Parallax scrolling is an eye-catching feature used in WordPress where background images throughout a web page move a bit slower than foreground images, creating the look of depth on a two-dimensional website.

Luckily, to get this implemented on your site, there are some top-notch parallax WordPress themes and plugins that you can incorporate today!

What’s so awesome about them? Well, a great parallax theme can make your WordPress site more interactive, attention-grabbing, and increase better user retention. If you don’t have a parallax WordPress site, there are many reasons why you should!

We’ll be taking a moving, in-depth look (get it?) at some top-ranked, quality themes and plugins for 2022.

So, let’s go on a parallaxing journey and see what options are in store for your WordPress site!

We’ll take a look at themes first and then go over a handful of plugins.

• Parallax Themes
  • Divi
  • Elementor
  • Parallax
  • Port
  • Roxima
  • Baylie
  • Salon
  • Illdy
  • Create
  • Moesia
  • WPparallax
  • ParallaxSome
  • AccessPress Parallax
  • Hemingway
  • Radiate
  • evolve
• Parallax Plugins
  • Advanced WordPress Backgrounds
  • SiteOrigin Page Builder
  • Parallax Image

Parallax Themes

Divi

Divi is no stranger to the WordPress community. It’s a multipurpose premium WordPress theme, with an amazing drag-and-drop builder, unlimited design options, and the ability to create any site you want — including a parallax website.

With Divi, you can apply parallax scrolling to any background image by toggling a button in its builder. They wrote an excellent guide to use parallax with their themes that cover all of the essentials of implementing this feature.

Additionally, for added value, Divi has been mentioned around here several times due to its compatibility with our plugins, like Smush and Hummingbird.

Elementor

Elementor is another well-known page builder for WordPress used by over 8-million users. It gives you a seemingly endless amount of options when it comes to creating a parallax theme.

This page builder makes adding a parallax effect effortless, with options for scrolling (e.g. vertical, horizontal, etc.), scale, rotation, and more. You can adjust the direction, speed, and viewport, which controls when animations start and end.

To get an inside scoop, they feature an article about how to incorporate parallax into their design that features step-by-step instructions.

And to really enhance things, we have a post about using Elementor with our Smush and Hummingbird plugins for an optimized parallax-themed site.

Parallax

The popular Parallax theme provides a couple of options between parallax scrolling and single-page design. You can even include fly-in elements for very cool visual effects for your users to feast their eyes on.

It also includes over sixty pre-designed layouts that are built with their drag & drop builder.

The Parallax theme is great when it comes to layout design. You can customize practically anything (e.g. header, menu bar, slide-out header, etc.), so the outcome of your site’s appearance is determined by you.

You can see a demo of a Parallax site here.

Port

The Port theme is an agency parallax theme that features several parallax sections on the home page and slide-out main navigation.

You select your theme options, including logo, colors, and custom CSS when it comes to designing. It also includes video support, compatibility with Contact Form 7, and you can include your favorite Google fonts.

Roxima

The flexible one-page parallax theme, Roxima, is perfect for businesses. Its responsive and retina design is eye-catching and a great experience for users.

The drag-and-drop homepage builder makes setting up a breeze. Plus, it includes content widgets and several layout designs.

When it comes to optimization, it’s quick and SEO-ready right out of the box.

Baylie

Baylie is a bold agency theme that features a full-screen parallax slideshow.

It includes a shortcodes plugin, so you can easily create slideshows, buttons, toggles, tabs, and columns. Plus, you can incorporate a hovering effect and smooth filtering animations.

This theme is also highly customizable, with theme options for your own logo, colors, custom CSS, and more.

Salon

Living up to its name, Salon is a perfect choice for spa and beauty salons when it comes to a parallax theme.

It has theme options that will ensure you get set up quickly and easily with their drag-and-drop builder. Plus, it’s super flexible in terms of color schemes, images, and more.

It’s retina-ready and stands out on numerous devices. So, like a great hairstyle, your site looks amazing. You can see a live demo of Salon here.

Illdy

For a free option, Illdy might suit you well. It’s a responsive, mobile-friendly parallel theme designed to capture your users’ attention immediately in the header.

Since it’s not geared towards any particular company or service, it’s a great choice for freelancers and agencies alike.

Additionally, it’s highly customizable and includes unique features, such as a project grid and testimonial slider.

Create

Create is an open-source page builder that gives you a ton of control when creating a parallax theme. It’s also bundled with the top slider plugin, Slider Revolution.

One of its features includes a one-click demo import to get you started. From there, you can edit and adjust accordingly. And there are multiple layout options, video background implementation, and works with Google Fonts.

You can check out a live demo of this theme here.

Moesia

If you have a business website, Moesia might be for you. You choose between eleven predefined blocks and create a homepage that works best for your company.

Each of the blocks for the homepage can have an individual parallax background image and its own set of colors. Also, you can include animations, a parallax header, and include Google Fonts.

Moesia has over 9,000 downloads and is rated 4.5-stars, so it’s got a solid reputation and is worth exploring for yourself to see if it’s the perfect parallax option for you.

WPparallax

With the WPparallax theme, you can create an endless amount of homepage sections with prebuilt layouts. It’s a modern and lightweight theme with an impressive design layout.

WPparallax has unlimited color options, features a live preview, supports WooCommerce, and is compatible with Elementor.

On top of that, you can create your header and footer with its easy-to-use drag-and-drop builder. It has a ton of header elements to design and customize to your specific needs.

ParallaxSome

ParallaxSome is a free one-page theme that features parallax scrolling. There are many options for customization, including a fully customizable base theme, a testimonial section, a contact area, and more.

It comes with a variety of homepage sections that are all customizable. The theme is based on WordPress Live Customizer that lets you customize your theme while previewing live.

You can view a demo of ParallaxSome here.

AccessPress Parallax

AccessPress Parallax is a one-page parallax theme that works for any website (e.g. personal, business, etc.). You can choose layouts for teams, portfolios, services, and more.

It’s compatible with Elementor and comes with six starter websites. AccessPress Parallax also includes a prebuilt demo, custom footer, responsive design, and custom colors.

Check out a live demo of this theme here.

Hemingway

Fitting for its name, the Hemingway theme is made for writers and bloggers. It comes with a beautiful two-column design and sharp typography.

You’ll make a great first impression with your readers by including a custom parallax header that can be modified with your own image. Plus, you can change colors and adjust almost everything.

This is a parallax theme I’m sure Hemmingway himself would’ve used (if he was blogging and alive, that is). Be sure to view a demo of this theme here.

Radiate

Radiate is a sleek and simple blog-focused parallax theme. It features clean typography and an easy blogging experience for its users.

You can choose your own color variations, include custom widgets, and features two ready-to-use starter sites.

If you want to sell products or services on your website, it’s fully WooCommerce compatible. And, it works great with Beaver Builder, Elementor, and SiteOrigin.

A preview of this theme is available here.

evolve

evolve is a minimal theme that features modern, easy-to-customize parallax displays.

The premium version features a built-in Mega Menu, up to five unique header layouts, custom post/page layouts, color schemes, and much more.

It’s compatible with WooCommerce, bbPress, Elementor, and plenty of other WordPress plugins and companies.

You can check out some demos of evolve here.

Plugins

You don’t have to resort to a theme to include parallax displays on your WordPress site. Like just about anything else, there’s a plugin that can help.

Here are a handful of plugins that can assist you in creating awesome parallax displays.

Advanced WordPress Backgrounds

With Advanced WordPress Backgrounds, you can add parallax backgrounds with the help of the JavaScript plugin, Jarallax.

You can create custom speed options, add scroll effects, including opacity effects, and more. Also, it has mouse parallax.

This plugin works well with WPBakery and can be used for various uses (e.g. blog, eCommerce, etc.).

The Jarallax plugin used in conjunction with Advanced WordPress Backgrounds is on GitHub, which may be tricky for beginners or intermediate WordPress users since it requires a bit of coding knowledge. Otherwise, it’s a good plugin to consider using for your parallax background.

SiteOrigin Page Builder

SiteOrigin Page Builder is a content creation interface that can allow you to use parallax options to a row.

You can select your parallax type between Modern and Legacy. Plus, add a parallax delay and customize how the parallax image is scaled.

What’s nice is the live page editor, so you can see your parallax images in action and adjust accordingly as you’re building your site.

Parallax Image

Lastly, the Parallax Image plugin is a free uncomplicated choice to add a parallax script via shortcode.

One thing about this plugin is still working out some updates to get their Gutenberg widget. However, it’s recently updated and can still work well when implemented.

You can see a demo of this plugin in action here.

Relax and Add Parallax.

Hopefully, this article was a nice and parallaxing (okay, I made this word up) journey. As you can see, adding some depth to your site catches your viewers’ eyes and keeps them sticking around!

Obviously, there are definitely some benefits for including parallax into your WordPress site. So, if you want some more examples of parallax sites and information, no worries — we have you covered.

All of this being said, once implemented, sit back — and enjoy the parallax!

The bad news is… most themes of this nature come at a cost. :(

The good news is… after scouring through the WordPress theme directory, we’ve uncovered a bunch of great free options you can use for your coming soon or launch page. :D

In each mini review we cover what’s good about each one, their specific options/features, and which one might work best for you.

Then, when you do launch — BOOM! — the sky’s the limit.

Plugin vs. Theme: Which One Launches You Higher?

Before we continue, I recently published an in-depth article that provides useful insights on using coming soon plugins.

Inside I explain why coming soon pages are important and test several plugins. It’s worth reading as it goes hand in hand with the article you’re reading now.

In general, there are much more WordPress coming soon plugins than there are themes out there – all with varying specific features.

And as you’ll see, many of these themes do require additional help with their suggested plugins. Still, these coming soon themes have a standalone purpose.

After all, a theme might be the better way to go if you’re looking for the complete layout of your website to be geared towards launching.

Plus, a theme can work well if you’re after a simple coming soon/launch landing page – meaning you don’t necessarily have to install a whole bunch of plugin add-ons.

Use Both Coming Soon Themes and Plugins For Best Results

In my experience, both work best in unison together.

A standalone coming soon or launch theme can also be enhanced with a great plugin. Likewise, practically any theme can benefit from having a coming soon plugin.

It’s what suits your purpose the most efficiently.

What’s For Launch?

By the way, launching goes way beyond just websites.

A coming soon theme can also be a great tool to promote events like: A wedding, a new restaurant, book launch, online course, and much more!

Point is, no matter what type of site you plan to launch, a coming soon theme (like the ones below) can help you.

I’ve downloaded and tested all of the following free coming soon and launch themes. You won’t find any ‘fake’ reviews that are based solely off the theme website or description.

Let’s go through these and help you pick one that’ll put your next event/website into orbit.

• Event Press

  

  Event Press by Nayra Themes is a free announcement and counting down until the “big day” theme. What’s impressive is all of the essentials are set up for you.

  It’s suited for webinars, seminars, the launch of your website, and much more.

  Living up to its name, this theme can especially be beneficial for events. It has all the essentials to make your celebration go off without a hitch.

  Grab some punch and an hors d’oeuvre and let’s check out this event – er, EventPress.

