Photocrati

Choosing the right theme can make or break your website.

We’ve been there – trying out countless themes for our own WPBeginner blog. While we now have a custom design, that experience has given us a keen eye for what website owners need in a theme.

We’ve also worked closely with a ton of photographers and have a long history of recommending world-class plugins and themes to people who run photography portfolios.

In this Photocrati review, we’re putting all this experience to good use. We’ll be looking closely at the popular Photocrati WordPress photography theme, to see if it has the features, layout, and design photographers needs to display their original work in an eye-catching way.

So, is this the right WordPress photography theme for you? Let’s find out, in this Photocrati review.

Photocrati Review: Why Use It in WordPress?

Photocrati is a premium WordPress theme for photographers. With Photocrati, it’s easy to get your photography website up and running, thanks to tons of built-in demo themes and a 1-click demo installer.

No matter what design you choose, you’ll get access to unlimited customization options.

Inside the WordPress Customizer, you can change the fonts, colors, layout, sidebars, spacing, and more.

When you’re happy with how the design looks, you can even export your settings and share them with other users or websites.

To help you display your photos and images, Photocrati comes bundled with the free NextGEN Gallery plugin and NextGEN Gallery Pro.

These two popular WordPress gallery plugins allow you to display your photos in beautiful layouts and lightbox popups that work seamlessly with the Photocrati theme.

Photocrati Review: The Right Photography Theme for You?

The right photography theme will help you showcase your photos in the best possible way. This will create a great first impression, and make people want to see more of your work.

With that in mind, in this Photocrati review we’ll see if it’s the right photography theme for your WordPress website.

1. Over 520 Designs

Photocrati comes with over 65 built-in designs, which have up to 8 home page styles each. This means you’ll have over 520 starting designs to choose from.

You can preview any of these designs, or import them into your photography blog or portfolio website with just a few clicks.

2. Endless Customization Options

No matter what design you choose, you can fine-tune every part of your Photocrati theme in the WordPress Customizer.

Simply open the Customizer as normal and you’ll get access to hundreds of options. In this way, you can customize every part of your WordPress theme including the fonts, colors, sizes, and spacing.

You can also create custom navigation menus for your photography website.

In this way, you can tweak every part of the design to look and act exactly as you want, including using your own color scheme and branding.

3. Share and Save Custom Designs

After fine-tuning your design in the WordPress Customizer, you can export your settings with just a few clicks.

This creates a .dat file that you can import into any other WordPress blog or business website.

Simply install Photocrati on the new destination site and select ‘Import.’

As already mentioned in this Photocrati review, this is perfect for sharing your designs with other websites. For example, you might run a WordPress development agency and want to use the same settings across all your client sites. Rather than manually applying these settings to each new website, you can simply export your design and use it as a site template.

Photocrati’s import/export tool is also useful if you own a portfolio of websites, and want to use the same design across all your blogs, sites, or online stores. You can even sell your exported designs to other Photocrati users, and make money online.

4. Search Engine Optimized

When ranking websites, speed is a major factor that Google takes into consideration. However, showing lots of large, high-resolution images can slow your site and hurt your SEO. With that in mind, you’ll want to do everything you can to boost your WordPress website’s speed and performance.

The good news is that Photocrati is optimized for performance and boasts fast page load times. This means you can show all your photographs and images, without slowing your site. In this way, Photocrati can boost your image SEO and your overall WordPress SEO.

5. Optimized for Mobile

According to our internet usage statistics, mobile internet traffic accounts for almost 55% of total web traffic. That said, you’ll want to make sure your photos look good and load quickly on smartphones and tablets.

With that in mind, no Photocrati review would be complete without confirming that it’s optimized for mobile devices. This means your site will look great, no matter whether the visitor is using a smartphone, tablet, or desktop computer.

To see this in action, you can view the mobile version of your site from desktop, at any point.

6. Build Beautiful Galleries with NextGEN

The Photocrati theme comes bundled with the free NextGEN Gallery plugin. This is a popular WordPress gallery and portfolio plugin.

The first time you import a Photocrati theme demo, you’ll be able to install NextGEN Gallery with just a few clicks.

After installing and activating the plugin, you can create as many galleries as you want.

This means you can display your photos in beautiful layouts and slideshows.

With NextGEN, you can customize the built-in gallery styles using straightforward settings.

This means you’ll have no problems creating a style that perfectly fits your Photocrati WordPress theme.

After creating a gallery, you can add it to any page, post, or widget-ready area using the NextGEN block.

