Review of The Client Machine WordPress Theme
* Disclaimer: I’m a regular writer for FreelanceFolder, but have done my best to view this theme objectively and let know you of all the pros and cons.
The Client Machine is a new theme from FreelanceFolder with a ton of features meant for the beginning freelancer. It incorporates a clean and professional portfolio site design, a backend area to make good looking invoices and proposals, as well as a login area for clients to view them.
I was able to get my hands on a copy for a review and was quite impressed with the theme. I mentioned it’s for beginning freelancers, only because an advanced freelancer probably already uses something for their invoices and proposals, as well as having their own custom design. However, the unhappy freelancer may want to look into this theme as well.
The Design
The design of this site is very well done. The proposal and invoice designs are all very professional looking ( you can see the proposal to the left). The site is clean and uncluttered. The only negative I might add, is that I’m not a fan of the avatars, but thanks to the admin panels (discussed below) the avatar can be easily changed or removed.
The proposal templates allows clients to accept the project and the invoice allows a direct link for clients to pay you via Paypal.
The Admin
The admin area is beautiful. The Client Machine takes advantage of custom post types in WordPress 3.0 to give you separate areas for your portfolio, proposals and invoices. You can send invoices to the clients directly from the admin area, with a very appealing lightbox. The theme comes with a ton of options that allows you to edit almost anything, you even get several different theme colors.
One negative of this theme is that there’s no XML import file to get you started. When you install the theme, the homepage is already laid out and pre-filled with beginning content, but then the rest of the pages have to be made by the freelancer. For someone who’s unsure of how to put it all together, or what kind of information to put in, might be confused at this step in the installation process. It would have been nice if they included the XML file from their demo site.
However, there’s a comprehensive help file that can help with the installation file. It even included 10 screencasts with a ton of great freelance advice.
Other Great Features
- Custom social media display in the footer, contains several icons and sites.
- Little or no coding experience required
- Files are neat and organized and it’s easy to see what everything’s doing
- The code is clean and properly structured.
- Custom login area for clients.
- Paypal integration to allow clients to pay through your site, in the correct amounts.
Some Other Cons
- No way to find the theme on FreelanceFolder, unless you search for it
- A few validation errors
- Homepage hero doesn’t seem to center in Firefox
- Depending on how many people buy and purchase the theme, potential clients could recognize it as a template site.
Worth Buying?
If you’re just starting out in the freelance world, or if you’re a veteran freelance who’s terribly disorganized and has an outdated portfolio, I highly recommend trying out the theme. This was one of the easiest themes for me to install and get started with, and I’ve been through a ton of pre-made themes before.
Where To Buy
You can buy The Client Machine on FreelancerFolder. It’s currently on sale for $59.
About the author
Amber Weinberg specializes in clean and semantic XHTML, CSS and WordPress development. She has over 10 years of coding experience and is pretty cool to work with. Amber is available for freelance work, so why not hire her for your next project?
idea is perfect. but it need a feature: most of my clients pay their bills with bonus.. the invoice system in client machine is not allowing add bonus to invoice amount.
this is the first thing i found.. what are you thinking guys?
Can’t you just adjust the invoice amount for this?
“Paypal integration to allow clients to pay through your site, in the correct amounts.” This is what impresses me the most. With how it’s set up, does it forward you to Pay Pal and then back, or do you fill it out and securely pay on-site?
I’m not sure, as I didn’t get that far in the install. If you look at their screens though, you can see that it takes you to the PayPal site with all the invoice info already filled in for you.