  After activating it, all the customization options are immediately available to you. However, they recommend that you install the Evento plugin that works well with this theme.

  Evento is great for customizing your landing page for specific holidays and more.

  

  Now, let’s get this party started and check it out.

  

  The layout is great on this theme to get ready for an announcement of any kind. You’re immediately able to add a relevant header image and text.

  Directly below that is where you can add your organizer or other relevant information.

  What’s convenient is you don’t need to have a separate contact form plugin or anything else with this theme. It’s already set up for you in their system.

  That way if anyone has any questions or comments, they can quickly contact you. As you can see, even if it’s a website dedicated to sending well wishes for, let’s say a wedding, hey — that’s fine, too!

  

  And, of course, if you’re counting down; whether it be for an event, website launch, or anything else — their countdown timer is easy to configure and set up.

  

  Maybe you have a fundraising event and you need to raise some dough. You can include a donations section on your landing page and make it happen.

  This feature is included in their PRO version, so you would have to upgrade to include.

  

  The Pro version includes some additional features and support. However, for the basics, the free version might do the trick. It has all the elements of a great coming soon theme.

  I like its easy to use layout, default options, and its overall functionality and design.

  This theme can kickstart your upcoming event, build your email lists, countdown, and works great as an all-in-one theme.

  To see this theme in action, be sure to check out their live demo.

• Landing Pagency

  

  Landing Pagency by ThemeEverest is a simple theme that’s recommended if you’re a creative agency, consulting business, or startup.

  There’s not a ton of customization features (e.g. contact forms, countdown timer, etc.), but all the essentials can be accomplished with plugins.

  It comes with the blog prominent on the landing page. You can adjust everything to fit your needs for a coming soon page, product promo, or event.

  Its simplistic look might be exactly what you’re looking for and customization is simple.

  

  This theme has no recommended plugins to accompany it. For a pop-up, we recommend using our Hustle plugin.

  And for additional forms, our very own Forminator can work well here as well.

  This theme also makes for a great opportunity to put your CSS knowledge into play. Like most themes, you can tweak it as you’d like.

  The nice empty canvas on this theme can provide anyone with CSS skills a chance to add a personal touch. Maybe a happy little cloud?

  

  There is an upgrade option as well. Here’s a comparison of the FREE vs PREMIUM versions:

  

  A lot of the premium options can be accomplished with a variety of plugins, good hosting, image SEO, and more. However, it may be worth the cost to upgrade if it has all the essentials you’re looking for.

  For a simple coming soon option, I was impressed with its quick editing options, default layout, and design. Sure, it doesn’t have a ton of features, but sometimes that’s perfect.

  Be sure to view their demo to see if it’s a great match for your purpose.

What Goes Up, Must Come Down

After you launched and your event is over — what next? Does the website come down?

That depends.

Something to keep in mind is themes are more of a permanent* option, so if you don’t have repeat events or promotions, it might make more sense to use a coming soon plugin instead (since they’re easily deactivated).

However, if you have reasons for keeping a coming soon theme (e.g. recurring events), then it’ll be nice to have a more stable website layout.

Coming in For a Landing (Page)

As you can see, most of these themes work best as a landing page. Are you ready to land on one?

They’re also all a little bit different.

For free options, there are slim pickings. However, there are a lot of options out there available for purchase.

The main thing is that your coming soon theme for WordPress is engaging and effective.

Or, instead of your campaign taking off, your visitors might takeoff… to another website.

Yesterday, we released our latest product, a flexible and accessible WordPress theme for schools and education.

This is the first theme that our team has created that truly incorporates everything that the Gutenberg block editor has to offer – such as reusable blocks, editor styles, content groups, and customizing default blocks.

No use in sugarcoating it, it wasn’t as fast or as easy of a project as we hoped. But the end result was well worth it. We thought we’d share some of the why and how of what we created here. It should be useful to anyone choosing, designing, or developing new WordPress themes in the future.

A Bit Of Backstory

We work with tens of thousands of schools and colleges the world over. Everything from student blogs and ePortfolios, news sites, and on up to the main website of large universities. See bulletin.hds.harvard.edu and charlestonsouthern.edu as just two examples.

Not every site needs (or can afford) custom design and development. But our customers have three main, often competing, requirements:

• easy to publish, edit, and create content by anyone
• exceed all accessibility guidelines
• adhere to branding guidelines like logos, colors, fonts, etc.

It is pretty easy to create or find themes that meet one or two of these requirements but ensuring all three, that’s a whole next-level challenge. While we have some work to do (more on that below), we’re certainly happy with the results.

Choosing Our Development Stack

Before beginning development, we spent a good amount of time deciding on the specific features we wanted to include and then looking through the different frameworks and tools out there to build off of. There is no reason to completely start from scratch.

Our focus was on finding the best existing tools and frameworks that would help us with our accessibility, performance, and user-friendly goals.

As a foundation, we decided on UnderStrap which itself is based on the ‘Underscores’ theme by Automattic and the Bootstrap framework by Twitter. This is a pretty popular framework and it is easy to see why. Starting with UnderStrap has decreased development time and helped significantly with our accessibility goals.

We also knew that we wanted to rely heavily on the WordPress customizer for all of the different theme options and settings. We fell in love with the Kirki framework and leveraged heavily quite a few of the controls it offers.

Our theme makes use of CSS Variables which also made it easier and faster to develop (with much less JavaScript for improved performance). It is worth noting, this does require a special script to work in IE11 (which quite a few of our customers do use) and not every feature can be used in IE11.

For the typeface options, we started out with making many of the free Google Fonts available in the customizer. But we needed to load all variants and styles (bold, italic, etc.) which can be heavy to load, so we opted to not include Google Fonts at all and landed on adding only free Variable Fonts instead. There is enough variation there with modern fonts to give end-users great options to choose from.

Last, our school customers loooove icons. Iconmoon made it easy for us to select from free icons (but we tried not to include too many so that we don’t slow the site down or overwhelm the user). As a result, it easy to add and customize icons for menus and in content blocks.

On that note, we’re particularly excited about new hooks in WordPress 5.4 which will allow us to add custom icon options to Menus in the Customizer. As of now, we force users to go to Appearance > Menus if they want to manage icons, even though they can do everything else with Menus right in the customizer. This new WordPress core feature will be a big win for usability.

Favorite Lesser-Known Gutenberg Features

Working with this theme has also been the first significant experience many on our team have had with the Gutenberg block editor. We’ve gotten addicted to some of the lesser-known features which we have enhanced with the theme too.

Reusable Blocks

Reusable blocks are incredibly useful for any block or content that repeats more than once across a site. You can update it once, and those changes will be applied everywhere the block appears on a site.

With our theme, once you create a reusable block, we’ve used the filter in WordPress core to show a new main Reusable Blocks menu item in the WordPress dashboard too.

Our customers use Reusable Blocks for a variety of reasons, including footer content, creating ‘mega menus’, and important notices across multiple pages.

Content Groups

Using ‘Content Groups’ in the block editor is what really makes full page builder features possible. You can easily make ‘rows’ or combine blocks and choose a separate background color for the group to give it separation and a more customized look.

Editor Styles

One of our favorite features of ‘Gutenberg’ is that theme authors can make it so that the back-end editor displays the content with the same styles as the front-end. A true ‘WYSIWYG’ experience, with background colors, fonts, and buttons all showing the same when editing as it does when viewing the site live.

However, for anyone developing themes, we found that we basically needed to apply styles twice as the HTML in the editor is different than the front end. This also meant we kept having to tweak and make changes twice as we improved the theme during development. It has sort of resulted in an ongoing battle. We expect that documentation and implementation of editor styles will continue to improve as more theme authors take advantage of it.

Accessibility Design

One of the features that we spent a lot of time on was with giving users flexibility on choosing colors, but still enforcing accessible contrast ratios between text and background colors.

Here’s an example of how it works:

As background colors change, we change the color of the text. We also use chosen colors to then provide additional accent colors that can be used in block settings for backgrounds, buttons, quotes, etc.

While most accessibility tools are more about finding accessibility issues, our goal is more about prevention before the problems occur. We know that accessibility is a continuum, meaning it can always be improved. As such, we will continue to build on accessible design options in our themes in products.

What’s Next For Our Theme?

We built this theme to be the parent for all of our future custom theme projects. We’ll continue to add new custom blocks and integrations with popular plugins that our customers use.

We also are working on making Reusable Blocks that can be shared across sites in a Multisite Network.

We’re still doing some real-world testing in hopes, if there is demand, that we will eventually submit it to WordPress.org as well.

In the meantime, if you know of a school that needs a website and would like to use this theme, please send them our way! ;)

Because, as we state in our Complete Guide To BuddyPress For WordPress, the vast majority of regular free WordPress themes work just fine as a BuddyPress themes:

A few years ago, you could only use a BuddyPress-compatible theme if you wanted to run BuddyPress, and if you wanted to use the plugin with your own theme, you’d have to add some extra theme template files to make BuddyPress work. If you’ve been told that you still have to do this, don’t worry: you don’t. Since version 1.7, BuddyPress will work with any well-written theme, although there will always be some themes whose layout and design suit BuddyPress better than others.

So, if you’re searching online for free BuddyPress themes and are having a hard time finding themes that are still supported, don’t worry.

Many WordPress themes will work with your BuddyPress installation!

Free WordPress Directory BuddyPress Themes

And to help you out we did a search for “BuddyPress” in the free WordPress theme directory, found the ones we liked, installed and tested them with BuddyPress and hereby present them to you, updated for 2022:

Membershiply

Membershiply is a free community and membership WordPress theme made by SuperbThemes.com. The theme utilizes BuddyPress in combination with either the built-in WordPress Gutenberg editor or Elementor. The plugin comes with a bunch of layout and color customization. Some outstanding features are one-click demo import, customizable fonts, 10+ layout options, and 40+ color options – allowing you to customize the site so it matches your brand and website.

There’s a premium version of the theme available, which unlocks more customization options. The premium version is not required to build an awesome community/forum website.

Spacious

Spacious is a free WordPress Theme you can use with BuddyPress for a clean-looking site or blog. The theme includes a number of customization options that allow you to tweak its design. These options include a slider, boxed and wide layouts, light and dark color skin, and various widgets. The theme is WooCommerce compatible, translation-ready, and offers RTL support.

A Pro version is available with additional features, including unlimited slides, support for Google Fonts, font size options, 35+ theme colors, social icons, header text, footer copyright editor, additional custom widgets, and many other features.

Square

Square is a free WordPress theme that features an angular and minimal design suitable for business or corporate-themed BuddyPress sites. The theme is  WooCommerce-ready, flexible, responsive, compatible with all browsers and devices, and offers a number of customizable features, including general settings, colors, menus, widgets, social icons, BuddyPress Nouveau settings, and more. A Pro version is also available with many additional features, such as video background, sliders, mega menu, and advanced settings and layouts.

