With WordPress working as a core to one-to-many ways, it will work the same way when one think of creating or building up of a WordPress review site. Although with just like as the word says “review,” it makes a huge sense for the visitors who are going to be a part of it by accessing it. Websites like that of movies review, music review, softwares reviews, smartphones reviews and so on, it is one such never ending genre. While there are some good themes out there matching different genres, WordPress does have its own perspective themes which can be used mainly for review purpose only.
Disclosure: Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links and I will earn a commission if you make a purchase through those links. This article is not a guideline, a recommendation or endorsement of specific products.
Steam
Key Features:
- WooCommerce 2.0+ full integration and compatibility
- BuddyPress 1.7+ compatible
- AJAX admin panel
- 630 Google fonts
- 130 icons (via icon fonts)
- Full Google rich snippet and schema.org review integration
- Unlimited custom sidebars
- Unlimited colors and styles (custom logos, layouts, toggle display of all sliders and elements)
- Page builder for front page, archive pages, standard pages, unique for each minisite
- Mega menu dynamically loads posts for minisites, taxonomies, categories, and tags
- Sticky top bar with menu and login/account/register controls for improved user experience and accessibility
- Shortcodes based on Bootstrap library
- Custom menus (4 locations)
- Featured videos (display them in your article listings too!)
- Lightbox effect and navigation automatically added to galleries and images
- Paged, nested, styled comments
- Custom login logo
- Custom 404 and search results layouts
- Localized and translatable (.po file provided)
- Tested and works great with BuddyPress 1.7+
- Trending carousel with AJAX filter controls
- Sizzlin’ carousel rotates selected articles
- One-click minisite builder
- Complete Review/Rating system
- Three main layouts: right sidebar, left sidebar, full-width
- AJAX post loop sorting & filtering controls
- Custom ad network (supports Google Adsense and any other ad vendor)
- 30 footer layouts
- Unlimited social badges
- Views & Likes stats with live AJAX updating
- Awards & Badges system (custom user-defined)
- Related posts engine (5 algorithms to choose from)
- Minisite directories (2 types, 4 styles, 2 layouts)
- Author listing template (exclude/include by role or username)
- Page-specific background images and colors
- Theme options for Google Analytics, custom CSS, and custom JavaScript
- Theme Options importer/exporter tool
- Complete demo site provided with 3-step install instructions
- Fancy tooltips
- Email signup
Gonzo
Key Features:
- Compatible with Adpress Plugin: For responsive advertising, Gonzo is 100% compatible with Adpress from CodeCanyon right out of the box (not included).
- Facebook and WordPress Comments: You have the option of using Facebook comments to get more reach or use WP comments to preserve anonymity. The choice is yours.
- Four Post Formats: Choose from standard, audio (with soundcloud), video (embed) and gallery.
- GUI Shortcodes: User-friendly buttons/dialogue system. No need to type or remember the shortcodes.
- Widgets included: Facebook Fans, Socialbox Counter, Video, Latest Posts with Thumbnails, Tabbed Widget (supports all widget types) and Flickr Widget.
- Connected Author Page: Dedicated Author page with social media icons directly integrated into the User Panel in the WP Dashboard.
- BBPress: Gonzo is now compatible with the BBPress forum plugin.
- Best Reviews Page: As of version 1.5 there is a best reviews page and widget (both are filterable by category).
Zine
Key Features:
- Instinctive admin interface
- Responsive
- 5 Custom Post types
- 4 menus locations: main menu, top menu and bottom menu + Mobile/Tablet Menu
- The Top Menu and Main menu support 3 levels drop down
- Custom backgrounds: You can upload a different background for each page directly in your page editor.
- Archive template and custom taxonomies for each post types
- Rating system and Top Rated templates for reviews post types
- SEO feature: you can set up your metatags for each post and page.
- Generate video thumbnails automatically for video post format.
- Filter Portfolio (izotope)
- Complete Theme Options Panel
- Advertisement manager: Upload and manage your advertisements and use the “advertisement widget” to display them anywhere in your sidebars very easily.
- A bunch of usefull shortcodes with custom editor buttons to generate them
- Social Share buttons: facebook, twitter, google+, linkedIn, pinterest (meta automatically generated.
- Social Plugin : Set links to your social network profiles in the theme options ( available)
- Author box and Author templates : extra profile fields added for your authors (twitter, facebook , google+, linkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon, Flickr, Youtube)
- Choose your Homepage:
- Choose your home page header as slider, video, static image or no header
- Choose wich post type you want to display (default is all post types)
- If you choose to display the last blog posts, you can choose to display only one category (e.g: news)
- Complete Documentation with screenshots.
- Automatically create the main pages on theme installation.
