Last November (2014), we launched BuildPress and right away it exceeded our expectations. One year later, BuildPress is still one of our best-selling themes, although the competition in this niche is getting tougher. When we were discussing options for our next WordPress theme, the construction niche was still going through our minds all the time. We asked ourselves whether we should do another construction theme or not. I know what you are asking yourself: Why on earth would someone decide to compete against themself with another similar theme? Have they really run out of ideas? Well… StructurePress is not about competing against BuildPress and we didn’t run out of ideas, but we needed a new challenge and the main question became: Can we do it better?
Research and experience
Whenever we start developing a new theme, we always conduct deep and thorough research for that niche, and with BuildPress that was no different. However, at the end there are always some doubts about how accurate our research was and whether we did it the right way. Did we miss something or add something that’s completely off? (OK, I don’t think that this actually happened 🙂 )
This is actually the main point: BuildPress was based on research but StructurePress is based on experience – which you can’t buy, but you can embrace it and become better.
Beside that, we strongly believe that each one of our themes is better than the previous one, no matter whether we are talking about the design, code or functionality.
Take a look what’s different (and better) in StructurePress:
More useful widgets
Does a construction theme need the latest news widgets? What about a Skype button call or a jobs widget? Tough decisions, believe me!
These new widgets that we’ve added to StructurePress are a kind of re-examination: besides the Skype button call and the jobs widget, you’ll find a number counter and a steps widget (to define the steps of a project better).
No more bundled plugins
Let’s say (in short) that bundled plugins are great, until something goes wrong. To display Latest Projects in the BuildPress theme, we used the Essential Grid plugin, which has its pros and cons.
Although we still think Essential Grid is a great plugin, we get a lot of support requests related to it, and this was the main reason why we developed our own widget for Latest Projects in StructurePress. It has nothing more or less than what you need to display your latest projects, plus it’s intuitive and easy to use.
If you are familiar with Essential Grid, you can, of course, use it instead.
Clean and light design
This is obviously the biggest change between BuildPress and StructurePress. The fonts and spacing are bigger, which gives you more space to breathe and process the whole website. We followed the latest trends in web design, but not at any price – the user experience is an important point of view and must be considered before all the flashy new trends.
Does StructurePress mean the end of BuildPress?
Definitely not. We’ll keep updating it and ensuring it continues to work flawlessly for all of you who already run a website on it or who might buy it in the future!