Woostify

Woostify is a lightweight theme that integrates WooCommerce with BuddyPress and can be used to offer products to your online community. The theme lets you customize various features via the Theme Customizer, such as layout, color, buttons, menus, widgets, and BuddyPress Nouveau settings, and works with page builders like Elementor, Beaver Builder, SiteOrigin, Thrive Architect, Divi, and Visual Composer.

If BuddyPress with eCommerce is what you’re after, the theme’s Pro version offers additional features to enhance eCommerce functionality on your site, such as a mega menu, Ajax WooCommerce search, size guide, advanced shop widgets, ‘Buy Now’ buttons, countdown urgency, and sale notifications.

Free BuddyPress Themes Are Everywhere

As explained earlier, most WordPress themes by default are BuddyPress-compatible nowadays. You just need to experiment a little. Install a theme you like and see how it looks on your BuddyPress activity and members’ pages. Some themes allow you to customize and configure settings, some themes offer more limited customization options, and some will just be plainly not suitable for use with BuddyPress.

So, as you know, web design is continually evolving as more businesses compete to establish their brand online and stand out from a growing crowd of template-based websites.

In recent years, we’ve seen — and written about — many web design trends that have captured the collective imagination of web designers and brand-conscious businesses.  Suddenly, every website you click through seems to be influenced by web design styles like brutalism, minimalism, modern retro, material, modular, or security-focused design.

And what about using geometry in web design, rule-breaking typography, saturated colors, asymmetrical, broken, or slanted layouts, CSS Grids, video headers, parallax, cinemagraphs, customized illustrations, hand-drawn animations, microinteractions, and website push notifications? Yep, we’ve covered those too!

We’ve even debated the merits of using single-page web design and shared with you what the research says about using sidebars in websites.

While some web design trends focus on helping sites stand out from the crowd, other trends are borne out of functional or economic necessity, or even compliance. For example, think of mobile-based design or inclusive web design. It’s hard to imagine building sites today without mobile-friendly designs or taking accessibility into account.

Website owners want great-looking sites that will deliver results. It should be no surprise, then, that the trends listed below incorporate aesthetic design with essential functionality.

WordPress Web Design Trends For 2020

Let’s start with the trend that I believe will dominate the world of WordPress web design not only in 2020 but for many years to come.

The Best WordPress Design Starts Out Of The Blocks

Without a doubt, WordPress Gutenberg block-based web design is the most important WordPress design trend you’ll need to pay attention to in 2020 and beyond.

During the latest State of The Word address delivered in November 2019 at the WordPress Camp US (WCUS) in St. Louis, Missouri, Matt Mullenweg (WordPress co-founder) made it clear that Gutenberg is the future of WordPress web design and web development.

To appreciate the significance of Matt’s speech, you need to know that Gutenberg is the biggest change WordPress has made in its 16-year history.

Since the release of WordPress 5.0 on December 6, 2018, Gutenberg has had 20 new releases, the number of contributors has grown significantly (from 200 to over 480 in one year), and the adoption of the Gutenberg editor on WordPress sites has almost tripled.

Anyone designing or building WordPress sites today simply cannot afford to ignore just how serious WordPress is about its adoption push for Gutenberg.

In the past year, Gutenberg developers have made significant enhancements to the editor (I cover some of these below) and decreased Gutenberg’s average time to load and average time to type. While not everyone has moved away from the WordPress Classic editor yet, more users are responding to the increase in Gutenberg’s post-loading speed by switching to the new editor.  Matt announced during his address that over 270,000 posts per day are now being published using Gutenberg.

You can watch Matt’s full address in the video below:

(Matt’s entire presentation above was created and delivered using Gutenberg.)

So, how is Gutenberg going to affect WordPress web design in 2020?

For a start, Gutenberg will allow more users to start customizing their own sites.

Many of Gutenberg’s new features are already available with WordPress version 5.3. These features include user enhancements like:

• Smoother block movements as you drag elements on the page with motion settings for improved accessibility.
• A ‘typewriter’ mode that keeps your vertical place as you type for a more pleasant writing experience.
• Block previews that let users see what blocks will look like before selecting them.
• Support for uploading large images such as high-resolution pics from your smartphone. (Shameless plug: use an image compression plugin like Smush when uploading large images to your site and you will never have a problem).
• Faster block navigation mode for improved usability and accessibility (users can navigate through block menus using their keyboard).
• The ability to customize navigation menus with elements like background and text colors using an inline navigation menu block.

Gutenberg also features new blocks that let you group blocks together (Group block), add white space between blocks (Spacer block), and use custom gradients and multi-buttons on pages and posts.

During his address, Matt also mentioned that one of the most sought after features users wanted from Gutenberg blocks was the ability to add social icons. Gutenberg’s Social Icons block will let users add social icons and buttons anywhere on their posts and pages. I expect different types of social media blocks will be made available for users to choose from.

As more contributors and developers are now focusing on Gutenberg as the way forward, WordPress also announced that it will launch a Block Directory that will allow users to search for and install blocks into their sites using an inline block directory. This includes blocks that will add entire collections to your site, like pattern libraries, for example.

With Gutenberg’s block directory, users will be able to design pages on the fly. This leads to our next WordPress web design trend for 2020.

One Theme To Rule Them All

WordPress theme developers take note: Gutenberg’s block-based capabilities will give users more freedom to design and customize their own posts and pages. Rather than focusing on developing purpose-specific themes (e.g. an eCommerce or blog-focused theme) that merely accommodate Gutenberg blocks, WordPress theme developers should rethink how to support this new freedom with multi-purpose themes that offer features for building all kinds of websites.

As Matt Mullenweg (WordPress co-founder) recently stated in the State of The Word WCUS,

“What we’re really trying to enable with these fundamental building blocks is that you can look at any website in the world and build that inside WordPress in just a few clicks.”

This represents both a challenge and an opportunity for WordPress theme designers. How do you build themes that users can transform into anything they want?

Let’s take a look at some theme designs that are attempting to do just that:

Neve

Neve is a fast-loading, highly customizable, multi-purpose theme that can be used for all kinds of website projects. Although this theme has a minimalist design, it is highly extensible and works perfectly with Gutenberg as well as most page builders.

In addition to being WooCommerce ready, responsive, RTL enabled, and translation ready, this lightweight theme is also fully AMP optimized (see the next web design trend below to learn why this is important).

Genesis Framework

Genesis Framework developed by StudioPress (now part of WP Engine) aims to move beyond being merely Gutenberg-ready by releasing a number of themes enhanced to be specially optimized for Gutenberg.

Themes like Breakthrough Pro, for example, incorporate Gutenberg theme support for things like block color palettes, font sizes, editor width, and image sizes, custom styling and default Gutenberg block styles that work with the full range of available editor widths, and easy WYSIWYG editing that lets you build pages and posts using Gutenberg blocks with matching front end and admin styles.

Make Fast Sites Faster

Sites not only need to look good, but they also need to load faster. Especially on mobile sites.

Two growing trends to watch out for are  Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) and Progressive Web Apps (PWA).

AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) are essentially stripped-down HTML versions of your existing webpages designed for faster-loading speeds. Google caches and serves AMP content to make pages load instantaneously to users in its search results.

Themes like Neve, which I discussed earlier are AMP optimized, so no special configurations are required.

PWA plugins for WordPress allow users to return to your site back to your website by launching the app from their home screen and interact with your website through an app-like interface.

Converting your WordPress website into a Progressive Web App allows users to return to your site by launching an app from their mobile phones and interact with your website through an app-like interface.

In a world where milliseconds can make a huge difference to whether visitors choose your site or click through to someone else’s and a one-second delay can decrease conversion rates by as much as 7%, WordPress sites that can load even faster than its competitors will keep attracting users’ eyeballs and winning clicks.

WordPress theme designers and web developers can stay ahead of this trend by developing mobile-friendly WordPress themes that won’t require the need of AMP at all and converting sites into PWAs.

Make Sites You Can Talk To

More users are searching online using their mobile devices and using voice search features. According to a voice search study by Backlinko, page speed plays a significant role in voice search SEO, where the average voice search result page loads in 4.6 seconds (52% faster than the average page).

You can add voice search capabilities to WordPress sites using plugins.

WP Fastest Site Search

WP Fastest Site Search not only lets you add voice search capabilities to WordPress sites, but it also replaces the standard WordPress search widget and adds other search enhancement features like autocomplete, spell correct, PDF search, and image search in addition to search filters and search results pages.

Adding voice search plugins to WordPress, however, is not enough. You will also need to learn how to optimize your WordPress site for voice search. Voice search optimization helps users find what they are looking for faster and this requires fast-loading, mobile-optimized sites. Also, it’s important to focus on areas like content readability to make sure that the site can answer readers’ questions. WPAstra has written a great article on voice search SEO.

Make Sites That Talk Back

Users not only expect to find and get what they are looking for faster online, but they also expect to get instant replies to their queries.

Just think about how ‘waiting’ has evolved for users online We have gone from drumming our fingers nervously on the table as we wait for email replies, to watching anxiously as animated dots on mobile screens tell us that someone is replying to our text messages. Technology has conditioned users to expect instant gratification and now we have to deliver.

The solution? AI chatbots.

Olark Live Chat

Live chat integrated with AI technologies allows businesses to respond and engage immediately with customers who land on their website. If someone is not available to respond live, AI scripts can take over to direct users appropriately and provide a feeling of instant support. Sometimes, all users need is to feel they’re loved, even if only by a caring bot.

WordPress, You Move Me

Most users stick around a website for less than 15 seconds. That’s how long you’ve got to grab their attention.

Integrating motion UI features such as animated elements and transitions into your web design can help grab your visitors’ attention as they enter or leave your site. The key here is to strike the right balance between grabbing their attention and then directing them to whatever it is they are searching for.

If you don’t know how to start adding motion to your website, start where most WordPress users start… with a plugin!

Animate It!

Animate it! lets you add CSS3 animations to content on posts widgets and pages when visitors enter, exit, scroll, or click on elements on your site.

Video Backgrounds

Video backgrounds are another way to add motion to your WordPress site. You can use the Gutenberg Cover Block to add a video background to your pages.

When adding videos and animations, just make sure that your site still loads fast. Install our Smush and Hummingbird plugins to help you with this.

Say Hello From Ahlo To Zialo

While businesses aim to expand globally in areas like eCommerce and the internet keeps making the world a smaller place, more cultures around the world are trying to preserve their uniqueness.

In 2020 and beyond, multilingual WordPress sites that allow users to view content in their own language are going to become more popular.

While WordPress itself currently does not support bilingual or multilingual sites out-of-the-box, it does support WordPress being translated into all languages. Also, there are plugins that will allow you to easily create a multilingual site.

WPML

WPML (WordPress Multilingual Plugin) lets you translate WordPress sites into many different languages and integrates with WooCommerce, allowing sites to interact with users in over 100 countries and languages. Other popular language translation plugins include Polylang, Weglot, and TranslatePress.

It’s important to note that for years, WordPress has been supporting developers that help improve its multilingual capabilities. WordPress is not looking to replace translation plugins or make multilingual WordPress a core offering.

Everyone’s Got An Opinion And Something To Say

Imagine being able to design and develop WordPress sites using real-time collaboration. Different departments would be able to give valuable input into specific areas of the site as it is being developed, resulting in better sites for users and development teams.

