One of the key reasons why people love working with Bootstrap themes is because they’re visually pleasing and quite simple to configure. In fact, the aspect of familiarity also comes into play. If your website is using a Bootstrap-based design; there’s a good chance people will naturally know how to navigate your site because the visual appearance of the website elements is already familiar.

These days, modern WordPress themes in categories like beauty, eCommerce, and travel are all built using a custom style guide. So, not necessarily with Bootstrap. But, if we look at what is available in terms of the larger Bootstrap theme catalog – there’s definitely a solid selection of themes to choose from.

As always, all of our theme collections include themes that have been tested for optimal performance (Core Web Vitals) but also for responsive design. Both of these elements - responsiveness and performance - are critical if you plan to write content that attracts visitors through organic search.

Screenr

Screenr is a simple one-page parallax theme. Of course, you can add other pages if you need to. If you take a look at the demo content, you will see that it works well for business. It’s a clean, modern theme that you can use to create a variety of different websites for portfolios, digital agencies, freelancers, and more.

You can customize things easily from the front end using the WordPress Customizer. This theme is updated regularly and support from the developers is strong.

Features:

• Multipurpose
• Easy to customize
• Translation ready
• Sticky header
• Parallax effect
• Dedicated support

OnePress

This is another multipurpose theme with an elegant design. It is well suited for a portfolio, landing page, or business website. The layout and elements are similar to Screenr, but this one has a whole different look.

This full-width, single-page theme would be great for any sort of creative agency. It’s ideal for mobile devices because everything is on one page. And browsing is easy because the sticky nav menu can take your visitors to different sections of the page.

Features: 

• Translation ready
• Single page theme
• Compatible with WooCommerce
• Smooth CSS transitions
• Parallax effect

Glow

This theme is ready to go for anyone that wants to build a website in the health and wellness business. It’s perfect for beauty salons, spas, barbershops, gyms, medical professionals, etc. Out of the box, you get a five-page website that includes a blog.

This theme exudes health and wellness with its refreshing design. The front page has a minimal style and makes good use of clean lines and CSS transitions.

Features: 

• Full-width
• Social media buttons
• Easy to customize
• Stunning design
• Translation ready

Passionate

Are you missing passion in your life? Well if you have a passion for beautiful, responsive websites – you may have found what you are looking for. Seriously though, this theme is a gem.

It comes with a boxed width, which is good for readability. This theme is useful for businesses, personal websites, blogging, or any other type of site to be honest.

Features: 

• Boxed layout
• Built-in widgets
• Custom 404 page
• Theme customizer
• Dedicated support

EasyMag

This theme is designed to create a news or online magazine website. The typography is easy to read on mobile devices, making it ideal for text. It would work great for building sites like Reuters and CNN.

This theme gives you the option to choose from multiple layouts and it supports advertisement banners. As the name suggests, it makes it easy to build an online magazine.

Features: 

• Clean design
• Featured posts
• Advertisement banner support
• 6 different layouts
• Social icons

Codilight Lite

Codilight is another online news theme that will work for any sort of blog or magazine. The refreshing design takes cues from Google’s Material Design principles. This gives it a modern feel that makes it well suited for sites about tech, lifestyle, health, or entertainment.

The design makes good use of white space and the typography makes the text easy to read. The sidebar is convenient for visitors – featuring space for advertisements, a search box, and a few other useful widgets.

Features: 

• Full-width layout
• Search bar
• Left and right sidebar
• Theme options
• Translation ready

Easy Blog

Right away you’ll notice that Easyblog draws your eyes toward the center of the page. This simple, clean blog theme focuses on the content. You get everything you need to run a successful blog: featured posts, a calendar, advertising space, social media buttons, and a search bar.

You may like this one if you are looking to monetize your website. Easyblog is useful for personal blogs, photography blogs, writers, travelers, and more.

