It’s easy to get stuck in an endless browse of deciding the right theme for your WordPress blog. Worst part yet -most of them can cost a pretty penny for just one measly theme.
Cue Elegant Themes. A well-known name throughout the world of all things WordPress; Elegant Themes designs wildly successful themes, plugins and more.
They’ve even just passed the 600k+ total downloads mark, with no intentions of stopping!
Elegant Themes is an extremely user-friendly theme option to start off with if you’re just a beginner with WordPress. Just so you can be 100% sure of your decision, this Elegant Themes review will break down (in detail!) why you should totally start using it for your website.
What is Elegant Themes for WordPress?
Elegant Themes has been put on the map for releasing almost 90 beautifully designed, fully functional themes and about 5 plugins over the span of 11 years.
The brand’s history starts with Nick Roach, its founder. After explosive success, they grew well on its way to become one of the most used theme solutions for WordPress users.
Elegant Themes then went on to build one of the most accomplished WordPress products to date – the Divi WordPress theme. At the moment, this single theme is responsible for powering over 2 million websites!
What to consider before buying Divi from Elegant Themes?
If you’ve got your eyes set on designing your site with Elegant Themes, here are a few things to take a closer look at.
1. User-Friendliness
Firstly, fret not if you’re a total WordPress newbie!
All of Elegant Themes’ products are designed to make life as uncomplicated as possible for you when creating your website from scratch. This makes it the ideal option to go with if you’re a small business owner, or a freelancer just starting with the basics.
2. Code Flexibility
As with some pre-designed themes on the market, it’s safe to say that this probably isn’t something to opt for if you’re a seasoned developer. There is some wiggle room that lets you customize its modules (defining custom CSS fields, including select extensions, etc) -but this too has its limits.
Because Elegant Themes requires you to follow their strict framework, switching back and forth between themes can be a little messy too.
Keep this in mind if you’re still not sure what you want your website to look and feel like!
You might want to start out experimenting with free theme options that are more lightweight. This way – it won’t leave behind chunks of weird code when you want to switch it up.
In the meantime, you could test the waters with free, basic WordPress themes like Neve, Zakra and ShopIsle.
This way -you’re aware of what you want (and what you don’t) when it comes to your website’s interface.
What are you getting with Elegant Themes and Divi?
If you’re ready to leap straight into a forever theme, here’s what Elegant Themes are prepared to offer:
a) The Divi Theme & Visual Page Builder
Elegant Themes’ flagship theme,‘Divi’, is unmatched in terms of features, visual website builder, design, and conversion options.
It has been downloaded over 2 million times in total. At the moment, it also single-handedly powers an exact 1,170,426 websites in 2019.
From e-commerce, lifestyle blogs, official company websites, and so much more in between -Divi is built to suit the expectations of all kinds of design needs.
Elegant Themes made the Divi theme its pride and joy back in 2013. Ever since -Divi has quite literally been the dream of web designers and developers everywhere for how comprehensive, seamless, and easy to use on WordPress.
Using the Divi theme comes with its own set of awesome perks. There are hundreds of free design elements, vectors, and other unique options to let you fully customize the interface of your site. Also, imagine 40+ slider templates, call-to-actions (CTA’s), galleries, forms, testimonials and tons more content you can use to amp your site up.
Let’s get a little nitty-gritty. Exactly how does downloading the Elegant Themes work in your favor?
1. Customization & Efficiency
Say you’re too short on time needed to build, arrange, and edit everything from scratch. In an instant, Divi shows you hundreds of full, pre-made web layouts that you can import immediately. Just start adding your own text and branding -you’ve got a whole website just like that!
Remember how we mentioned Elegant Themes being a total miracle for beginners?
The Divi interface is meant to be the perfect first-time theme for WordPress newbies. Since it operates on a ‘drag and drop’ basis as with the Divi Builder -there’s zero coding knowledge involved.