Although real-time collaboration in WordPress is not quite there yet, it is on its way. Leonardo Losovitz has written a great article on how Gutenberg is reinventing the experience of creating, editing, and managing content in WordPress and helping web designers assist users.

Gutenberg will soon make it possible to collaborate with other WordPress in real-time.

Start Designing Tomorrow’s WordPress Sites Today

As you can see from the above, Gutenberg is the most significant development to affect WordPress and will influence all future WordPress web design trends and developments. Ignore this at your own peril.

WordPress web design from 2020 will focus on sites that integrate design and functionality, load extremely fast, and cater to a growing mobile user base worldwide. Knowing this should help you build better sites.

We’ve covered many web design trends in the past and we’ll keep predicting trends in the future. We’ll even show you where to get web design inspiration from, so if you’re a web designer or a web developer, make sure to subscribe to receive our latest updates and stay on-trend.

There are so many variations to choose from. If only there was a way to mix and match them to get exactly what you want. Oh wait…there are several food chains who’ve exploited this very need.

If you’re planning to customize your WordPress website, using a page builder is similar to customizing a pizza. You choose the elements you want in your page, add content, set their alignment, background, colors, fonts, etc. And voila! Your page is ready to be published, for the entire world to savor.

What is a WordPress Page Builder?

In WordPress, a page builder is essentially a plugin that lets you design your site’s pages and posts without any coding involved. It’s a given nowadays for most page builders to come with drag-and-drop functionality. Thus, you can create detailed web page layouts pretty fast, like building a complex structure out of legos.

Why Use a Page Builder for WordPress?

There are many advantages of using a page builder. Here are the 4 primary ones:

No Coding Knowledge Required

Many website owners find it difficult to make even minor changes to their website’s page layouts or styles. You may know exactly what you want to change, but may not know how. With a page builder, you don’t need to learn HTML, CSS, JavaScript, or PHP to make these changes.

This enables you to achieve high-end web pages without any coding involved. What would’ve taken days or weeks earlier, including hiring a professional web developer, can now be done by yourself in a matter of hours, if not minutes.

Feature-Rich

Another amazing advantage of page builders is that they come loaded with tons of on-page widgets and features: Sliders, image carousels, galleries, content grids, social sharing buttons, pricing tables, charts, CTA buttons, forms, animations, etc.

Want the same functionalities without using a page builder? You’d have to install quite a few dedicated plugins, premium or otherwise. First, you’d need to research to find the right plugins. Then, you’d have to learn how to use them. And after that, you’ll have to make sure that they’re all up-to-date and work perfectly with one another and all the other plugins you’ve installed.

Imagine doing that with half a dozen plugins, or even more. A page builder eliminates that hassle and helps you keep it simple.

Pre-Built, Attractive Templates

Most page builders come with beautifully crafted templates for standard website pages such as Home, About, Services, Products, Contact, etc. These templates are a great way to kickstart your designing process.

Some page builders also allow you to mix and match sections from multiple templates, thereby giving you virtually unlimited page design options to choose from.

Easy Customizations

Page builders are fast and intuitive. With user-friendly features such as drag-and-drop support and a live preview mode, you can add modules to your pages easily, and then rearrange and resize them quickly as you like. You can also change their styles such as background, font, color, padding, margin, and border effortlessly.

Any changes you make will be reflected immediately in the live preview section, helping you fine-tune your site.

With so many page builders for WordPress out there, we decided to compare the top ones and list them all, so that you can decide which will be the right fit for you.

Let’s begin!

The Top 13 WordPress Page Builders

1. Beaver Builder
2. Elementor
3. Divi
4. Visual Composer Website Builder
5. WPBakery Page Builder
6. Oxygen
7. SiteOrigin Page Builder
8. Themify Builder
9. Themeum WP Page Builder
10. Thrive Architect
11. GeneratePress Premium
12. MotoPress Content Editor
13. Brizy

Beaver Builder

Beaver Builder markets itself as “a complete design system.” It’s a flexible drag-and-drop page builder that works on the front-end of your WordPress website, so you can see the changes live as you’re making them. You can also click on individual elements to edit their properties.

If you’re new to page builders, Beaver Builder also includes an intuitive onboarding tour that will explain all its features one by one, helping you get familiarized with its user-friendly interface.

There are modules for adding almost any element you may want on a page, including content sliders, maps, testimonials, galleries, slideshows, accordions, pricing tables, etc.

And if you want to get a headstart with your designing process, it also includes more than 50 finely-crafted templates for landing and content pages. They’re all mobile-friendly, responsive layouts. You can even save your custom templates for use in other sections of your website, or on a different website altogether (all WordPress developers say yay!).

Beaver Builder plugin works great with almost every WordPress theme and Gutenberg. And if you want to uninstall it for any reason, it doesn’t leave behind a mess. If you’re a WordPress developer or an agency, you’ll appreciate how Beaver Builder can help you build some flexibility into your workflow.

Take Beaver Builder for a spin here and see for yourself whether it’s the right fit for you. There’s also a lite version of the plugin available for free on WordPress.org repo (with limited features though).

Pricing: Starts at $99/year (Unlimited Sites) / Lite Version is Free

*Check out the WPMU DEV members-only discount!

Elementor

Elementor is another front-end focused page builder plugin for WordPress. It prides itself on its fast live design and inline editing capabilities. And deliver it does, which probably accounts for its 3 million+ active installations!

With Elementor, you make changes to the page and instantly see exactly what it looks like. It makes the whole process of designing and editing web pages a seamless experience. Elementor also works perfectly fine with or without Gutenberg.

While the free version of Elementor plugin includes over 100 designer-made templates and just 30 basic widgets, the Pro version takes it to a whole new level with 300+ pre-built templates and 50+ advanced widgets.

Elementor Pro also tacks on a theme builder, a popup builder, a visual form builder with popular marketing integrations, WooCommerce builder with 15+ shop widgets, dynamic content & custom fields capabilities, and motion effects.

It’s certainly one of the most ambitious page builders for WordPress out there.

Since Elementor is released under Open Source and GPL, other developers are free to create their own extensions for it. Check out these amazing add-ons for Elementor on WordPress.org repo.

Elementor Pro (and Beaver Builder too) pairs well with free themes such as Hello Elementor, Astra, OceanWP and GeneratePress.

Pricing: Starts at $49/year (1 Site) / Free (Only 30 Basic Widgets)

*Check out the WPMU DEV members-only discount!

Divi

Divi labels itself as “the ultimate WordPress theme and visual page builder.” Its visual page builder has a pretty slick, easy-to-use interface and comes loaded with tons of features out of the box.

While the Divi Builder plugin works best with the Divi All-in-One theme, you can also pair it up any theme of your liking. It works just fine. And just like Beaver Builder and Elementor, Divi Builder employs a front-end, drag-and-drop WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor.

It comes with 40+ website elements and 800+ pre-made designs, including 100+ full-website packs. Furthermore, Elegant Themes adds brand new layouts to Divi Builder almost every week. All these features come together to help you create amazing designs with surprising ease.

When it comes to pricing, Divi has the sweetest deal of all the premium page builder options out there. Not only does it come with a great theme and the standalone page builder plugin, it also includes all the other products by Elegant Themes.

Try the Divi Builder Demo and see it in action for yourself.

Pricing: Starts at $89/year (Unlimited Sites), $249 for lifetime access

Visual Composer Website Builder

Visual Composer Website Builder is a drag-and-drop solution to create websites you’ve always wanted. Just like the options mentioned above, it sports a live front-end editor, which allows you to make changes to your website instantly and see how it looks before hitting the publish button.

It comes with 200+ premium templates and content elements, enabling you to design spectacular landing pages or page sections in minutes. To give you an idea of its extensive customization options, just its button element comes in 30 unique styles.

While Visual Composer sports a clean and minimalistic interface, its actual user experience leaves much to be desired. It does need some getting used to, but once you’ve figured it out, it’s a breeze from there on.

Unlike with other page builder plugins listed above, it also lets you edit the header, footer, sidebar, and other theme features. This is why it’s called a website builder, rather than a page builder.

Visual Composer Website Builder is made by the same team behind WPBakery Page Builder plugin, which confusingly enough was named Visual Composer before. They had to rebrand their old product to avoid trademark restrictions set by Envato marketplace. In case you were confused about this, now you know!

Pricing: Starts at $59/year (1 Site), $349/year (Unlimited Sites)

WPBakery Page Builder

WPBakery is both a front-end and back-end page builder plugin for WordPress. Its front-end user interface is quite similar to that of Visual Composer Website Builder, which isn’t surprising as it’s made by the same team.

Some users prefer its old-school back-end editor to the new front-end ones. You can also move back and forth between the two editing interfaces as needed.

It includes 50+ premium content elements, 100+ pre-built layouts, 200+ 3rd party add-ons, 40+ grid design templates, and much more. And it works with any theme, making it a comprehensive page builder solution.

However, you should note that WPBakery is a shortcode-based plugin, which means that all your customizations through it are tied to clunky shortcodes. It can slow down your website considerably if not used smartly.

WPBakery originally started its journey on Enavato’s marketplace CodeCanyon, where it’s still available. It’s also the most sold WordPress plugin on there. If you’ve ever bought a premium theme from ThemeForest, chances are high that it came preloaded with WPBakery Page Builder plugin.

Pricing: Starts at $45 (1 Site)

Oxygen

Oxygen is the new kid on the block of WordPress website builders. It’s designed from the ground up to be a full site builder, as opposed to being just a page builder. Oxygen’s templating engine lets you design every part of your WordPress site – headers, footers, pages, any post type, and any taxonomy.

With Oxygen, you’re essentially building a custom WordPress theme from scratch (though the team behind it doesn’t like to call it as such). But instead of hand-coding it, you’re using an intuitive, live visual editor to do it. This makes the process much simpler and quicker.

The elements in Oxygen are “more flexible, more customizable, and more powerful.” In a way, it lets you do more, but with less! It sounds counter-intuitive, but that’s how I can describe Oxygen in a nutshell.

The Oxygen design library includes premade design layouts for almost everything you can imagine. You can import complete websites from it with just a single click. Not happy with the existing designs? You can mix and match sections from any website template to create beautiful pages with a uniform style.

The end result is an optimized WordPress website with minimal bloat, thus making it load faster.

With that being said, Oxygen is meant for advanced, professional website designers. You need to have at least some knowledge of HTML/CSS/JavaScript, and a rudimentary understanding of PHP and WordPress CMS to make the most out of it.

The best part about Oxygen though is its current pricing, which seems almost too good to be true.

Pricing: $99/lifetime for Unlimited Sites (limited-time introductory pricing)

SiteOrigin Page Builder

SiteOrigin Page Builder boasts almost 2.5 million downloads and 1+ million active installs on WordPress.org repo. While its user interface isn’t that easy to use, it’s nonetheless a highly popular page builder plugin. This can be attributed mostly to its price (which is free), while still delivering full-fledged page builder features.

