When I first got the email from MyThemeShop to try out their latest WordPress theme, Cyprus, I thought, “wow, what a great looking theme!”
Then I forgot about it.
The next email is what piqued my interest. Bhanu from MyThemeShop mentioned that the Cyprus Theme was their “first SEO-ready WordPress theme”.
In my review of MyThemeShop, I had mentioned as a downside, that the one thing lacking from the themes that I’d love to see was SEO-readiness.
This is something that I was already accustomed to from using StudioPress themes. Their themes had built in SEO features so you didn’t need any additional plugins like All-In-One-SEO or Yoast.
Making the Cyprus theme SEO-ready was like a dream come true for me because I really love MyThemeShop’s themes but hate that I have to use another plugin to manage the SEO.
Cyprus Achieves SEO Perfection with Rank Math
So much not having to use an additional plugin. Cyprus Theme achieves it’s SEO-readiness with the use of their own SEO plugin called Rank Math.
When you first install the theme, you’re asked to set up the Rank Math, although you don’t have to activate the plugin. The plugin and the theme are combined seamlessly and all you have to do is answer some questions about your site to set up the plugin.
If you previously used another plugin to manage your SEO, you can import the data right into Rank Math.
I currently use All-In-One-SEO to manage SEO on the sites where I don’t use a StudioPress theme and although I’ve heard about Rank Math before I had never tried it out. Now I don’t want to use All-In-One anymore.
Individual posts and pages use a checklist type setup that tries to get you the perfect SEO for your site. This is sort of like the Yoast SEO plugin if I’m not mistaken but it feels much better.
Having to use another plugin, especially one this good, isn’t such a bad thing after all for an SEO-ready theme.
It’s not exactly built in the way StudioPress themes SEO is built into the theme but I almost want to disable their SEO function and use MyThemeShop’s Rank Math plugin instead.
Cyprus Theme isn’t Just About SEO
I’ll admit, I tried the Cyprus theme because of the SEO thing but that aside, what makes Cyprus theme a great theme is the fact that it’s a very beautiful theme and like most MyThemeShop themes, it’s packed to the brim with features.
The theme comes with two predefined designs. You can choose from the default design or you can choose the blog design.
Both designs come with custom widgets and settings which you can use to make your blog look even more unique.
The theme options is where you can go crazy with customization whether that’s to change the color scheme from green to blue or to add CSS code to completely change elements of your theme’s design.
Among some of the other things that I loved about the Cyprus theme are:
(1) 1-Click Child Themes.
After finding the predefined layout I want to use, creating a child theme is the next thing I do when I set up a MyThemeShop theme.
You do not need a parent theme or framework for this. All you need to do is name your child theme and click a button to create one.
(2) Typography Options
Cyprus theme includes all the Google fonts.
The advance typography options panel lets you change up any of the elements of your theme’s typography so you can spice up your content.
You can adjust things like font size, spacing, font weight and line height or even use CSS to get the look and feel that you want.
(3) Social Sharing Buttons
I like the social sharing button options that come with this theme. The theme options lets you choose from 6 predefined styles and also where to place them in the theme.
(4) 14 Custom Widgets
WordPress already has bunches of widgets that you can use to make your sidebar useful.
Cyprus comes with 14 custom widgets to let you do even more.
You can easily add a Facebook Like Box, show off your Instagram feed or your tweets from Twitter.
If you have a multi-author blog, you can use the MTS Author Posts widget to display posts from the author of the post a visitor is reading.
Just go to widgets and look for MTS widgets to add any of the custom widgets that come with the theme.
You can see more of the Cyprus theme’s awesome features by going here.
What I Didn’t Like About Cyprus Theme
Is there anything that I didn’t like about Cyprus?
I think that it should have had more predefined designs. Other themes from MyThemeShop usually have a WooCommerce shop design and some have up to 5 designs.
I didn’t see anything about WooCommerce support for this site so that made me wonder a bit.
However, I do not use WooCommerce and what comes with the Cyprus theme is enough for me. I’m just speaking for the people that maybe want to use this theme but have items to sell and would love to have a shop section.
Having additional designs would have been great too.
Besides that, I’ll have to say that the Cyprus theme is perfect.
Should You Use the Cyprus Theme
The theme is beautiful and flexible.
Out of the box, you can use it for almost any project that you need including blogging, affiliate niche sites, Amazon affiliate sites or a business websites.
It looks perfect for topics like health and fitness, make money online topics, finance and personal development.
You can customize it to fit your niche, topic or use with the advanced theme options panel where you can toggle off features or choose from colors, backgrounds and layouts.
If you have knowledge of CSS then you can also add code to make the theme even more unique and customized to your needs.
It’s a great theme out of the box and to be completely honest, with the SEO-ready features, it’s my favorite MyThemeShop theme right now.
Cyprus has 24/7 support and comes with a 30-day money back guarantee so there’s nothing stopping you from trying it on that site that you’re planning to start or the site that needs a fresh update.
Check out the theme features and demo here.
Are you thinking of trying the Cyprus theme and have questions? Ask me in the comments and I’ll see if I can answer.
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