opinion: they look and feel quite good. I am buying some for a network of blogs.
Pedro
This is realy a nice theme. I will get back to it, next time I start a news-blog. I recently bought a realy bad-coded theme and had to do a lot of handcoding to get things right. Next time I will invest the few extra-bucks to get such a nice theme.
*bookmarked!*
Nice clean theme. It seems clean themes are showing up all over the place now. I like the inclusion of a banner management script.
Looks like the site is down. Right in the middle of the John Chow Effect too!
I guess I’ll check back later.
It’s back up – we’re just doing some upgrades to the MySQL on the system.
johnchow.com is really turning into an online marketplace with all these people trying to sell stuff on the site!!!
I think that if people think its worth paying $400 for a review on his blog let them!
Pesonally I think he should increase his prices to $500 (since he’s getting great publicity off alot of places stating how its helped them loads)
But anyways…if you want him to provide great content…you’ve just gotta see a few reviews
it is already an online market here in John chow.
I am subscriber of this blog for some time now and these reviews didn’t bother me at all – in fact, this one is quite useful. Maybe I’ll buy a better theme for my blog – when I’ll pile up some $
. Anyway, the man has to live, doesn’t he? Why blame him for writing some paid reviews ? 
Adii comes from my country. NICE!
I bought this theme and like alot more than Brians theme (which I bought too). Adii’s theme came with decent documentation, which brians came with none at all, which left a newbie such as my self very confused.
Adii theme has Premium News settings option in the wordpress option, where with a click of a switch you can remove the video player, and many other features. This is worth the money.