TheGem is a multi-purpose template, launched in August 2016 by Codex Themes, an Envato Elite author. Designed for both creative and business industry, it helps you create a beautiful online portfolio, multiple niche websites, and virtual stores. TheGem is packed with features, demos, styles and layouts, ready to transform any project plan into reality.
Design
A modern and minimal theme, TheGem was designed to help you build a professional website combining creativity with style. Responsive and retina ready, this theme is flexible and allows you to choose your page layout. Using a full width or boxed layout, merged with beautiful graphic elements, you can be sure your website will be unique.
TheGem has a custom plugin dedicated to help you import the demos on your site, giving you a choice between a full demo, a partial one and over 40 pre-built designs called Selected Concepts. I’ll leave it to you to discover your favorite combination and create a beautiful website using pre-built templates like Agencies, Apps, Construction, Architecture, Real Estate, Beauty, Creative, Gym, or Shop.
With TheGem you can adjust the logo size with a control button. For desktop and mobile, you can also customize the logo style with a dark, light color to be more visible when the header’s background is enabled.
Horizontally, in full-width mode or a vertical position, you can style the website’s main menu & header to be light or dark, changing the visual appearance of the whole page.
The footer area can be customized with an information box, color or image background, and widgets to make this section a dynamic part of your website.
This theme comes with six post formats to choose from: image, video, audio, quote, gallery and multiple custom post types. ‘TheGem Theme Elements’ plugin gathers portfolios, news, quick finders, clients, galleries, teams, and testimonials post types, accessible from the WordPress admin area.
When a website is built using media files and texts, typography is an important feature that goes hand in hand with creativity. From the Fonts Manager, the theme allows you to upload custom fonts in different formats like EOT, SVG, TTF, and WOFF. You can also use beautiful typographies from the Google Fonts set.
TheGem template is social friendly and comes with a dedicated section in the Theme Options panel. You can activate your favorite social profiles like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus, Vimeo, Youtube and so on.
Functionality
The Theme Options panel is intuitive, very easy to understand and use. From this panel, you have multiple choices to customize the General Options, Header, Fonts, Colors, Background or Social networks. With the drag and drop functionality given by the Visual Composer page builder plugin and TheGem Shortcodes, you will be able to customize your posts and pages with a large number of elements, blocks, columns, both on backend and frontend.
When creating a new post or page, you will get an additional set of customization options. These refer to functionality, but also to appearance. You can choose what widgets you want to display on sidebars and set up the header’s behavior on a particular page. You can also style icons from three available packs, add a video background, select a given background for header section or upload an image.
The theme comes with six pre-defined areas for sidebars. The Codex Themes author included over 15 custom widgets in the template, like The Gem Clients, The Gem Gallery, Picture Box, Project Slider and so on. Using the Visual Editor widget, you can add information boxes containing media files into sidebars.
To add beautiful slideshows on pages, you can choose to create them with the NivoSlider, LayerSlider or Revolution Slider plugins. This template also comes with premium plugins like Visual Composer, TheGem Import, TheGem Theme Elements.
If you plan to create a web shop, you will be glad to know that the WooCommerce plugin is compatible with this multi-purpose theme. MailChimp, Google Analytics, Contact Form7, Black Studio TinyMCE widget plugins are also included. With the free plugin ZillaLikes, you can show likes automatically and counts on posts and pages.
The theme package file contains a child theme, which can be enabled when a user wants to make code changes, without altering the main template.