Features: 

• Easy customization
• Recent posts
• Featured posts
• Social media icons
• Search box
• Contact form

Travelers

This is a blog theme with easy-to-read text and space to place high-quality images. It’s ready for travel agencies, hotels, tours, airlines, travel blogs, tech websites, or any other type of blog. The typography is large and it reads like a book.

The right sidebar holds everything your visitors need to share content, search, and view recent posts. There is also space for advertising. Check out the demo to see all the other features.

Features: 

• Eye-catching design
• Sticky posts
• Right sidebar
• Built-in widgets
• Easy to customize

Nisarg

Nisarg is a very simple, yet effective blog theme. The design is the epitome of sophistication. It’s a no-nonsense theme that lets your content speak for itself. If you like the Twenty Sixteen theme, you will like this one even more. It’s fully responsive already and minimal.

This theme is well suited for a personal blog, travel site, photoblog, recipe blog, creative portfolio, landing page, or any other website focused on text and multimedia.

Features: 

• Minimal, sophisticated design
• Clean layout
• Multiple post formats
• Easy to customize
• Multiple accent colors

Sydney

This is a business theme with lots of potentials. You can build professional sites for anything from boutique agencies to large corporations. See the demo to find out just how much content is loaded into this one. There may be more elements than you need at first, which gives you lots of room to grow.

The front page of the demo contains video posts, parallax sections, a team showcase, portfolio grids, calls to action, social sharing icons, and more. It also comes with a blog and prebuilt pages to show off your employees, a blog, and a services page. 

Features: 

• Endless possibilities
• Pre-built page templates
• Parallax effect
• Custom colors
• Custom background

Sparkling

Aside from having an awesome blog full of useful content, Colorlib also designs themes. This is quite an impressive and unique theme. It’s well suited for any type of creative website or blog. You can use it for business too. It comes with a full set of features, including a shopping cart.

With WooCommerce compatibility and a robust theme options panel, Sparkling comes with many more features than you’d expect for a free theme. There are all also numerous shortcodes integrated that you can use to build pages.

Features: 

• Well-designed
• A custom theme options panel
• Multiple layout options
• SEO optimized
• Compatible with WooCommerce

JupiterX Lite

The Jupiter X theme combines two separate site management options: the WordPress Customizer for changing site settings. And the Elementor website builder lets you change every inch of your design with a style that you prefer.

But even then, I think the provided demos are sufficient enough to get you started. Interestingly, if you do decide to go the WooCommerce route with this theme – Jupiter X has a lot of options that let you edit/design the look of your product pages, etc.

Features:

• Change style globally or on a per-page basis
• Customize design for devices individually (desktop, mobile, tablet)
• In-built collection of site sections (pre-made layouts)
• Great overall performance

Awaken

Awaken is a Bootstrap theme that’s going to work great if you use it for a blog or a magazine website. The clean grid-based structure is going to make it easier for you to present multiple categories at once. Thus, making it more accessible for your readers to find either your newest or your best content.

The design is kept relatively simple if we look at it overall. In a lot of cases, this will help you focus a lot more on writing rather than worrying that something is out of order.

Features:

• Custom widgets to display posts on the homepage
• In-built slider for displaying featured posts
• Display ads using widgets in specific areas

Corlate

Corlate is a multi-purpose Bootstrap theme that will be quite easy to adapt to a specific project’s needs. It could be that you need to build a landing page or a personal portfolio. But just as well, this theme will work for blogs and magazine sites. Because the Corlate theme uses WP Page Builder – you’ll have the option to switch things up in real-time.

Some of my favorite features are the custom elements collection, but also the design of the site’s footer. Check it out in the demo below to see if you feel the same.

Features:

• Includes a custom page builder
• Has the option to enable a mega menu
• Professional design, ideal for business projects
• Support for Google Maps and Google Fonts

Futurio

The Futurio theme is a versatile yet cleanly optimized WordPress theme based on the Bootstrap design system. Out of the box, you’ll have the option to pick and choose from over 10 unique demo layouts. And many of those layouts are also intended to be used for eCommerce sites. Once you decide on the layout, just click on the “Import” button and it will be done in a single click.

