You may have heard from many website builders that the theme of WordPress is very important, so you are confused about what theme to use before actually building a website. My answer is:
The theme is not important at all, because now we can use various Page Builders such as elementor and oxygen to build websites. An excellent page builder can achieve the functions that any paid theme should have, and can even do better.
So you only need to find a few themes that are suitable for Page Builder. For example, the following free themes are very light:
Below I will tell you why I chose this way, and what to pay attention to when building a site with the theme and Page Builder. Next, this article will revolve around the following outline:
Why is it not recommended to use multi-functional paid themes?
In the past, it was the world of multi-functional paid themes. The most classic themes include avada, the7, theX, etc. I was still in Mike three or four years ago.A whole series of teaching videos have been released specifically for avada.
It is very convenient to use this kind of paid theme to build a website, you can even use them to make any type of website, such as photo website, video website, review website, book review website, hotel website, etc., because the developers of these paid themes When writing code, it has been considered that this theme should be adapted to the situation of most people.
So these themes are in themeforestThe sales volume on the Internet is very explosive. Take avada, which is the number one sales leader, in the past, it has sold more than 600,000 copies in total (the real name is envious of the development team, which translates to an income of 36 million US dollars…)
But when we need to build a website in a specific field, such as a foreign trade website, the disadvantage of such multi-functional paid themes will be exposed: they are too bloated.
I used avada to build a lot of websites before, and I can give 100 points in appearance, but I can only score 70 or even 60 points in speed, because I use Gtmetrixor Google Page InsightIt often takes about 5 seconds to open such volume software to measure the speed of the website.
And the point is that there are some things that I can’t optimize, no matter how good the cache plug-in is, it won’t help, so I have to go to upwork to find someone to optimize the speed after I finish the website, and the $200 for one optimization is gone.
Although I heard that these multi-functional themes are improving day by day, at least I don’t need to find someone to help them optimize the code, but trust this thing, once you lose it, you can never get it back. The injury is so bad that I don’t even want to touch them now.
After playing with an independent website for a few years, you will know that no matter what you use to make a website, speed is the key. Other projects are perfect, but without speed, everything is bullshit.
Why use Page Builder?
After the multi-functional paid theme quit my first echelon, I started to look for alternatives. Something that I had never paid attention to before entered my career, and that was page builder.
What is Page Builder? Simply put, it is a plug-in for the WordPress platform. After installing this plug-in, we can “build blocks” on any page or any article page.
In fact, the method used by Avada to build a website is the same as that of Page Builder, except that their Page Builder is developed by itself and integrated into the paid theme.
Page Builder is more pure. It takes out the function of “building blocks” and divides the building into small pages, which is more intuitive and adaptable.
Originally, our website could only use avada as a fixed theme. Once the theme was switched, the website would not function normally at all, and all pages would be destroyed. But with Page builder, we can switch themes at will without worrying about switching themes will damage the page.
And most Page Builders are much lighter than paid themes, and Oxygen Builder , which I use most nowFor example, this Page Builder is very extreme in terms of speed optimization. It first directly invalidates your theme (I was stunned when I first came into contact with it), and then realizes the most functions with a very small amount of code.
The picture above is the theme page of Inquiry Free.com. You will find that the theme I use is the WordPress default theme: 2017.
There is such a tool called Website Theme Finder, it can detect what theme a website uses. I don’t know how those people who use the detector to test my website find that I use the default theme.
Not much to say, let’s take a look at the results of this Page Builder website… Inquiry Free Network is made with Oxygen, using Google’s official speed measurement tool Google Page InsightMeasured out, my page score looks like this:
Several of my niche sites are now all switching to Oxygen, and their scores are all like this:
This is an exaggeration, because Google’s speed measurement function is notoriously strict. I have built a website for so many years, and there are not many websites that can score more than 80 points. Even if I ask people on Upwork to help me optimize the code level, But it is still difficult to get 80 points.
But an Oxygen directly explodes the speed, which is a result that any paid theme cannot do.
Of course, because Oxygen involves a little knowledge of HTML, CSS and PHP, it is extremely unfriendly to Xiaobai, so I still don’t care too much about Amway.
If you are new to building a website and just getting started, I still recommend ElementorSuch a foolish Page Builder, I train offlineIt is also based on elementor teaching.
Although elementor is slightly inferior in speed, it is very easy to get started. Any pure novice can use elementor to make a high-end website, but Oxygen can’t do it. Oxygen is still too difficult.
Why did you choose these themes?
At the beginning of the article, I mentioned that if you plan to use Page Builder to build a website, you can choose the following themes:
- hello
- WP Astra
- Ocean WP
- Kadence
There are tens of thousands of WordPress themes in the world, why do I only recommend these few? -Because they are light, they have no redundant functions.
They do the minimum functionality a theme should have, and even though some themes have strong control over headers, footers, and archive pages, it doesn’t prevent them from becoming my first-tier must-choice theme.
Especially Hello, this free theme was developed by the elementor team, which discards all functions, leaving only an empty shelf.
All resources are only in the form of Hello, and everything else needs to be done with elementor-is there anything more awesome than this? (Em… there is, Oxygen doesn’t even need a theme framework)
Without exception, these themes are all extremely fast. If you go to YouTube to find the corresponding videos, you will find that people in the whole circle are highly respecting these themes.
Of course, there are a few themes, such as Astra and Ocean, which have been developed for so long and have added many functions to their themes, so that users who do not have Page Builder can use their themes to build websites.
But the conscientious advice of those who have experienced it: please don’t use the functions that come with the theme too much, because while using these functions that come with the theme while using Page Builder, you will mess up yourself in the end, because you don’t know a certain function or Was a certain page modified with the built-in features of the theme, or was it created with Page Builder?
We can use the theme to do some basic things, such as designing a header and footer, but for other pages, try to use Page Builder as much as possible.
More thoughts on the topic
For so many years, I have been trying to “escape” the theme, and I have always wanted to Get Rid of Themes, because most of the commercial themes start to deviate as they develop, and become completely different.
I found that the vast majority of teams must “seek out trouble” if they want to continue to operate normally: Even if the task at hand is finished, the whole company must be busy first, otherwise serious management problems will arise if the people under them are idle for too long .
People are the easiest to think too much when they are free, and they are the easiest to think about poetry and distant places and want to leave their jobs.
Foreign theme teams are also unavoidable. When this theme completes the staged tasks, the team leader will think to keep everyone busy: Hey, we might as well develop another set of kitchen/fitness/swimming/writer/film critic The theme, so our theme is not more powerful? !
The result will be bigger and bigger, more and more bloated.
I have used a lot of paid themes, without exception, these themes were very easy to use at the beginning, but after using it, various problems will be exposed as the version is iterated, so I have to find new ways to use it. Get rid of the endless “theme spell”.
Fortunately, after several years of detours, the method I have chosen so far is not bad. Using Page Builder + light theme can always make the website get a good report card.
According to current trends and trends, this set of methods will certainly not become obsolete in the next 3 years.
Keep learning.