It works with any theme, supports live editing, row and widget styles, and is available in 17 languages. Page Builder uses standard WordPress widgets as its content elements, so combined with its widgets add-on bundle (also free), it should take care of most of your page designing needs.

One cool aspect of this plugin is its History Browser feature, which lets you roll forward and back easily through any changes you make. This gives you the freedom to experiment with your page layouts and designs without worrying about breaking the content.

While I wouldn’t recommend SiteOrigin Page Builder to anyone, especially newbies, it still needs to be acknowledged as it’s used by many out there.

Pricing: Free / Premium Add-ons start from $29/year (1 Site)

Themify Builder

Themify Builder is both a front-end and back-end page builder plugin for WordPress. It’s included with all Themify themes as part of the Themify framework, but the standalone Themify Builder plugin works with all WordPress themes and is available for free.

Its compact back-end interface lets you to drag-and-drop modules around quickly and easily, while the front-end interface allows you to preview your design live (WYSIWYG).

Themify Builder comes with 40+ professional pre-designed layouts for various website types such as blogs, shops, portfolio, services, etc. All of these website templates can be imported with just a single click.

Most of the standard modules are included for free (text, post, gallery, video, widget, menu, slider, button, map, icons, etc.). However, you can extend its capabilities further by purchasing an add-on bundle which includes 25 extra premium modules.

If you’re looking for a free page builder for WordPress with a simple, easy-to-use interface, you should give Themify Builder a try.

Pricing: Core Plugin is Free / $39 for Add-on Bundle

Themeum WP Page Builder

Themeum is known for its high-quality, user-friendly themes, and their WP Page Builder plugin is no different. Its sleek and simple front-end interface is easy to understand, even if you’ve never used any page builders before.

WP Page Builder calls its modules add-ons, and they’re all unique and perform a specific task. As of now, it includes 30+ add-ons, with more slated to be coming soon. All your WordPress widgets can also be used as an add-on. Apart from that, you have plenty of pre-designed blocks and page layouts to choose from to get started.

Its library feature lets you save any part of your page design as its own template, which you can replicate on other pages or websites easily with just a single click. You can also import or export entire page layouts.

The free version of the plugin includes everything you need to get started. The Pro package gets you 15+ premium layout bundles, that also includes 83+ readymade page layouts. And if you ever want to create custom add-ons or add custom blocks and layouts to WP Page Builder, you can do that easily by following their developer guidelines.

Wanna see it in action? Try the live demo of WP Page Builder.

Pricing: Core Plugin is Free / Membership is $199/year

Thrive Architect

Thrive Architect is an intuitive drag-and-drop front-end page builder for WordPress. What sets it apart from the rest of the page builders is that it’s focused on building landing pages that convert.

Want to change something on your page? Just click on it and start editing instantly. Wanna move something? Click to select, and then drag and drop where you want it to be.

Thrive Architect comes bundled with 300+ beautifully designed landing page templates that are 100% focused on conversion. And to eliminate the WordPress plugin hellhole, it includes conversion-focused elements such as attractive CTA buttons, dynamic actions and animations, pricing tables, testimonials, lead generation forms, countdown timers, and more.

Plus, all of these features integrate with your favourite marketing tools, so that you can concentrate on growing your business, and not how your website looks and works.

Thrive Architect works with any WordPress theme. If you’re looking to create professional looking sales pages, webinar pages, or opt-in pages, this is the solution you’re looking for.

Pricing: $67 (1 Site), $19/month (25 Sites)

GP Premium by GeneratePress

GeneratePress is one of the most popular and well-reviewed free WordPress themes. It’s built with a focus on speed and user-friendliness. And thanks to its strict adherence to WordPress coding standards, it works well with all major page builders, including Beaver Builder and Elementor.

Now, you might be wondering why a free WordPress theme is included here. Well, that’s because GeneratePress also offers a premium package called, well, GP Premium.

GP Premium builds on GeneratePress theme and adds 14 premium modules, including the Site Library, from which you can import entire demo sites with just a click. Its Sections premium module acts as a tiny page builder, allowing you to build complex web page layouts with a basic back-end interface.

While it’s not the most intuitive page builder solution mentioned here, it still needs a mention due to its performance advantage.

Most page builders add considerable bloat to your site’s frontend, but GP Premium retains its fast and lightweight nature, thereby giving your site a boost in page load speed and performance.

Pricing: $49.95/year (Unlimited Sites)

MotoPress Content Editor

MotoPress Content Editor is a drag-and-drop page builder plugin for WordPress that’ll help you create better websites with any theme. With its front-end editor, you can easily design your site’s posts, pages, or custom post types.

It includes 30+ content modules and various styling options for you to choose from. However, if you want to display videos, Google Maps, pricing tables, or add a simple contact form, you need to purchase those add-ons separately.

Its straightforward page builder interface can help you streamline your website building process, helping you design your pages swiftly. The designs you build with this plugin are optimized for all viewports, meaning they’re all responsive and mobile-friendly layouts.

This plugin also lets you create custom reusable sections, widgets, and pages. Thus, you can transfer your designs to other websites in no time, saving you a lot of hassle.

There’s no shortcode lock-in with MotoPress Content Editor, which means that even if you choose to deactivate the plugin, your content will still be safe.

Try MotoPress Content Editor here and see for yourself whether it’s the right fit for you.

Pricing: Core Plugin is Free / Premium Add-ons Available

Brizy

Brizy is a relatively new entrant to the WordPress page builder plugins scene. Built from scratch and focused on usability, its intuitive and clutter-free interface ensures that you only see what’s needed for the task at hand.

Like Elementor, Brizy is an ambitious venture and has set its goals pretty high. The first thing you’ll notice about Brizy is its modern, minimalistic design.

It works pretty much like any other front-end page builder plugin for WordPress. You set your page layout, and add or remove page elements as needed. But the area where Brizy truly sets itself apart is how you customize on-page elements. This is where it shines.

For example, if you’re using Beaver Builder or Elementor, you’ll be doing it via a sidebar or a popup. But Brizy lets you edit the element properties inline, right where it is, which seems more intuitive and natural.

Another area where Brizy trumps other page builders is its cloud save feature. You don’t have to worry about saving your changes anymore. It’s all taken care of automatically. And if you ever want to roll back any changes, you can do it easily.

Brizy works with all WordPress themes.

Pricing: Starts at $49/year (3 Sites) / Lite Version is Free

Other Notable Mentions

These page builder plugins were shortlisted, but just missed the mark from making the cut. You can check them out if you’re curious.

• Page Builder Sandwich
• Live Composer
• King Composer
• Cornerstone by Themeco

How to Choose the Best WordPress Page Builder for You?

With all being said and done, you’re still left with picking a WordPress page builder from a pretty big list. To lock down on any one plugin that’s the best fit for you, look out for these five main factors:

• Ease of Use – how intuitive and fast is the builder interface to use?
• Compatibility – is it compatible with your existing setup (theme, plugins, etc.)?
• Flexibility – does it let you create layouts and apply design styles that you want?
• Price – is it within your budget?
• Final Output – does the end result look good, is responsive, and is optimized for performance?

Start with Your Dream Site Today

WordPress has always been a platform that promotes openness and DIY. With a page or website builder, you can start building a powerful website in minutes, without compromising on design, flexibility, or functionality. This saves you a lot of time and money, as you don’t have to hire a professional web developer or designer.

Using the right page builder, you can create websites that can compete with many professionals out there. Get started with building your dream site today!

*The discounts for our members that we mention in this post are there because they are products that we know our members love. No affiliate links, kick-backs, special treatment, or anything like that :)

A major part of this pivot has been to embrace the remaining themes and plugins at the forefront of the WordPress design space – making sure our community understands them and that our products and services work seamlessly with them. It’s to that end that we’ve created this guide to the Divi theme.

Divi by Elegant Themes is, by all accounts, the most widely used premium theme and visual page builder in WordPress. We’ve been happy Divi users ourselves for many years – in fact, both the Edublogs and CampusPress websites, which are sister services to WPMU DEV, are running Divi child themes, as are sites that we’ve built for many of our customers.

We chose Divi because it gives our team the flexibility to make content changes and updates to pages with complex layouts on the fly. And for those using it on their own, Divi requires no coding skills whatsoever to create custom websites.

In this Ultimate Guide to Divi, we’ll look at some of the features that we like most and some examples of Divi in the wild.

Why Choose Divi?

There are a lot of choices for WordPress users looking for a customizable theme or page builder; there’s Beaver Builder, Elementor, Avada, and more. So what makes Divi unique?

Key Features

• A front-end visual builder, built with ReactJS
• Responsive design settings and draggable widths and heights
• 1495+ professionally designed pre-made layouts
• Ability to save and re-use anything with the Divi Library
• Full export of designs and content (to share or sell!)
• User role management
• Simple split A/B testing built right in

A Massive, Passionate Community

One measure of any product or service is the community behind it, and Divi has a big one.

There are multiple Facebook groups with over 100,000 members combined, WordCamp Meetups, and the Divi Nation Network. And beyond that, there is an entire ecosystem of add-ons, plugins, child themes, and more for Divi built by 3rd parties.

The product has consistently been improved over the years, and every week, two new professionally designed layout packs are released into the Divi Library for all Divi users to download and use for free.

In short, Divi is a solid choice, packed with features, and a company with Elegant Themes and community around it that keeps it growing and improving, with no signs of slowing down.

Getting Started With Divi

All said and done, Divi is just a WordPress theme. Like any theme, you download the theme files and upload them to your WordPress site to activate.

Divi is a premium theme and will cost you $89 for one year of updates, or $249 for lifetime access – which can be used on unlimited sites. I personally have been a member since 2009 – which just floors me to think about how fast time is flying by (and how valuable that lifetime access really is).

We won’t re-create an entire guide to downloading and installing Divi, you can find detailed videos and step-by-step directions in their docs section here.

Once activated, you’ll see the ‘Divi Builder’ options when editing or creating any new page and post. You’ll want to take a bit of time to familiarize yourself with the builder and how it works.

3 Key Words You’ll Need To Know

Section – The first thing you choose from when designing layouts with Divi are sections. A page or post will be made up of one or more sections, and you can choose from full-width or standard sections.

Row – Each section is made up of one or more rows, and you can choose rows with up to 4 columns.

Module – Each row is made up of one or more modules, which is sometimes also referred to as ‘elements.’ There are modules for just about anything you can think of, including header images, sliders, buttons, menus, sidebars, and videos.

There is a much more detailed overview of these tools and how it all works in the docs for the Divi visual editor here.

Getting The Most From Divi

Front-end vs. Back-end Editor

One of the more impressive features of Divi is that it has mastered the ‘square-space’ like front-end editing experience – in Divi speak, it is called the ‘Visual Builder.’ It works really well once you learn a few of the quirks and what the different symbols and icons mean. You can drag-and-drop elements, create columns and rows, and edit content to see exactly how it will look on the live site.

To be honest, when using Divi, I personally still default to the back-end editor experience, but that may just be because I was using Divi for years before the front-end editor even existed. There are times when the front-end is easier, and others, like when creating a more complex page from scratch, when the back-end works better for me. I’m excited to try out the brand new page creation process on the front-end with future projects, which may change how I feel about this too.