Sometimes, you may want to show a bigger version of the images in your gallery. This is particularly important when your photos have lots of detail, or you sell digital art or graphics. The good news is that NextGEN Gallery comes with a built-in lightbox popup.

Finally, if you have lots of galleries, then it might help to organize them into albums. This can help visitors find the content they’re looking for, even when your WordPress website has lots of different galleries.

7. Sell Photos Online with NextGEN Gallery Pro

Want to turn your passion for photography into a profitable online business?

Photocrati also comes bundled with NextGEN Gallery Pro, which builds on the free plugin and offers a ton of additional features.

This includes the option to sell your images as digital downloads or physical products. In particular, NextGEN Gallery Pro integrates with Printlabs, which means print orders will be fulfilled and shipped to your customers automatically through White House Custom Colour.

Using NextGEN Gallery Pro, you can quickly and easily create a price list based on WHCC’s print catalog. Then, simply add your own retail price and markup, and link that price list to your image gallery.

With that done, customers can order your products and NextGEN will automatically send the resulting order to WHCC. The company will then print the order on demand and ship it to the customer in a white-labeled package.

This means you can sell images without having to manage your inventory, process orders, handle shipping, and perform many other tasks typically associated with running a successful online marketplace.

If you take photos for clients, then NextGEN Gallery Pro can also add photo proofing to your WordPress website.

This allows customers to ‘favorite’ images as they’re looking through your galleries.

When they’re finished, they’ll see an option to submit their selection.

If you do sell digital downloads and images online, then you’ll want to protect your original work from content thieves.

NextGEN Gallery can automatically add a watermark to all your images. You can also disable right-click in your NextGEN galleries so people can’t easily download your images.

For more information about this plugin, please see our NextGEN Gallery review.

8. Professional and Community Support

As we’ve seen in this Photocrati review, the plugin comes with dozens of professionally-designed layouts that you can add to your site with just a few clicks. You can also fine-tune these designs inside the familiar WordPress theme customizer. However, sometimes you may need some extra help.

If you prefer to research yourself, then Photocrati has detailed online documentation and a comprehensive help portal.

There’s also the Photocrati blog where you’ll find step-by-step guides covering everything from how to use the theme, right through to general advice on how to choose the best WordPress photography plugins.

All the Photocrati pricing plans also come with professional support so you can get help directly from the experts.

Photocrati Review: Pricing and Plans

No matter what Photocrati plan you buy, you’ll get access to all its features, designs, and the two NextGEN Gallery plugins. This is everything you need to build a beautiful photography website, create an unlimited number of galleries, and sell your images online.

The best plan for you, depends on the number of websites where you want to use Photocrati.

There are 3 plans to choose from:

• Plus. For $99.50 per year, you can use Photocrati on a single website. This is ideal for photographers who need to create an online portfolio, or freelancers who want to build a stock photography site, online store, or any other platform where you plan to sell your work online.
• Pro. Do you want to use Photocrati on multiple websites? Priced at $139.50, Pro allows you to install Photocrati on up to 3 websites. This makes it a great choice if you own several WordPress blogs, websites, or ecommerce platforms. For example, you might run a photography blog where you share best practices with your target audience, and a separate digital product marketplace where readers can buy your photos.
• Lifetime. Priced at $349.50, Lifetime allows you to use Photocrati on up to 25 websites, forever. This makes Lifetime the perfect option for WordPress developers, agencies, marketers, and anyone else who manages client websites. Simply buy a Lifetime license and you can use the Photocrati theme and its bundled NextGEN Gallery plugins on all your client sites.

Photocrati Review: Is it Worth It?

To conclude this in-depth Photocrati review, we’re confident that it’s the right theme for your WordPress photography website.

It comes with 520 starting designs and unlimited customization options, so you can create a photography theme that perfectly suits your client or personal branding.

Photocrati also comes bundled with NextGEN Gallery Pro, so you can easily sell your photos online using automatic print fulfilment. You can also create an unlimited number of galleries and albums, and display them in beautiful lightbox popups.

If you want to use Photocrati on a single website, then Plus has everything you need. Meanwhile, you can use Photocrati Pro on up to 3 WordPress websites.

Finally, if you’re a WordPress developer or agency, then Lifetime allows you to use Photocrati on up to 25 websites, forever.

We hope this Photocrati review helped you decide whether it’s the right photography theme for you. Next, you may want to see our guide on how to choose the best web design software, or see our expert pick of the best drag and drop page builders compared.

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