I just finished setting up a website for a Pilates studio. The owner chose the Eleven40 WordPress theme from StudioPress.
The first thing you notice about Eleven40 is that it’s w-i-d-e. You don’t have a lot of empty space alongside your columns in this theme!
I’m a big fan of white space. It’s a very important part of design. (As its name implies, white space is the area of background around your images, text or other website items that separates one thing from another.)
White space tells your eye where and how to move. When a website doesn’t have enough of it, you feel stressed just looking at it and you’re likely to leave a page faster.
Even though Eleven40 takes up more room from side to side, it still allows plenty of white space.
Here’s what the home page of the Inspired Movement Pilates site looks like.
See how narrow the margins are compared with this site?
Other Features
Columns
You can use either a 2-column or 3-column layout, with the sidebar(s) on the right, left or one on each side.
Colors
Eleven40 comes with four color choices: orange, blue, green and red. You can see the orange in the example above.
Mobile Responsive
Automatically resizes to fit a smart phone or tablet screen. You can read more about why you should have a mobile responsive theme here.
Here’s what it looks like across several mobile devices.
Home Page
It’s easy to customize the home page using widgets. Step-by-step directions and examples are available to you once you’ve purchased the theme.
Genesis Framework
It’s built on the Genesis Framework. I won’t go into the sorts of details about it that get programmers salivating, but there are a handful of important things you should know about Genesis.
- It’s super secure. The developers have worked very hard to give you a WordPress platform that’s built to stand up to hackers and other internet bad guys. The company has a strong commitment to security, and you benefit.
- Built-in support for Google Authorship. Don’t know what that is? It’s a very important new development that will help you rank better in Google search. Genesis makes it easy to claim your authorship. You can read more about Google Authorship and why it’s important here.
- Great typography. Fonts are easy to read, and of a good size with sensible line spacing.
- Excellent tech support. StudioPress tech support is fast, dependable, and their staff knows their products inside and out.
General Impressions
The Eleven40 Theme is a clean, visually appealing theme that’s easy to use right out of the box. If you have questions, or want to customize it, the support team is responsive and helpful. This theme is best suited for a traditional blog-style design.
Find out more about the Eleven40 Theme and buy it here. [aff]
Note: On August 8, 2013, StudioPress released a new version of the TwentyEleven Theme. This review pertains to the original theme release. I will review the TwentyEleven Pro Theme shortly.
Hi Susanna,
I love the new design and the Eleven40 theme for my studio site!
I was nervous about moving the site from the free WordPress platform
over to BlueHost, but you made the transition really painless.
Thank you for being such a great resource and getting it up and running
quickly. 🙂
In Good Health,
Becky Walls, Owner
Inspired Movement Pilates Studio, LLC
Becky, it was a pleasure working on the IMovePilates.com site. Thanks for giving me the opportunity.
Hi Susanna,
eleven40 is my favorite Genesis theme and I like the way you designed that pilates site. Interesting since releasing eleven40 now more than 1 year its popularity never was decreased. I think people like the clean and wide layout.
Keep up with the good work.
~ Dragan
I’ve been thinking about making the switch to the Eleven40 theme for my personal website. It looks impressive and super customizable even for people like me that don’t like to get into the nitty gritty with the code. Thanks for the insight!
-David
I’m considering purchasing this theme for my site, after seeing that it matched exactly what I wanted and what I even mocked up in a design of my own (though this design is much more high quality). Thanks for posting a review of it, it helps!
You’re welcome! Glad you liked it.
Hello, I found your site when searching for eleven40 customizations. I’m seriously considering this theme for my blog. Would you be willing to share how you enlarged the logo to fit across the header? I was leery of all the black on top so I was thrilled how you covered most of it with the orange logo. Thanks!
Hi Carrie,
It’s not hard if you don’t mind getting into your CSS a little bit. The orange is actually one of the color options for the theme. It’s been a while so I can’t tell you specifically the modifications I made, but if you have questions or problems the tech support team at StudioPress are very helpful.
Love the work you have done on IMovePilates.com.
I’m building my first website and am using eleven40 pro. The orange stitched box surrounding the title doesn’t seem to be avaialble? Was it an extra you added in or is it something that disappeared when Studiopress upgraded to eleven40 pro? Thanks.
Craig, sadly, it’s something that disappeared when the theme was upgraded to Pro. I don’t know whether it’s something you’d be able to access with a little help from StudioPress support — never bothered to inquire. But if you like it, you might reach out to them directly.
Thanks for a quick response Susanna, much appreciated. It’s a shame it disappeared as it certainly adds to the impact, looks great in orange with the orange pilates studio image you have, really gives a professional.
May I ask just one more question? The menus in eleven40 pro by default appear at the top with white text on a black background. On your wonderful pilates site, you have them rather smartly underneath your orange title in black on a white background. Is that again something that was only available in eleven40 and disappeared in pro or did you achieve it via custom code or a plugin. Thanks, Craig.
Hi Craig,
Sorry for the late response – I’ve been on vacation. (Strange, but true.)
The older Eleven40 theme places the primary menu below the header (where it shows on the IMovePilates.com site). Eleven40 Pro places the primary menu to the right of the logo, and the secondary in the footer.
If you’d like your primary menu to be located below the site title area, contact StudioPress support. They often have handy little bits of code to accomplish things like that. (Note that these changes take place within the functions.php file, so you need to be comfortable working with that.)