There is a pretty slick demo where you can play with the front-end editor in action here.

Using The Customizer

For when you want to make design changes across the entire site, Divi works seamlessly with the standard WordPress customizer. You can upload logos, choose fonts and colors, and select from a myriad of settings and options.

The customizer includes settings for the header, footer, and every single ‘module’ such as blog posts, sliders, dividers, and more.

Using The Library

A major time-saver is the ‘library’ function that is part of Divi. You can save sections, rows, and modules to a library to reuse on other pages and posts. For example, if you want to start or end all posts with a standard set of text, you can add that text module to the library. Or, if you are creating multiple landing pages that all have similar layouts or elements, those can be added and reused as well.

Even more impressive is that any library item can be, with just one click, designated as a ‘global’ item. Global items mean that when you update that element on one page of your site, it will automatically be updated everywhere that the library item appears. With a little bit of planning and thought, these library items can be incredibly useful.

Mobile And Responsive Design

Out-of-the-box, Divi is responsive, such that it will resize and reorganize all modules, rows, and columns without you needing to do anything.

But, there is an option to hide or show any element based on the screen size of the visitor. For example, you can show a different menu to those on desktops versus mobile devices. Or, you can hide that giant and slow-to-load image slider in the header for mobile users, giving them a better browsing experience.

You can also preview the view of each page on different-sized devices from within the Divi builders, which comes in handy.

Doing A/B Testing

Having trouble deciding which call to action you should use or want to test other elements of your site’s design? Divi makes it so that you don’t need to invest in more complicated A/B testing tools, it can be done right from within the Divi editor.

In Divi, it is called Divi Leads which allows for ‘split testing’ unlimited versions at once. Simply choose your variations, and you are off and running.

Child Theme Or Na?

In our experience, when it comes to using Divi for clients of CampusPress or our Enterprise hosting services, we almost always make a child theme. This is because we can then control the branding and design aspects of the site and keep end-users from breaking these guidelines. We can also implement page templates for layouts, and be a little more pixel perfect with things like menu items, breadcrumbs, typography, and the like.

But the reality is that Divi can be incredibly flexible on its own – no child theme needed. If you are building a site where you’ll be the only one with admin access, it could be perfect for you right out of the box. There are also loads of layout packs that you can download and customize too, so that you don’t have to start from scratch and so that no two Divi sites will look the same.

More resources on child themes:

• Divi’s take on building child themes
• Lots of Divi child theme resources from the Divi blog

The showcase that follows includes examples of sites using Divi that are built with and without child themes which should also help provide you with a good idea about what you can achieve whichever route you choose.

Showcase

campuspress.com – A child theme of Divi, we built elements into the library to reuse on different landing pages.

recubre.com.mx – A WPMU DEV member’s site, an example of Divi working great for eCommerce sites too.

roundrockisd.org – A child theme, which we re-created the same look and layout from a theme using Visual Composer. Changing to Divi improved performance and reliability considerably.

wilcosymphony.org – A site that I built over a weekend for a local non-profit.

wpgoby.com – A WordPress agency and member of WPMU DEV.

My Divi Wishlist

While Divi checks off just about every box and meets most needs, there are a few items on my Divi wishlist worth sharing.

First up, it will seem simple and there are Divi extensions by 3rd parties that allow for this, but I’ve frequently wanted a quick way to put a site title in the header and not use a logo. In many cases, existing logos may not fit well in headers or the quality just isn’t good enough to use. A blurry or misplaced-looking logo can distract users from the content on the site.

More importantly, we’d love to see the Divi team incorporate the features of our Divi Accessibility Plugin into the Divi product itself, and work towards ensuring Divi can more easily be used in a way that will meet and exceed accessibility standards. We can limit the use of some elements and get close, but there are some issues that need to be improved.

And lastly, I’m sure the Divi team has a plan, and we haven’t discussed it at all with them, but I want to know how Divi will play nice with the new ‘Gutenberg’ editor experience once it is part of WordPress core.

Wrapping up

If you’ve been looking for a new theme and you don’t want to spend a bunch of time messing with custom code, check out some of the links above, and get building with Divi today.

Also, if you’re using Divi — be sure to optimize it with our plugins. We have an article all about optimizing Divi with Smush and Hummingbird.

If you look at the kinds of initiatives that Google alone put forth–like the penalties for sites without SSL certificates and the strengthening of their mobile-first campaign–it’s clear that everyone’s priorities were really starting to align in 2017. In essence, we were all working towards building a better (and safer) online experience for everyone.

Of course, that focus on security and performance will never go away. However, as Google, WordPress, and other Internet leaders clarify and streamline those parts of the web development process for you, it will free you up to master new design and development trends.

The great thing about web design and development today is that you’re not trying to reinvent the wheel each year. Instead, you’re taking the lessons learned from old or current trends, doing away with the bad parts, and adapting the good parts to create something new-ish. Which is great! It keeps users from having to reacquaint themselves with a new type of design or interaction while ensuring that what you do continues to have a positive effect on their experience.

That’s why you might not be surprised by many of the trends and tools on this year’s list of WordPress and Web Design Trends You Need to Know for 2018. They might not be the forerunners in web design right now, but they are the natural evolution of what you’re currently practicing and using.

Web Design and Development Trends for 2018

Let’s start with what I believe will be the most popular and best web design trends in 2018. Again, there’s nothing really new here; however, you’ll find that each has a unique spin on what the current best practice is.

1. Adventurous Color Palettes

You’re well aware that using color psychology can do wonders to improve your web design. While you should never throw those principles out the window, you may want to consider to what extreme you take those chosen colors in 2018.

Some current examples:

Lush Cosmetics

inJob

2. Rule-Breaking Typography

In another case of web designers being rebellious, 2018 is going to bring a major shakeup to typography. While I don’t think we’ll see traditional fonts in the main body text go away, I do think header text is going to get a lot funkier.

Some current examples:

Elegant Seagulls

Bolden

3. Hand-Drawn Graphics

You know that you can use a handwritten font to give your web design a warmer and more personal feeling. But have you thought about using other hand-drawn elements to bring your site to life and give visitors a better sense of what you’re capable of?

Some current examples:

Bully!

Pow

4. Subtle Animation

There are a lot of cool ways to add animation to your site. You can use CSS tools for subtle elemental animations or you could use WordPress plugins for more grandiose movements. We’re not going to see this trend go away, we’re more just likely to see it in smaller doses.

Some current examples:

Omnisense

Optimo

5. Sticky Elements

I think this is a trend we’re already starting to see quite a bit of as web designers move away from overly obtrusive pop-ups and more towards out-of-the-way pop-ups. As visitors become pop-up blind (with the pervasive use of them across most websites), this is a smart choice for right now. However, rather than using the traditional pop-up box design, 2018 will bring more sticky bars to the bottoms and tops of websites–and not just for promotional offers.

Some current examples:

WPMU DEV

Neil Patel

6. Website Push Notifications

Website push notifications are a lot like mobile and SMS notifications, except these messages are delivered directly to your visitors’ desktops (once they’ve opted in). While push notifications will never supercede email marketing or pop-ups, it’s another tool you should have in your site’s arsenal as you attempt to reach visitors in real-time.

Example of what a website push notification request looks like:

Princeton Review

7. Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality

There’s been a lot of talk about augmented and virtual realities making a splash online for a couple years now. As we move into 2018, we’re going to see more companies take advantage of this augmented reality technology to give visitors’ a more “hands-on” experience as they interact with products, in particular.

Some current examples:

Ray-Ban

Ikea

In addition to the cool trends above that we’re already beginning to see trickles of in web design, expect to see more:

• Single-page websites
• Google AMP content
• On-site AI (especially in the form of chatbots)
• SVG images
• Use of JavaScript
• Mobile-first initiatives

Best WordPress Plugins for 2018

Okay, so now that we know which web design and development trends to keep an eye out for–and to start learning to implement–for 2018, let’s move on to WordPress plugins.

Keep in mind that this isn’t a numbers game; the more plugins you add to your site doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll have a stronger design or improved performance. In fact, if you use poorly coded plugins, you may end up with the opposite. Instead, focus on quality and use plugins to fulfill your site’s real needs.

• Defender

  

  Defender is going to be your end-all, be-all WordPress security solution. Whatever you need–login protection, security monitoring, theme and plugin checks–Defender will provide your site with the fortification it needs. As a bonus, you’ll also get 10GB of Snapshot automated backups, so think of this like a two-for-one.

• Hummingbird

  

  Next up is your performance plugin. Hummingbird takes care of optimizing the content and files on your WordPress site so that it runs super fast for visitors. It includes file compression, caching, performance monitoring, and even integrates with the Cloudflare CDN.

• SmartCrawl

  

  This is the final three of the “holy trinity” of WordPress plugins: security, performance, and now SEO. SmartCrawl is the plugin to use to help you keep all your pages, posts, and images optimized and ready to impress anyone who encounters them in search.

  More Information

• Smush Pro

  

  For websites containing more than a small handful of images, you’ll need an image optimization plugin to keep them from degrading your site’s performance. Smush Pro is a good choice as it will ensure that your images are compressed and automatically resized, taking the optimization work off your shoulders.

• Contact Form 7

  

  Obviously, if you’re building a website for a client, they’re ultimately going to use it establish their brand’s presence online. But they won’t want it to just be one-sided, which is why there should be at least one contact form available for visitors to reach out through. You can use Contact Form 7 to do this as it’s free and user-friendly, two traits your clients will love.

• Hustle

  

  Although we’ll see a good amount of sticky bars making their way onto websites in the next year, the pop-up is still an incredibly powerful tool for converting visitors. With Hustle, you have your choice of how you want to slide into visitors’ experience and provide them with not only a good reason to keep looking around the site, but a great reason to buy something while they’re there.

• Akismet

  

  If your site has a contact form or blog on it, then you’ll need an anti-spam plugin like Akismet to work for you. It automatically detects malicious spam entities and keeps you from ever having to deal with them.

• WP-Optimize

  

  As a WordPress developer, you’re absolutely going to want this plugin installed on your sites in 2018. WP-Optimize is the perfect complement to your performance optimization plugin, only its main job is to focus on keeping your MySQL database clean.

• WooCommerce

  

  When you intend on selling products through WordPress, you need a reliable and secure e-commerce platform that syncs directly to it. And that plugin is WooCommerce. Don’t forget that there are plugins built specifically to work with WooCommerce, too, which makes this an even more attractive and powerful e-commerce plugin.

Best WordPress Themes for 2018

Of course, don’t forget that plugins are meant to extend the attractiveness and performance of your WordPress site. If you don’t have a solid base to work from, it won’t matter how secure or fast you make it.

So, when considering which WordPress themes to start with, I’d suggest you work with a trusted WordPress theme developer. If you’re curious to see what theme options are out there–especially if you’re building WordPress sites for a specific niche–check out these guides on the best free WordPress themes and the best premium WordPress themes.

