Introduction

If you run a gambling, betting, or finance affiliate project, you need more than a generic blog theme. You need clear comparison tables, focused calls to action, and flexible review layouts that match how casinos, games, and bonuses actually work.

Mercury is a WordPress affiliate theme designed exactly for that. It targets gambling and casino sites, sports betting, esports, forex and stock brokers, cryptocurrency, VPN and hosting offers, and even dating and news blogs. You work with ready-made structures for casinos, games, and bonuses instead of forcing everything into standard posts.

You do not need coding skills to get value from it. For those new to WordPress, this theme, like the Mercury Business Portfolio Theme, offers an incredibly powerful but easy-to-use options panel. You get multiple demos, a large set of shortcodes, and custom post types that help you organize content, drive clicks, and keep your site readable on any device.

Key Features at a Glance

• Purpose-built for gambling, casino, betting, crypto, forex, and affiliate review sites
• Three custom post types: casinos/bookmakers, games, and bonuses
• Multiple single and archive layouts for each custom post type
• 37 shortcodes, including dedicated shortcodes for casinos, games, bonuses, posts, and playing cards
• Fully responsive, retina-ready, and cross-browser compatible design
• One-click demo import and multiple niche demos
• Dark mode, boxed layout option, and wide color, header, and background customization
• Geolocation-based handling of restricted countries for casinos
• Strong affiliate focus with “Claim”, “Get Bonus”, and similar call-to-action elements
• Compatible with WordPress 6.8 and updated regularly, including Font Awesome 6.7.2 and modern improvements
• Support for NFT-related content and cryptocurrency offers
• Translation-ready with child theme included

Custom Post Types and Affiliate Structure

The core of Mercury is its affiliate-focused content structure. Instead of stretching standard posts to cover everything, you get three dedicated custom post types with relevant taxonomies.

Casinos and Bookmakers

The Casinos/Bookmakers post type is built for structured casino and betting reviews. You can:

• Rate casinos on a five-point scale or extend to up to ten stars
• Add descriptions, logos, and important attributes
• Use 6 single-page layouts to present information in different ways
• Choose from 9 archive list layouts to display casino comparisons and listings

For each casino, you have a rich set of taxonomies: Categories, Software, Deposit Methods, Withdrawal Methods, Withdrawal Limits, Restricted Countries, Licences, Languages, Currencies, Devices, Owner, and Established. You can also add logos for many of these taxonomies and define relationships between casinos, games, and bonuses.

This structure suits comparison tables and review lists, especially when you rely on “Play Now” or “Get Bonus” buttons with masked affiliate links.

Games

The Games post type helps you review slots, table games, esports titles, and other gambling or betting-related games. For a different approach to showcasing creative work, consider a responsive portfolio theme like Pregame. You get:

• 7 single-page templates for games, including versions with and without sidebars
• 2 archive layouts for game listings
• Taxonomies for Categories and Vendors, plus vendor logos
• Simple star ratings for games

You can link games to multiple casinos and bonuses, which is useful when a single game appears across several casino brands.

Bonuses

The Bonuses post type focuses on promotions, gifts, and bonus codes. It provides:

• 2 single page layouts
• A custom archive list layout
• A Categories taxonomy
• Fields for bonus codes, terms, and external affiliate links

You can choose between light and dark bonus page styles and show detailed terms and conditions on casino pages and listing tables. A pop-up message under a T&Cs button is also available for clearer compliance messaging.

Shortcodes, Layouts, and Design Flexibility

Mercury leans heavily on shortcodes to give you control over how offers and content appear.

Shortcodes and Widgets

The theme includes 37 shortcodes, broken down in the visuals as:

• 11 shortcodes for posts
• 17 shortcodes for casinos/bookmakers
• 7 shortcodes for games
• 2 shortcodes for bonuses
• Additional playing card shortcodes

These shortcodes drive listing tables, sliders, grids, vendor lists, and more. For some casino shortcodes, you can enable a “Load More” button, which helps you avoid overly long pages while still showcasing many brands.

Widgets extend this further, with dedicated casino widgets, game widgets, slider widgets, and posts widgets. Together, they support homepages that mix featured casinos, latest bonuses, articles, and top games in a clean, modern layout.

Visual Customization

You can adjust the design without touching code:

• Fully responsive and retina-ready layouts
• Unlimited color schemes and header color schemes
• Option to enable a boxed layout and set a custom background color or image
• Dark mode for the theme and dark style for the header
• Ability to change the color of H1 headers and their background blocks
• Customizable colors for “Play Now” and “Read More” buttons
• Custom header styles, sticky menu, and sticky sidebars
• Custom footer copyright text, favicon, and optional background image in the footer
• Multiple post templates and a full-width page template

You can also disable the floating header if you prefer a simpler layout, or enable floating bottom bars on casino and game pages to keep calls to action visible as users scroll. This flexibility in design is also a hallmark of themes like Corona - Business & Portfolio Theme.