| GENERAL | |
|---|---|
| Item name | TheGem |
| Category | Multi-purpose |
| Type | Premium |
| Author | Codex Themes |
| Envato elite author | Yes |
| Tested version | 1.1.0 |
| COMPATIBILITY | |
| Content width | Full Width |
| Browser compatibility | IE8+ / Chrome / FF / Opera / Safari / Edge |
| WooCommerce | Yes |
| bbPress | Yes |
| BuddyPress | Yes |
| WPML | Yes |
| FONTS AND TRANSLATION | |
| Integrated translation | - |
| Google fonts | Yes |
| Custom fonts | Yes |
| Typekit fonts | - |
| RTL support | Yes |
| POST FEATURES | |
| Video posts | Yes |
| Audio posts | Yes |
| Post templates | 1 |
| Post view counter | - |
| Smart lists | - |
| Social share | Yes |
| Custom image lightbox | Yes |
| Custom image galery | Yes |
| Link post | - |
| Lightbox skins | 1 |
| PAGE FEATURES | |
| Page templates | 150 |
| Blocks | 26 |
| Widgets | 20 |
| Header styles | 4 |
| Footer styles | 1 |
| Masonry layout | Yes |
| Mega menus | Yes |
| Sticky menu | Yes |
| Social networks | Yes |
| Social counter | - |
| Video playlists | - |
| Instagram widget | - |
| Custom Page Builder | Visual Composer |
| Portfolio styles | 3 |
| Responsive layout | Breakpoints |
| Blog layouts | 13 |
| Menu styles | 4 |
| Dual Sidebars | - |
| Shortcodes | Yes |
| Video slider | - |
| OTHER FEATURES | |
| Demos included | 47 |
| SEO optimized | Yes |
| Custom Theme Updater | - |
| ADS | |
| Ad system | - |
| Adsense support | - |
| Custom ads | - |
| PERFORMANCE | |
| CSS file size | 894 kb |
| Overall speed | High |
| Performance documentation | - |
| USER EXPERIENCE | |
| Total ratings | 206 |
| User rating | |
| Learnability | Medium |
| DESIGN | |
| Responsive design | Yes |
| Retina ready | Yes |
| DOCUMENTATION | |
| Difficulty | Beginner |
| Explanations | Explicit |
| Explicit screen shots | Yes |
| Video tutorials | Yes |
| Search option | - |
| Extra documentation | Yes |
| PREMIUM PLUGINS | |
| Plugins | Visual Composer, TheGem Import, TheGem Theme Elements, Revolution Slider, LayerSlider, |
| VALUE | |
| Price | $59 |
| Value for the money | Very good |
Performance
We have tested the TheGem’s default demo on different page speed tests, and the content loads with a high speed.
Downsides
Importing the demos might take some time, as the imports are loading quite slowly. The author also warns users about this.
Even if the theme is entirely compatible and tested with the WPML premium plugin, TheGem comes without a custom, built-in translation panel. You can find .po and .mo files in theme’s installation package and use an editor to work with them, or you can purchase WPML plugin.
Hello dear! With so many options, the site still goes that fast? Now I’m using a free theme, but I need to use multiple plugins to get everything I want, and this slows really down my site. I want to invest in The Gem, but i’m concerned. The demo looks explosive and this review is really helpful, but I’m not sure what to do. My site is about photography and travelling. Can you help pls? Yours sincerely, Anne Jameson.
Hi, Anne! TheGem is a beautiful theme, with a quite high site speed. This measurement depends on many factors. In the first place, the website’s loading speed depends on an excellent host. Then, you have to optimize the site and the WordPress install. The final step is to upload a theme and manage your content, media files and the additional plugins.
How easy is The Gem vs. something like Divi? I’m new to them both. Thanks! My sense of The Gem is that it has great functionality and I prefer the movement and features. Do you have any preferences?
Hi Stephanie, Thank you for your given trust! You can check out our amazing comparing tool to see the differences between these two themes https://www.wpion.com/review_compare/divi-wordpress-theme-review_vs_thegem-multi-purpose-wordpress-theme/. Also, please note that TheGem WordPress theme is sold on Themeforest.net, and the Divi template is sold outside this market. As for the specifications, both have multi-purpose functionality and a medium learning curve. They are both great, but your website project makes all the difference :). Good luck with your project!
How good The Gem is for ecommerce?
Need your opinion
Hi! People use the multipurpose TheGem theme on their websites, even on online Stores. It’s compatible with the WooCommerce plugin and you can see how the demo Shops look here – http://codex-themes.com/thegem/shop/. Just use the “Shop” dropdown menu to see more. Good luck with your project!
Hi I’m making a website for a client who just wants to use the site as a product display and a place to go for information on his company. My question is, can you use TheGem to style product displays and not use any e-commerce of any kind?
Designer was telling me to go with Avada that everything is always updated often unlike other ones. But I really love the Gem templates… should I just go forward with the Gem, or can I create something similar using Avada?
Hi Brian,
Thanks for your message. If you love working with a template, then why change it? With Avada, you can design any website, as it is a multipurpose template, well supported and constantly updated. It really depends on what’s your website purpose. If you have a news-related website, personal blog, medical one, or others. Maybe you should test Avada too, and see which one suits your site best. Good luck with your project!
Hi Anne, Does the elemetor pro version come with The Gem pack? or we have to buy it separatedly?