Best Web Hosting Companies to Work with in 2018

We know hosting needs vary from client-to-client. So having several options is great. When we sat with HostingAdvice.com one of the things they were most impressed with was the Hub and our ability to centralize and automate management across platforms for one flat cost. They saw WPMU DEV as, “Particularly useful for those managing multiple websites” because it “provides a centralized interface for administrators to efficiently manage, update, monitor, and scan (all their) websites.”

Here are the best web hosting companies you should work with in 2018:

1. BlueHost

2. InMotion

3. HostGator

4. SiteGround

While your clients are likely the ones to make the decision on which web hosting plan to use (though the recommendations above will likely help you earn their trust), you might find a need for web hosting yourself. Specifically, you might find the prospect of managed WordPress hosting an attractive option if you’re responsible for managing the updates and security for your clients’ network of sites.

If you’re looking for recommendations for managed WordPress solutions, check out this guide.

Wrapping Up

As I mentioned earlier, many of these trends and tools won’t seem that novel for 2018. But I don’t see that as a bad thing. In reality, the fact that we’ve gotten to a point where we no longer need to recreate the wheel and find completely new ways to design or develop in WordPress is a good thing. It doesn’t mean we’re lacking in creativity or innovation. We simply have caught up with how fast these things move and are better equipped to keep pace now.

Updated 7/30/2018: We’ve discontinued Upfront in favor of supporting a bunch of other awesome drag and drop page builders.

While I’m not one to discourage anyone from using a free theme, I do think it’s important to survey the full landscape of offerings so you know what your options are. Free themes offer good opportunities to create beautifully designed websites. Premium themes—especially ones that are multipurpose—open up even more possibilities.

The one problem I see with going the route of a premium WordPress theme, however, is the matter of convenience. Free WordPress themes have a single WordPress repository where they’re all stored, but premium themes can be found all over the place: theme marketplaces, membership sites, and even sometimes for sale on the developer’s own website.

So, how do you do a comprehensive search for the best free and premium WordPress themes without driving yourself nuts in the process? The following guide covers all the questions you should ask yourself during this process. By understanding your site’s needs, your limitations as a developer, and much more, you’ll be able to more quickly and effectively track down the best and most trustworthy WordPress theme for your site.

The 5 W’s That Will Help You Find the Best and Most Trustworthy WordPress Theme

Alright, so we’ve established that there is a multitude of themes to sift through and a number of different resources where they can be found. But your goal here isn’t to narrow down that list simply to find one that works “well enough”. You need a theme that jives the best with your business and that’s going to be trustworthy and reliable to a fault.

Let’s face it, it’s frustrating spending a lot of time searching for a theme. It’s downright infuriating to spend even more time trying to troubleshoot a faulty theme only to have to ditch it and start the process over again. So, if you want to spare yourself the hassle of searching in the wrong places (or in too many places) and focusing on the wrong things, this guide will help you narrow down that search and properly assess a WordPress theme’s quality before you begin.

Who: The Theme’s Developer

So, you want to know what makes a WordPress theme trustworthy. While there are a number of places you could look to make that assessment, the first place you should start is with the developer who built it. Any issues with the theme will ultimately point back to them, and so your assessment of a theme really needs to start with the person behind it.

Here is what you need to know:

Is the developer well-known and respected in the WordPress community?

Check their profile on the platform on which you found the theme. On wordpress.org, you’ll only be able to see the other themes they’ve created, but that should be enough to tell you what sort of quality you’re working with.

On other sites, you can get a more entailed bio and dig a little deeper into their credentials and accolades.

What do other users of the theme say?

Unless you’re using a theme directly from a developer’s site, there will be ratings and reviews from users. Check for common threads related to issues with their quality of coding.

Do they provide support?

Even with the most well-coded themes you may run into a glitch or simply need help sorting out an internal issue. Most developers of premium themes include support for at least a few months after purchase. There are some free theme developers who do, too. Check to see what their policy is and make sure that the response time in the support forum aligns with that promise.

You’ll also want to know if they support the actual theme in terms of updates.

Ideally, any theme you use should be updated every time the WordPress core updates; if not, more frequently.

What: The Theme’s Features

Next up are the actual features of the WordPress theme. If you want something that is trustworthy, you shouldn’t have to seek out the assistance of a dozen or so plugins to tick off all the features you want to utilize on your site. That would defeat the purpose of using a lightweight theme in the first place.

Here is what you need to know:

Would the original design suffice?

Not that you would ever want to use a theme right out of the box, but if you had to do so in a pinch, would the basic design suffice? The reason you’d even want to ask this is to gauge the developer’s understanding of design best practices. If a theme is too complicated, utilizes low-resolution imagery, or has other major design no-nos, then it’s not worth your time in trying to fix or personalize.

Is it responsive?

1. Open the preview of the theme in your browser window and minimize your screen to test the theme’s adjustability (or just view the preview on your mobile device).
2. Check for roundups on the best free responsive themes and the best premium responsive themes for recommendations.

How flexible is it?

While you might not know just yet all the functionality you want to build into your site, you’ll at least have a good idea of the must-haves. Here are some things to consider:

• How much customization you need in terms of colors, typography, layouts, menus, etc.
• Special page types you plan to include (e.g. support forum, portfolio, ecommerce).
• Additional elements your site will need, like testimonials, mega menus, video backgrounds, tooltips, and so on.

The more accommodations the theme makes for all these “things”, the less work you’ll have to do later.

Is it SEO friendly?

There is a lot that goes into making a site SEO-friendly. Do your due diligence and check the reviews on the theme to ensure that it’s well-coded, fast, free of security issues, has a clean interface, and integrates with your SEO plugin of choice.

Are there hidden costs?

Seeing a price tag associated with a WordPress theme is one thing. Recognizing that you’re going to have to shell out money later is another. Think about whether this theme will force you to pay for additional themes in the future. And what about plugins? If you’re not comfortable with coding, will you need to hire a developer to help you manage it? All these costs add up and should be considered at the original time of purchase and download of a new theme.

Where: The Source Location of the Theme

In addition to assessing the theme and developer for overall quality and reliability, you should also think about where you’re getting the theme from. As I already noted, there are a variety of places where you can procure a WordPress theme from, but do you know which ones are known for consistently producing high-quality theme offerings?

Here are the ones you need to know:

WordPress.org

For high-quality free themes, there’s no better place to go for them than the official WordPress Theme Directory.

Marketplaces

WordPress theme marketplaces are a pretty cool option as you can get super granular in your search query, and then sift through results regardless of who the developer is behind it. Here are some of the most trusted theme marketplaces:

• Creative Market
• ThemeForest
• WPExplorer

Independent Theme Shops and Developers

The last of your options will come in the form of the independent developer who sells themes directly from their website. One of the best reasons to go this route is because they typically offer membership or bulk pricing, so you’re not stuck paying top dollar for just one theme. If you’re looking for quality and value, start here:

• WPMU DEV
• Elegant Themes
• My Theme Shop
• Obox
• StudioPress
• ThemeIsle
• Themify
• WooCommerce

When: The Longevity of the Theme

Let’s talk about the general lifespan of a web design trend, shall we? A few of these trends—like minimalism, which I hope never goes out of fashion—will have an enduring legacy. There are others, however, that die out either because they become obsolete (think of something like image sliders) or because they have no place in modern design anymore (like sidebars).

Even if you have found a really great WordPress theme that checks off all the other boxes here, it’s still important to assess it for its modernity and longevity as you don’t want to get stuck with something that will go stale in six months or even a year’s time.

Here are some options to consider to be on the safe side:

Multipurpose themes

Multipurpose themes could be a good way to get around this problem as there are a number of options you can play around with. Plus, once you get the hang of one of those themes, you’ll be able to seamlessly jump into any of the other designs and layouts included.

WordPress theme memberships

Memberships are awesome too since you don’t have to worry about cherry-picking themes at random. You’ll have an entire collection available to you for the length of your membership, which also gives you the ability to use as many of their themes as you want. (It’s also great when the theme developer adds new, more modern theme designs to their collection, so look out for that.)

Builder themes/plugins

Builder themes like Upfront may be the best solution in terms of ensuring the longevity of your theme. They’re easy to use and give developers a lot of flexibility and control over reshaping and tweaking their design to fall in line with current design standards.

Why: The Theme’s Alignment with Your Own Goals

Finally, we come to the “why” of it. It is here where you need to ask yourself how well the WordPress theme you’re considering aligns with your business’s niche and goals.

Here is what you need to consider:

Your niche

If you build websites for a specific industry or niche, it’s ideal to find a theme that was built specifically for that purpose or that can accommodate all your needs. Think of restaurant websites that need to show off menus, membership sites that need forums, photography sites that need galleries, etc. If the theme wasn’t built with that purpose or audience in mind, you’d have to spend more time finding the tools to help you do it later.

Your goals

You should also think about what your business’s goals are.

Do you want to churn out a bunch of sites, making minor tweaks to themes? Or do you want themes that give you more power and flexibility to create something truly custom and unique for customers?

What it really comes down to is whether or not you consider yourself a WordPress developer or implementer. If you’re not comfortable with coding or just aren’t ready to commit a certain amount of time to each job, then that should factor into the theme selection process as well.

Wrapping Up

The actual choice of WordPress theme will ultimately fall on you to make. Why? Because only you will know which one will serve as the best reflection of the business you’re building the site for. Hopefully, this guide can get you started in deciding which WordPress theme will work best for your needs in terms of quality, convenience, cost, reliability, support, and more.

Theme shops have changed the game, lifting the standard of themes you’ll find in the free repository with free versions of their products. And these free versions come complete with features you would have previously only found in premium themes like WooCommerce support and responsive design.

Gone are the days when downloading a free theme meant settling for a subpar theme. Now you can – and should – expect a well-coded theme that’s completely customizable using the Theme Customizer.

Here’s our list of some of the best free WordPress themes you’ll find in the WordPress Theme Directory that have been developed by premium theme shops, plus a few released by independent theme developers.

• Flash

  

  Flash is a good-looking multipurpose theme with a minimalist aesthetic – ideal for business and corporate sites. It features multiple pre-built demos, which you can import in seconds using the ThemeGrill Demo Importer plugin. The theme also integrates with the Flash Toolkit plugin (available to download for free from the WordPress Plugin Directory) and SiteOrigin’s Page Builder plugin (which you can also download and use for free), making this theme user-friendly to set up and use.

  Other features of this theme include a responsive design, multiple blog layouts, Woocommerce support, multiple header styles, multiple color options, boxed and wide layout, 6+ widget areas and 11+ custom widgets, product filters, plus it’s optimized for speed and SEO. And if you want even more features, there’s a pro version of this theme available for $69.

• Shapely

  

  If looks are deceiving, as the saying goes, then Shapely is a perfect example. On the surface, this free WordPress theme appears simplistic and, I hate to say it, doesn’t seem to have much going on in terms of features. But when you look beneath the surface, this versatile one page WordPress theme comes with a bunch of customization options, not to mention multiple homepage widgets that can be used to add portfolio, testimonials, parallax sections, product and service information, call to action button and much more.