Technical Foundation and Integrations

Mercury is built to work cleanly with recent WordPress versions and common plugins used in affiliate setups.

• Compatible with WordPress 6.8 and earlier versions like 6.3, 6.1, and 6.0
• Regular lifetime updates, including style optimizations, code improvements, and new demos
• Font Awesome updated to version 6.7.2
• Compatible with Contact Form 7 for lead and support forms
• Integration and compatibility with the Slots Launch plugin, with dedicated demos and theme parts
• ACES Gambling plugins and Mercury Addons plugins updated across versions to support new features

Geolocation features help you handle restricted countries for casinos. The theme can detect user location for casino listings and uses custom taxonomies to define which casinos should be hidden or marked as restricted. This reduces manual work when you manage multiple regions.

The theme also supports NFTs and cryptocurrency-related content, which is useful if you promote crypto casinos, exchanges, or token-based projects.

Demos and Real-World Use Cases

Mercury ships with multiple demos that you can import with one click. These demos cover a wide range of niches:

• Casino and casino affiliate sites
• Sports betting and bookmakers
• Esports betting
• Poker and slots
• Cryptocurrency affiliate programs and exchanges
• Forex and stock brokers
• VPN and web hosting offers
• Dating affiliate sites
• News and blog-focused layouts
• Slots-focused demos, including integration with the Slots Launch plugin

Because each demo is built on the same custom post types, you can mix niches. For example, you might run a main casino comparison site and later add a cryptocurrency section or a forex brokers section without changing theme.

Practical Scenarios

You can use Mercury in a few concrete ways:

• Build a casino comparison portal where casinos are organized by licence, country, device, and payment methods, with geolocation controlling visibility in restricted countries.
• Create a content-rich blog that highlights betting tips, esports news, and match previews while using casino and bonus shortcodes inside posts to drive conversions.
• Launch a crypto and NFT hub where you review exchanges, crypto casinos, and NFT-related games, using the games and casinos post types plus NFT-focused content blocks.
• Run a multi-niche affiliate site that covers casinos, forex, VPN, and hosting offers under the same brand but different sections and demos.

Because shortcodes let you insert offers into posts, you can turn almost any article into an affiliate landing page without editing templates.

Competitor Context

Compared to generic blog or magazine themes, Mercury stands out in several ways:

• You get dedicated post types and taxonomies for casinos, games, and bonuses, rather than relying on a simple “review” category.
• The 37 shortcodes and multiple archive and single layouts give you more affiliate-specific presentation options than typical news themes.
• Geolocation for restricted countries and detailed taxonomies for licences, currencies, and payment methods address real regulatory and user-experience issues that many general themes ignore.
• Integration with specialist plugins like ACES and Slots Launch, plus NFT and cryptocurrency support, aligns better with modern gambling and crypto projects than generic multipurpose themes.

Against other casino-focused themes, Mercury emphasizes breadth of niches. You can serve casino, sportsbook, esports, forex, crypto, dating, VPN, and hosting from one theme, instead of managing multiple separate designs.

Customer Feedback and Testimonials

The data here does not include direct user testimonials or ratings, so this overview does not quote customer reviews.

However, the theme shows a sales count of 5,860, which indicates that many site owners have chosen it for affiliate projects. The detailed changelog also suggests continuous maintenance, with fixes, new demos, feature refinements, and compatibility updates spanning several years.

You also get documentation and a support center, with support advertised on weekdays from 10:00 to 20:00 (CET). That schedule is helpful if you expect to ask configuration questions or need guidance during setup.

Conclusion

Mercury is a focused WordPress theme for affiliate marketers in gambling, betting, crypto, and related niches. Instead of treating casinos and bonuses as ordinary posts, it gives you custom post types, detailed taxonomies, and layouts that match how your offers are structured.

You can import a demo that fits your niche, customize colors, headers, and backgrounds, switch to dark mode, and start adding casinos, games, and bonuses without coding. Shortcodes and widgets make it easy to build comparison tables, highlight top offers, and keep calls to action visible.

If you want to run a compliant, content-rich affiliate site that spans casinos, sports betting, esports, forex, cryptocurrency, or similar verticals, Mercury offers a flexible base with regular updates, documentation, and dedicated support to help you build and grow your project.