My review below is based on my experience of using Marketers Delight (MD) on two WordPress sites in the past year. My MD sites were/are: (1) a membership site for staff of a client organization who were attending my Zoom training courses, and (2) a simple blog of personal interests (currently still in development).
Pros:
- Aesthetics. MD looks good out of the box and can look even better with some simple tweaks.
- Ease-of-Use. I've used WordPress since 2009 and I've built different web sites on Thesis, Catalyst, Genesis, MD, Kadence, but I am by no means an expert website designer. As a small business owner, I need to focus on the core work of my consulting business. That's why I appreciate how easy it is to build a functional, modern-looking site with MD - this saves me precious time (and trouble/frustration) in trying to make my site look and function the way I want. I occasionally refer to the MD Support Forums and Documentation (both of which are helpful), but I'd say most of the work on MD is intuitive and the learning curve is no more challenging than most other decent WordPress themes on the market.
- Flexibility and Potential to Scale. When first installed, MD might look relatively simple - it has all the features you expect from a premium theme but little more. I prefer my sites to have as little bloat as possible, so I value the minimalism that MD provides. Nevertheless, the MD Drop-ins and Gutenberg WordPress editor extend the core features such that the possibilities are endless. Among the MD Drop-ins, I particularly like: Stream, Subtitle, WooCommerce and Docs Library. I should also mention the proprietary MD Accordion Category Links widget - this widget is invaluable on my personal blog because the topics (post categories) I blog on are diverse and disparate and the widget efficiently organizes post titles in the WordPress sidebar.
- High-Quality Code. The home page of my personal blog scored a GTmetrix Grade A, Performance score 100% and Structure score 91%. Pages of my MD websites load fast.
- Skills and Dedication of the Lead Developer. Alex is a highly talented WordPress developer with a knack for attractive website designs. I had known of him - and admired his work - for several years (since the Thesis days), and watched how his business and the MD theme had grown and matured. I finally took the plunge and purchased an MD license off the official MD site in 2020. When I saw the LTD offered on AppSumo in November 2020, I didn't hesitate to grab it!
Con (I can think of only one):
- Initial Work Required to Customize Look and Feel. If you're looking for a WordPress theme that you install and select a premade template/skin, MD is probably not for you. As mentioned, MD requires some tweaking and some work to get your site looking how you want it. This is not necessarily a con - the added work in customizing the site will make it unique and you won't be "locked" into a particular look/feel of a template or skin.
