Well, this seems to be the only way to get a hold of Envato. I just purchased my second theme from them, and it is broken. That’s 2 for 2 wasted money, and I want a discussion about quality control and how they are going to fix these broken themes.
Make sure you purchase recently updated themes ( within last 6 month up to 9 months is ok ) as well as double check the theme compatibility the the plugins and WordPress ( as well as the PHP version )
According to my experience, these are the main reasons why you think that the theme is broken.
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Updated 12/2022 - no plugins, latest WordPress. No, in this case, it’s missing documentation and it doesn’t produce a functioning page “out of the box”
Out of interest - this was from Themeforest and not Elements? What item is it?
It’s pretty hard for there not to be documentation - when you download the item you can choose ‘All files and documentation’ from the drop down
This theme is called “Soapy.” It comes with a directory called “Documentation” which contains a single text file with a link. The link resolves to a dead site (404 error). I’m sure I can dig up answers but that’s not what I buy themes for. Themes are supposed to take much of that work out of making a website look and function a certain way. If I have to figure out how to get the website to look/function that way even after buying a theme, why buy a theme? I’m frustrated in that this is the second theme that wouldn’t work “out of the box”. One of them requires me to turn over admin access to someone I don’t know.
It’s unusual that a power elite author would not be very active and their documentation not be working.
Just for the purpose of clarity:
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the image being placeholders is normal practice and outlined in the item description so that is not an error.
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Similarly - unlike a site template, no WP theme is going to mirror the demo ‘out of the box’ and without installing demo/your own content and configuring it properly, so again I am not sure that makes this at fault.
That all said - the author’s documentation etc. should definitely be working and there’s no obvious reason that you should need to provide admin access at any stage.
As Envato do not own/support the items themselves it is impossible for them to know the status of every individual item and what the authors are up to. However, if the item is genuinely bugged then you’d likely be entitled to a refund
Right. And in the same purpose – clarity. I realize that I would require the sample data. My practice in the past was to install with the demo data and then replace the sample content with my content. The missing images was something I didn’t expect. Themes I purchased in the past included all the images, too, but it’s been a while and I guess things change. The notice on the images is listed at the bottom and I didn’t read the entire “ad”. I saw a look that I liked and I bought.
As to “genuinely bugged,” I really don’t know because I don’t know if I’m missing steps in the author’s proposed installation process. The root issue is the lack of documentation. I agree 100% with your bolded comment. I don’t know anything about “Envato” or “Themeforest” and who owns what responsibility. I know where I bought this theme from. I know where I bought the previous theme from. I know they both have issues. I know one author, as “support,” told me to give him my admin credentials. That has tainted the reputation of where I bought the two themes from.
Given the item says it’s supported the best option is to try and contact the author for support (it says can take 2 business days) that way if you do not get a response then you would be even more entitled to refund the purchase
I finally did. This is where the various links took me to in the beginning, but I (think) I was able to reach out to the author. I’d think it’ll be more than two days since 1) weekend and 2) holiday. Time will tell.
Every author has their own coding style. You will need to familiarize yourself with each of the theme ( unless you can but the items from one author only ) at some specific time. As an experienced developer, sometimes I got request from the clients “something is not working” and it doesn’t take lots of time for me to find the problem but not for my clients.
About the “out of box” issue, @charlie4282 already answered, the theme doesn’t have to come “ready to use” and you will have to put your content and configure it or import the demo data.
The documentation: time to time, the support links may be changed. They should include the links to the item description page or somewhere on the admin panel. You can double check for it.
Edit: Adding the screenshot. It took less than 10 seconds for me to find the documentations.
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