Anyone use catalyst theme?

I use Catalyst and love it! Been using it for about 2 years now. Only premium themes I can compare are FlexTheme and Thesis. Catalyst is head and shoulders above those two in my opinion as far as flexibility and ease of use (Thesis is not the easiest to use).

Hopefully others will chime in and be able to compare Catalyst to Genesis (which I hear nothing, but good things about as well).

I've been using Catalyst since before it was released (I got a beta copy) and it's excellent.

There's a huge amount of flexibility and power built into it if you want to customize anything. You can have multiple page layouts easily (different sidebars, widths etc) to suit different parts of the site - and each layout with its own custom widget areas, so the sidebar content can be different for different pages etc... there's really not much you can't do with it.

You can easily make the header just how you want - text only and/or logo based - make it stretch full screen width with just a check box... make the footer content whatever you want, easily...

It's got solid and pretty comprehensive built in SEO options (which switch off if you use an seo plugin). Also easy to add header/footer scripts etc.

If you feel the need to do any CSS mods to the site, it's got a built in CSS builder/editor that makes creating the necessary CSS code very easy too (if you're not a coder).

Most things are otherwise very easy to change with selection drop-downs and so on.

As you mention in your query, there's a lot of great features in it. That means there's a bit of a learning curve, but once you suss it, it means that you can implement pretty much anything - quickly and easily - as it becomes more obvious what you can do with it (and how few limitations there are to it). A little persistence will pay off.

Regards comparison to Genesis - both Catalyst Theme and Genesis are frameworks and use the Parent/Child theme method. Catalyst or Genesis provide the core functionality, the style/design settings come with the child theme.

Catalyst comes with a bundled child theme called Dynamik - that provides all the dozens of options for adjusting/defining most aspects of the site styling - borders, fonts, colours etc etc..

There is also a version of the Dynamik Child theme for the Genesis platform too that enables pretty much the same design options.

I've used both - Catalyst/Dynamik and Genesis/Dynamik - my preference is generally Catalyst because I think it provides slightly greater flexibility and functionality overall and is maybe a bit more versatile, but that might be because I've used it for longer and more often! Nothing wrong with the Genesis/Dynamik option either though and I use that pretty often too (just for a change really!)

I've also written guides for both Catalyst Theme (Catalyst/Dynamik) and the Dynamik Theme for Genesis (Genesis/Dynamik) which you might find helpful.

Hope that all helps if you haven't made your mind up yet.

Is it easy to use by people who aren't designers?

Well, I'm not a designer, but I can build sites with it pretty quickly and implement ideas based on what I see on other sites.

If you know what you want to implement, it's pretty good for that.

Say, you want more padding space between the text and content pane border = easy

or you want to change the background colour of the sidebar headers = easy

or any border, background, padding, margin, etc

uploading images for use as background content - also easy.

Creating rounded corners for borders - easy - same for adding shadow effects.

Full font control on a granular basis - so you can set one font type/colour/size for say the content, and different settings for sidebar content. Same for headings etc.

You can style header areas, footer areas and navigation menu bars pretty easily.

You can also create static homepages (instead of blog style) easily with flexible widget areas (called EZ widget areas in Catalyst).

Really, it's a great theme for allowing you to implement designs relatively easily and tweaking it to get just what what you want.

What it wont do is invent the design for you in the first place!

You need to have some idea of what you want to implement, along with any graphics and images for backgrounds etc (setting and changing flat colours for anything is easy - and once you've uploaded images, using those in appropriate areas is easy too).

There's a learning curve though - and it does take a little time to get to grips with it - but it's not complicated. Just working out what's where and what to use for what. That's why I wrote my bonus guide

I believe the developers still offer a 30 day refund if it doesn't work out for you (check that for yourself first though).

Hope that helps.