Journal 2 Review: The Best Opencart Theme

There are thousands of different themes to choose for your Opencart store.

Many have different layouts, allow customisations, and have cool features.

However there aren’t many that tick every box.

That’s why Journal 2 is the best Opencart theme available (Compatible with OC 1.5, 2.0, and 3.0), and below I’ll look into the features that make it truly great.

Key Features at a Glance

Here are the main parts of the journal theme that make it stand out from the rest.

Product Custom Info (Module: Product Tabs)

This is a game changer, being able to tag products with extra information. This could be used to add shipping information, special offers, special features, and any other information that you think might encourage the customer to purchase from your store.

These can be added before or after the price on the right, underneath the product images, or as custom tabs at the lower part of the page.

Your content is added with a Title (the bold first line), an optional icon, and an optional html content area (below the bold line). This gives you plenty of flexibility to add all sorts of content to your products.

These can be tagged to all products, out of stock products, individual products, products from a certain category, or those from a certain brand.

Advanced Grid

This feature turns an ordinary page into something special, creating a visually appealing layout that’s usually reserved for an expensive custom design.

This module is created by combining your existing Revolution slider modules and banner modules into a mixed layout that can really impress your visitors and lower your bounce rate.

The way you create a layout is with columns and rows, which can be assigned certain heights and widths to create the desired effect that you need. In the example image on the right, they have used 3 columns, with the first and last being 25% wide banners, and the middle column being a 50% wide revolution slider. They have then split the first and last into two rows of 50% height each, and the middle is one row at 100% height.

You can also use background video within the Revolution slider module, giving you even more flexibility.

Regularly Updated and Fully Supported

Now this cannot be overstated, it’s vitally important to choose a theme that’s being maintained by the creator. If you’re building a business on this platform, you will probably end up with lots of customisations along the way, with years of work and lots of money invested into it. If the theme ends up being discontinued, it can cost you a lot of money to migrate to another one.

The guys who run the Journal 2 theme are also very responsive to support tickets and comments, allowing you to get any issues ironed out quickly and with as little hassle as possible.

Final Thoughts

Having tried various themes out in Opencart, WordPress and other CMS, I have consistently found the guys behind Journal to be the most responsive and helpful, with the Total WordPress theme being the only ones who come close to matching it.

I highly recommend you purchase the theme, which can be found here.