Bateaux Multi-Purpose WordPress Theme Review 2016

Bateaux is an innovative multi-purpose WordPress Theme made by Twisttheme. You can use this theme to crank out high quality websites in no time at all. Bateaux offers you a powerful set of tools and options to get creative with. There are some interesting features that outperform some of the top-selling themes on the market. Use it to build websites for any niche. Possible use cases include: landing pages, design studio websites, ecommerce, restaurants, blogs, one page websites or any other business purpose.

I really enjoyed taking Bateaux for a test drive. The developers did a really great job on this theme. They found a harmonious balance between simplicity, power and ease of use. I was pleasantly surprised with just about everything this theme had to offer and how easy it was to work with.

Features

This theme is packed with features, but it feels very light. This came out in June of 2016 and it feels current. I am interested in seeing how it develops as more and more people use it, which I’m sure they will. The options and tools are easy to use yet powerful. It won’t take long to master this theme.

Choosing color schemes, changing fonts, building pages, building mega menus, adding sections and customizing posts is simple. As of now this theme comes with 25 unique homepages. It also has lots of pre-made templates to make creating professional layouts very simple. This review will go over some of the features and options that Bateaux has to offer. Let’s get started with the Blueprint Page Builder, which is really one of the most impressive things about Bateaux.

Blueprint Page Builder

As with all themes, you should consult the documentation before diving in order to get familiar. I always do this, but first I like to tinker around to see what I am working with. My first experience with the Blueprint Page Builder was awesome. It’s light, fast and live. I felt like I was looking at the future of WordPress page building when I opened Blueprint.

This page builder gives you plenty of power and it optimizes your workflow. It loads fast and offers a live preview so you can see changes instantly. The Theme’s website really says it all:

“Blueprint gives you the power of live page editing with zero compromise on the performance. It features clean and easy-to-use interface as if you were using the native app, think of Sketch and Keynote. You can create a page within minutes.”

Everything was easy to find and I had no problems adding templates, finding the elements I needed and customizing anything from the backend. Building pages is simple and you don’t need to code or even use shortcodes! Of course there are a set of shortcodes that come with Bateaux that you can place just about anywhere if you want.

There are 6 components that make up Blueprint:

1. Menu Bar – the menu bar lets you manage templates, section settings, add elements, preview, configure page settings and change the display of the editor.
2. Inspector – use the inspector to edit anything on the page.
3. Section – this is where you can edit sections. You can do things like set a section ID, move sections, change the background and delete sections.
4. Row – copy, duplicate, move, set the layout or delete rows.
5. Element – here you can control depending on their properties. You can copy, delete, duplicate etc.
6. Editors – the editors give you lots of power. There are editors for media, backgrounds, buttons, text (inline text editor), pricing and many other things.

Post Builder

Like the page builder, the post builder allows you to get creative. You can change the style and behavior of any single post or make global changes. You can set layout of the post, featured media style, and other settings. There are 3 main layout styles for posts and lots of different styles for featured media.

Single Blueprint Now Integrated With Single Post

UPDATE: The latest version of Bateaux , v1.1.0, was just released on July 13, 2016. The Blueprint is now integrated with WordPress Single Post. So now you can use the page builder to create layouts and edit styles on on a Single Post. This is useful if you want to do things beyond the scope of post settings. Particularly if you like to mix up styles on your posts, like adding custom boxes, unique heading styles, color sections, icons etc. Using Blueprint to do this can speed things up and give you more power at your fingertips. Instead of just changing post settings, you have the freedom to design your page any way you want.

Templates Make Things Easy

Templates allow you to quickly import layouts and styles. By using one of Bateaux’s many templates, you can build complex pages in minutes. Customize any template to make it your own. You have the option to create your own templates from scratch or save them after you have modified an existing one. In addition to the 25 homepage templates, there are multiple of templates for each of the following:

• Blog Layouts
• Creative Blog Layouts
• Featured Posts
• Post Format (audio, video, gallery etc.)
• Post Layout
• 25+ Portfolios
• Case Studies
• Multiple Products
• Single Products
• Woo Pages

As you can see there tons of possibilities with templates. We didn’t list them all, there are currently over 50. You can check out the documentation to view a complete list of pre-built templates. Click the button below to see a live preview of Bateaux.

Theme Options

The theme options panel is minimal and gives users easy options to configure Bateaux. The options panel seems light because much of the functionality is built-into the page/post editor and the customizer. The admin panel comes with 5 different tabs:

• Home – from this tab you can jump to the documentation or open a support ticket. It also has a maintenance mode feature you can toggle on or off.
• Demo – here you can import demo content with a single click.
• Customizer – import or export customizer settings. You can also reset them to default.
• Fonts – set the default fonts, add a custom font or a type kit.
• System – this area gives you an overview of the WordPress environment, server environment and provides some information about the theme.

Customizer

Bateaux also does a good job of beefing up the native WordPress customizer, which got a face lift with the release of Coleman 4.5. There are enhanced options for changing colors, adjusting the layout, customizing nav menus, editing portolios and more. From the customizer you can also quickly apply custom CSS and see your changes instantly.

The color options are very helpful, especially if you haven’t mastered the language of color yet like myself. Bateaux has a custom color picker with 14 sync colors to choose from. From the customizer you can also change things like social share buttons, the header, footer, nav bars, typography etc.

Compatible Plugins

The theme is compatible with some useful premium WordPress plugins to help you get things done. You can install for and use them FREE with purchase of Bateaux.

• WP Google Map
• Yoast SEO
• WooCommerce
• WPML Ready
• Slider Revolution ($19)
• LayerSlider ($18)
• Contactform 7

Documentation

The documentation for this theme is well-written and easy to follow. It has step-by-step instructions for everything from installation to more advanced tasks like creating mobile pop-ups. Beginners will find all the instruction needed to set things up quickly.

Final Word

Bateaux is an impressive, powerful new theme. The support is strong and the feedback from users is very good so far. The developers are taking requests, so don’t be shy to ask for any features or report any issues. One of the best things about this theme is the workflow.

Although the admin panel seems very minimal compared to some other multi-purpose themes, everything you need is right there. The Blueprint page builder is this theme’s secret weapon — and it delivers. A lot of the power comes from the Blueprint page builder, which I can’t say enough good things about. Most importantly this theme worked well for me without any problems. Bateaux is definitely going to be a contender among top tier WordPress themes.