Speaking of, the Divi Plugin is a total feat in itself.
If you’re already using another WordPress theme on your site -it’s still an option to utilize the power of the Divi Builder.
The Divi Builder is a plugin that lets you use a ‘drag and drop’ based editing process to add new design elements, templates, and edit other modules with ease. No coding knowledge involved; a total win for WordPress beginners.
So it really doesn’t matter if you’re working with, let’s say an OceanWP or Astra theme at the moment. The Divi Builder isn’t looking to replace your existing theme! It’s rather a standalone, third-party plugin that wants to make your editing much easier.
You can still customize your pages and content without worrying about it messing up your layout.
In fact, editing altogether becomes a much faster experience -with mobile compatibility editing, easy undos & revisions, saving options and much more little things that would streamline your workflow.
This also includes really useful tools like quick duplication and a ‘history panel’ that helps you revert back to previous versions of your design if you change your mind.
Everything is customizable with both the Divi theme and its page builder plugin. You’re also presented with awesome animation effects, font text styling, responsiveness editing for mobiles and tablets, etc. so you get the picture-perfect website for your brand.
2. eCommerce Abilities
Divi keeps it simple when it comes to e-commerce. Essentially, if you have an already existing WooCommerce site, Divi just lets you integrate the two and start selling all your products instantly.
There’s really nothing extra about Divi’s eCommerce abilities, though.
The basics of editing product pages, animating listings, and other WooCommerce features are all at play – but Divi doesn’t find the need to add on any other swanky options on top of what’s already included.
3. Managing Your Website
If you’re a freelance web designer or developer – Divi wants to make the entire process of switching permissions and accesses an easier one.
The above picture is what’s known as the Divi Role Editor. Once you’ve designed, developed, and handed off a Divi website, you can adjust all user roles and controls from right here.
For instance, you might allow clients to edit texts and font styling -but to limit what they can do with other design aspects on the webpage. You can even completely max the controls out; locking permissions for your clients to edit, delete or add other design elements if you wish.
This all became possible in the brand new Divi 4.0 version – which works well if you don’t want clients accidentally erasing your hard work or messing up an existing layout.
b) The ‘Extra Magazine’ Theme
It’s safe to say that Divi’s 4.0 theme and builder are impressive releases by Elegant Themes. But they’ve got much more to offer -and the Extra Magazine theme is proof of just that!
While Divi is a multipurpose theme that can be used for literally every niche; the Extra gets more specific. This theme was designed to work in favor of online magazines, journalistic blogs, and other styles that require a whole lot of emphasis on writing and text content.
As you can tell, lots of grids and columns here. Perfect for the budding online journalist or content writer intent on showcasing their portfolio in a smooth, clean design.
Plus, a lot of their layout styles and design options are centered around a visual-rich rationale. Modules like featured images, carousel posts, article sliders, tabbed posts, etc are all popular with Extra’s users.
The best part? Extra works perfectly in sync with the Divi builder!
So naturally, this also comes with the 800+ page templates that are already packaged in the visual builder.
As a content writer, it’s important to note that your readers don’t want to be bombarded with too much text on your webpages. Attention spans are getting shorter, and you don’t want your readers to be turned off by your clogged up posts.
Personally, this is what I think the Extra theme solves better than most. Here are some of my favorites:
My personal experience with WordPress themes in the past used to be about choosing one or the other. Going with an attractive design that has more visuals but lacks useful information, vs. opting for a theme that includes all necessary text, but is terribly plain and old-fashioned.
Extra manages to tread the fine line between the two. The layout packs to choose from prove to be much more modern and sleek (a lot of white space, so readers aren’t overwhelmed), yet still organizes the text in a way that’s easy to understand.
Another interesting feature to note is Extra’s product review system. For example, let’s say you’re about to release a write-up on a new product or service. Extra lets you add custom breakdowns to your review – like rating it based on user-friendliness, price, support, etc.