For people to donate their time to the WordPress community by developing free themes is one thing. When the theme stands out amongst thousands as truly meeting it’s purpose, that is excellent.
Despite the spell checker setting (which is set to American in recognition of the majority of my visitors), I’m a Brit based in the UK. I do not say awesome every other sentence as a habit. When I say awesome, I mean I am awed, overwhelmed and grateful. This is out of the ordinary – and a very pleasing experience.
When the author offers first class customer service – a million miles away from the common “what do you expect when it is free” attitude – that is awesome.
You might wonder why service and support matter – surely, it is the theme performance that is most important? True, a theme must work properly and deliver superb presentation. However, even exceptional themes, if not well supported, soon fall by the wayside. A well supported theme is different – it just gets better and better – as you will soon see.
I’m testing out the Swift theme on this blog. As I mentioned last week, the best WordPress themes are usually the fastest. Swift by name, Swift by nature.
The first impression was good. It is fast, but I have not tested it fully yet. It is flexible, but I have not explored all the options yet – just enough to realize that there are sufficient options to make it possible to avoid the samey look that many themes bring.
“So why are you writing a review when you haven’t finished testing it yet?” I hear you ask.
This is not a review – that will come soon – but the level of customer service that the author offers deserves immediate recognition. So often we see bad support for WP themes (and plugins), and the excuse invariably is that customer support is not justified because the software is free. That is wrong – there is nothing more frustrating than seeing something useful fail because it’s author failed to explain properly how it works.
Contrast that ‘take it or leave it’ attitude with Satish Gandham from SwiftThemes.
First off, I could see from the site that the theme is well supported. These days, if there is no obvious author support, I tend to ignore themes. With WordPress advancing as quickly as it does, it is not worth getting locked into outmoded software. Swift was obviously supported, which is good, but not exceptional.
The exceptional customer support came to my attention this way…
I keep a ‘work-in-progress’ blog to record half-developed ideas (some say they all are 
) and progress notes. It saves cluttering up the blog, and sometimes what could be Draft or Private deserves to be seen. I made a note about Swift as part of another topic, mainly as a reminder to do the Swift review once I had finished the current project.
I linked to the Swift site, and Satish soon dropped by to tell me he had a new version of the Swift WP theme available in beta test. OK, it is not remarkable that a busy website owner and theme developer should take the trouble to acknowledge a link, but it is rare enough to be pleasing.
The remarkable came when I checked the link. Not only has Satish made improvements, but he has set up a demo site where you can login and view all the new options. None of the usual “take this beta stuff and see if you can wreck your site with it”. He has taken the trouble to remove all the beta testing risk by providing a demo site. Furthermore, it is not just a meaningless 2 page spread of indecipherable Latin – this has enough content to see how a real site will look.
As you can see, I’m impressed. I’m also very grateful that there are still WordPress contributors who go the extra mile and offer exceptional customer service without charge. Truly, the best WP theme service.
Best WP Theme Service: Next Steps
Do you know other WordPress theme authors that offer exceptional service? Please share the details below. Let’s keep this to format enhancing themes, but if you want to share WP plugin customer service experiences, why not join the discussions in the Functionality Forum (start a new discussion if there is nothing suitable at the moment)
Tags: best WP theme, Swift theme