  Shapely also supports most free and premium WordPress plugins, including like WooCommerce, Jetpack, Gravity Forms and Contact Form 7 – reassuring when you’re setting up a site that relies on some of these popular plugins. It’s obviously a multipurpose theme and with the right content and images is ideal for business, magazines, blogs and personal sites.

  Other features worth noting include that fact it’s responsive and SEO optimized, and mobile-friendly.

• Sydney

  

  Sydney is a slick business theme with a gorgeous fullscreen sliding (or static) header and nice touches like subtle animated text slide-ins and hover animations. This theme is a great option for businesses and offers plenty of customization options, including Google Fonts, unlimited color combinations, and sticky navigation. It’s super easy to set everything up using the WordPress Theme Customizer.

  The homepage uses “blocks,” which you can drag and drop and rearrange how you want it to look. You can also set parallax background images for any row of blocks, which is pretty cool. Like other contemporary themes, it’s responsive and translation-ready.

• Kale

  

  Whether you like this theme’s hipster namesake or not, there’s no denying this theme’s charm. Aesthetically, it’s gorgeous. The homepage features plenty of space to display posts but isn’t at all cluttered, making it perfect for bloggers, and in particular food bloggers (in case the demo images didn’t give it away!).

  Want to set up an online shop? Kale is a great choice. It supports WooCommerce, a super popular eCommerce plugin for WordPress, making it easy to sell your product (maybe a collection of recipes?) in no time. It’s responsive, of course, and when you look under the hood, it supports other important stuff, like SEO and RTL.

  Other cool features: built-in menus for displaying your social presence, multiple blog feed layouts, text and image logo options, sidebar size options (compact and default), banner/slider color overlay options, and more.

• Spacious

  

  Minimalist multipurpose themes are a dime a dozen these days, but what I like about Spacious is that it sticks to the basics: it’s responsive, supports eCommerce (WooCommerce in particular), it’s translation-ready, and has a lovely sliding header. Spacious comes with a heap of customizations you can play around with, including four page layouts, two page templates, four blog display types, 13 widget areas, five custom widgets tailored for business websites, color options to match your branding, boxed and wide layouts, and light and dark skins.

  With the right images and content, this theme would be a great option for any business website.

• Writee

  

  Writee is a blogging theme, yes, but it makes its own rules. Borrowing from multipurpose themes, it features a large hero (slider, if you want) header, but also allows for a sidebar, which you don’t see all that often in themes these days. It comes with a heap of options for rich customizations, like a fullwidth or boxed header. It’s also translation-ready, which is super handy when most WordPress users speak English as a second language. There are also nice touches like custom widgets and, of course, you can use the Theme Customizer in the backend of WordPress to further customize the look and feel of your site.

  Other features: responsive and mobile-friendly. Oh, and check out the typography – it really helps make this theme stand out.

• Illdy

  

  What I love about this BootStrap theme is the use of color. There isn’t a lot of color – a splash of yellow here, some purple there – but it’s used effectively to give this minimalist (there’s that word again!) theme some personality.

  Thanks to the Theme Customizer in WordPress, it’s super easy to customize this theme however you like – colors, hero images, tweaking sections, you name it. And also thanks to its one page layouts, it’s perfect for businesses, agencies and even personal websites.

  Like a lot of the free WordPress themes in this list, Illdy is compatible with WooCommerce and Font Awesome, and also supports popular plugins including Contact Form 7, Jetpack, and W3 Total Cache.

• Fluida

  

  Fluida is a modern and grid-based WordPress theme that is pretty darn nice! It’s a HTML5/CSS theme, it’s responsive and, thanks to its framework, comes with more than 100 Theme Customizer settings. Yep, that’s a lot of settings!

  The theme’s images have all been created using HTML5, CSS3 and icon fonts so it’s extremely fast to load. It’s also SEO, RTL and translation-ready, using microformats and Google readable Schema.org microdata. There are also 100+ social icons, three menus, six widget areas, eight page templates, and all post formats.

  For developers who want to further customize Fluida using a child theme, there’s clean code, either hookable or pluggable functions with clear descriptions and more than 25 action hooks.

• Edge

  

  Smart typography choices can really make a theme, and Edge is no exception. This gorgeous theme makes the most of free Google Fonts, in particular Lato and Playfair Display, a great sans serif/serif combination.

  Edge is easily customizable from the aptly named Theme Customizer in WordPress and is ideal for bloggers (with the sidebar) and businesses (without the sidebar and some homepage tweaking).

  It’s also responsive, mobile-friendly, and optimized for speed.

• Brilliant

  

  This beautiful magazine and blogging theme for WordPress sure has style. Brilliant features a fixed width homepage where you can feature your latest blog posts. There’s also a customizable sidebar for displaying comments, categories, and recent posts. In fact, everything is customizable in this theme (as it should be!) thanks to the Theme Customizer in the WordPress admin, so you can change colors, the header, widgets in the footer and more to suit your branding and style.

  Yes, it’s a pretty simple theme, but if you’re looking for a no-nonsense theme to show off your words, and you’re not planning on opening an online store, then you can’t go wrong with this theme.

• Optimizer

  

  I must admit, I got distracted looking at the preset templates for this theme. Dang, they’re gorgeous! But I digress… Optimizer is a fantastic multipurpose theme that comes with a whole lotta powerful features, including the ability to create a full blown site with drag and drop widgets, enabling you to add any type of content anywhere on your site without touching code.

  Customizations include: fullwidth and boxed layout options, image slider, easy logo upload, 600+ fonts, the ability to add custom CSS, and unlimited color options. It’s responsive, SEO-friendly, optimized for mobile, retina and translation-ready. This theme also supports WooCommerce, bbPress, MailChimp, and Contact Form 7.

• Olsen Light

  

  Olsen is a straight up blogging theme for WordPress and features a traditional blog posts on the left and sidebar on the right design.

  It features all the usual trimmings you’ll find in contemporary themes: custom widgets, social networking icons, and translation support and SEO support. It’s also completely customizable from the Theme Customizer in WordPress, so you can update the header, menus, layout, footer, and colors.

• Teletype

  

  Teletype is a minimalist blogging theme built on BootStrap. It comes with a lovely masonry post layout and you can drag and drop to re-order sections on the homepage, which is pretty cool.

  Features includes the ability to completely customize the homepage, including fonts (Google Fonts), colors, the header image, background colors, logo, social media icons and more. You can also turn the sidebar on and off, depending on your design preference. This theme is also translation ready.

• Sensible WP

  

  Sensible WP is yet another responsive multipurpose theme. It’s pretty basic as far as multipurpose themes go and doesn’t offer WooCommerce support, so this theme is better suited to agencies and small businesses that don’t have plans to sell online.

  As far as customizations go, you can control all the usual tweaks in the Theme Customizer, including colors, fonts, logo, and more. This theme also comes with XML demo content, which is handy for those who don’t like setting up a skeleton website. It’s also SEO and translation-friendly.

• Astrid

  

  This elegant WordPress theme is a delight to use thanks to its easy customization on the backend and stylish design on the front-end. Astrid features all the standard trimmings you would expect from any theme: customizable header, theme options via the Theme Customizer, and support for translations. The theme is also responsive, which is fairly standards for all new themes these days.

  Astrid features a lovely hard header and clear CTA on the homepage, which is ideal for business websites. It’s also WooCommerce compatible if you’re looking for a simple, minimalist store theme.

  Other nice touches: smooth scrolling and subtle animations.

• Hemingway

  

  I’m a big fan of Anders Norén’s themes minimalist WordPress themes and Hemingway is no exception. This simple theme is perfect for bloggers with its fullwidth header and standard blog posts on the left and sidebar on the right design. What I like about this theme is that, like Ernest Hemingway it’s namesake, it’s not trying to be flashy or over the top – the design shines through its economical design.

  Features include: responsive design, parallax scrolling, custom accent colors, custom logo, and widgets for Video, Flickr and Dribbble. there are also some nice page templates, and the code is translation-ready.

• Hoffman

  

  Another Anders Norén design, Hoffman is a beautifully minimal one page WordPress theme for bloggers. It has a thoughtful responsive design and the use of icon fonts makes sure that Hoffman looks great on devices of all sizes – big and small. This theme supports the gallery, quote and video post formats, all presented in unique and impactful ways. Standard run-of-the-mill posts look great as well. It comes with built-in support for the Jetpack plugin’s infinite scroll function and tiled gallery.

  Hoffman includes five custom widgets for recent posts with thumbnails, recent comments with avatars, Flickr, Dribbble and video. You can also customize it further by changing the accent color, switching the background color or adding a background image. It also includes two page templates, support for post editor styles and support for theme translation. Included translations: Swedish/svenska.

• Lovecraft

  

  And another Anders Norén-designed WordPress theme! Lovecraft is a beautiful two-column WordPress theme for bloggers. It features a two-column design with considered typography choices – it really is a joy to read. The big header image makes a striking first impression and is replaced with the post thumbnail on single posts and pages.

  Lovecraft has built-in support for Jetpacks Infinite Scroll function, which means that new posts will be loaded as soon as you reach the bottom of the page. You can also use the Jetpack Tiled Galleries function to display posts in a beautiful masonry grid. This theme is built to scale gracefully to any and all screen sizes – from a 27″ desktop display to a 3.5″ smartphone. The navigation and search form is hidden behind easy-to-access toggles on mobile. It also features editor styles, a full-width page template, three custom widgets and translation-ready code.

• Fukasawa

  

  Okay, one last Anders Norén-designed WordPress theme. Fukasawa is a minimal masonry blog theme for photographers and collectors.

  Fukasawa features a beautifully minimal layout that displays your posts, images and videos in a Pinterest-style grid. It’s perfect for sharing your content and, in particular, your images. There’s support for the image, video and gallery formats, and presents your galleries in a beautiful slideshow above your posts. Regular old posts look great as well.

  Like other Anders Norén themes, Fukasawa enables you to load new posts without reloading the page using Jetpack’s Infinite Scroll feature, and display your images in a beautiful grid with Jetpack Tiles Galleries.

  You can also change the accent color, upload your own logo and use the sidebar widget area (including five custom widgets) to give Fukasawa a personal touch.

• Make

  

  Make is a free open source builder theme that – according to its developers – has been refined over 5,198 times. Okay, that’s a lot of development time, but what makes it special? Its biggest feature is its intuitive Make Layout Engine, which is basically a page builder for WordPress. It’s designed to work like a native component of the WordPress page editor, so if you feel comfortable writing a post, it won’t be much of a learning curve getting used to building pages.

  You can take care of all customizations using the Theme Customizer in WordPress. Every detail, big or small, is yours to customize, including fonts, line height, spacing, even word spacing.

  Make is WooCommerce compatible, so if your plan is to build an online shop you won’t have any trouble selling physical products. If you want to sell digital goods, Make is compatible with Easy Digital Downloads. And if you want to add forms to your site, simply drop in Gravity Forms.

  This theme is also responsive, SEO-friendly and retina-ready.

For more, be sure to check out our ultimate guide to free WordPress themes, our list of the best 45 free WordPress themes, and our posts about free high-quality WordPress themes and free responsive WordPress business themes.