- Translation Ready : Contains .po and .mo files for translation
- Built on the BrutalDesign Framework
- Support
ReviewIt
Key Features:
- Free $80 JW Player (series 5) commercial license (YouTube, Vimeo, self-hosted audio/video support)
- 7 custom widgets (GP Recent Comments, GP Review Boxes, GP Review Lists, GP Post Boxes, GP You May Like, GP Review/Post Entries and GP Latest Members widgets)
- Cufon fonts
- Front-end login, register and profile pages
- Add custom review tags for easy categorizing of reviews
- Custom post/page/category options
- Fully localised (translation files)
- Image resizing
- Unlimited Sidebars
- Degrades gracefully if javascript is disabled
- Compatible in all major browsers
- BuddyPress/bbPress ready
- WooCommerce ready
Bodega
Key Features:
- Widgetized homepage
- Easily customizable Slider
- Style Options with Custom style presetss
- Get video thumbnails straight from YouTube & Vimeo URLs
- 7 Custom Widgets
- Post ratings
- Post formats
- Post Thumbnails
- Customizable post settings
- Button, Column shortcodes
- Contact Form shortcode
Avenue
Key Features:
- Reviews, Videos, Music and Galleries
- Unlimited Skins
- Built-in Review System
- Easy Customizeable Homepage Layout
- Responsive Design
- Custom Theme Options Panel
SwagMag
Key Features:
- Designed to create customized review mini-sites
- PHP and HTML versions both included with your download
- Works for both review and non-review sites from personal blogs to huge content heavy sites
- All of the latest jQuery enhancements and user interface upgrades to provide a rich user experience
- Tons of layouts and page templates including 14 total page templates, 2 front page layouts, 5 post listing layouts, and 2 single post layouts, and 4 unique rating box designs
- Optimized, minified, compressed, validated, spaced/indented/commented code, and architected intuitively
- 5-star customer support monitored 7 days a week with a smile
Broadway
Key Features:
- Unlimited skins
- 3 Post formats (videos, audio & galleries)
- Built-in review system
- User Ratings on reviews
- WordPress 3.0 menu support
- Custom theme options panel
- 11 Custom widgets
- Easy thumbnails with WP built in function
- PSD included
- Works with WP 3 .3+
- Broadway requires PHP5
Score
Key Features:
- JW Player (series 5) commercial license (YouTube, Vimeo, self-hosted audio/video support)
- 2 custom widgets (GP Sidebar Posts and GP Footer Posts widgets)
- Ability to follow posts/reviews
- RTL support
- Front-end login, register and profile pages
- Add custom review tags for easy categorizing of reviews
- Custom post/page/category options
- Fully localised (translation files)
- Image resizing
- Unlimited Sidebars
- Degrades gracefully if javascript is disabled
- Compatible in all major browsers
- BuddyPress/bbPress ready
- WooCommerce ready
Backstreet
Key Features:
- Light and Dark Skin
- Spotlight
- Portfolio
- Gallery
- Featured Slider (Full & Small)
- 3 Post formats (videos, audio & galleries)
- Inbuilt review system
- WordPress 3.3 menu support
- Flexible homepage layout
- Custom theme options panel
- 15 Custom widgets
- PSD Include (Template & Stars)
- Easy thumbnails with WP built in function
- Works with WP 3.5+
- Backstreet Theme requires PHP5
Reviewer
Key Features:
- Translation file included! – Use Reviewer in any language
- Five background pattern options
- Five Star Rating colors
- Author’s Page Template which lists all of the sites authors
- Ten font options from Google Fonts
- Custom “Recent Ratings” Graph Widget
- Custom “Featured Reviewer/Author” Widget
- Unlimited color options for links through included color pickers
- “Featured Posts” on home page which makes use of Sticky Posts with jQuery hovers
- Two layout options for the content and sidebar
- Two sidebar styles
- Widgetized sidebar and footer
- Five Shortcodes
- Social Network Icons
- Supports the plugin Contact Form 7
- Easy to follow documentation
- Valid XHTML
Black Aperture
Key Features:
- WordPress menu for the main navigation
- Standard featured images (post thumbnails)
- Unique featured posts showcase requires minimal effort to take advantage of
- Nivo Slider bundled (since version 1.7)
- Dynamic image resizing
- Custom built Theme Options panel within WP-Admin
- Default 3 column layout can be changed to 2 (removes left sidebar) from WP-Admin
- Both sidebars are widgetized
- Custom widgets for the 3 main ad spots, along with a recent posts list
- Change the logo to plain text (which makes use of the Blog Title and Tagline settings) or replace it with your own image without touching any code
- Custom CSS area in Theme Options which allow you to override CSS without manually editing templates
- Super lean markup and CSS
- Tested on Windows and Mac
- Support for Subscribe to Comments, Twitter Tools, and WP-PageNavi plugins out of the box