As you can see in the screenshot above, the theme boasts some modern design elements like waves, but also page transitions, and more. This is due to the fact that Futurio uses the Elementor plugin for its back-end. So, everything you get in Elementor – you’ll also get in this theme.

Features:

• Custom widgets for About Me, Popular Posts, Social Media & more
• Extremely lightweight, making it superb for passing Core Web Vitals
• Has extensive functionality for WooCommerce stores
• Build your own Header design with in-built tools

Vega

In all fairness, this is quite a dated theme. It hasn’t seen many updates in recent years, but over 4,000 WordPress sites still use it. And, if we take a look at the demo – it manages to capture those modern features, too. In particular, you’ll like the smooth scrolling effect which is ideal to reflect a more professional feel for your site. And, it’s based entirely on Bootstrap.

Features:

• Parallax section dividers
• Multiple layouts for displaying the blog
• A selection of custom color schemes
• Homepage layout presented as a landing page

Summary

When the price is free, well, it’s pointless to ask for more. I do think these themes fit their purpose very well, particularly if you’re looking to create a simple website/blog.

In case you didn’t find what you were looking for, check out our other collections:

• Best Free Personal Blog WordPress Themes
• Best Free Magazine WordPress Themes

The post 15+ Best Free Bootstrap WordPress Themes 2023 appeared first on FameThemes.

Chances are, you might also be looking to do a redesign of your existing store. Whatever the case, this article is all about exploring the best free WooCommerce themes you can get your hands on.

As theme developers ourselves, we know how much effort people put into making the correct choice.

Not only do you have to consider personal preference, but also the design elements that will work the best with your type of online store. And to simplify this process, we can begin by understanding the trends that are shaping the current eCommerce landscape.

The current web design trends for eCommerce stores

In order to create the best possible collection for these WooCommerce themes, we have to take into consideration a select few factors. Specifically, by following the current trends in eCommerce design – we are able to selectively pick and choose themes that implement these trends.

Unlike in the late 2010s – the current landscape of eCommerce design trends revolves around 3 main principles. And those principles are simplicity, creativity, and performance. Simple designs do well because they avoid putting unnecessary strain on the visitors’ thinking process. And creativity can be understood as the use of custom-made design elements. Little things like marker effects and other directional hints that drive visitors toward their desired product page.

And performance in this context is the performance of your website. Not only is it a ranking factor for Google Search, but slow-loading eCommerce stores can lose up to 50% of potential customers. So, taking that into consideration – our selection of WooCommerce themes has been selected for optimal page speed, but also to have a variety of modern design trends at your disposal.

Customify

The Customify theme is trusted by more than 50,000 WordPress websites. And, it is particularly popular with WooCommerce stores because of its flexibility. The Customify theme gives you an extended list of features and tools to do your own site customizations. And while being somewhat of a page builder theme itself – Customify works well with plugins like Elementor, Beaver Builder, and many others.

As for why people love using Customify – there are a lot of ways to look at it. First of all, it’s a lightweight theme with a strong focus on clean structure. This ensures your eCommerce store will be lightning-fast, but still retain all the customization possibilities.

You also get to play around with in-built features like a custom Header & Footer builder. This feature lets you go all out on making sure that new customers can quickly access your most important product pages.

The pre-built Outfit demo style is the perfect design for apparel stores, but can easily be customized to be also used with electronics and similar store types. Since the theme is so customizable, the only limit is your own creativity and how much you wish to optimize an already great design.

Zakra

One of the current trends in eCommerce store design is simplicity. The less the customer has to navigate towards a product page, the sooner they can checkout. And this is also the case with the Zakra theme, which under the hood boasts a ton of great features. But on the surface, the design maintains a clean structure and delivers an easy-to-navigate experience for your store visitors.

Because it is a multi-purpose theme – it’s possible to use it in practically any kind of store type. Whether you’re selling clothing or specializing in grocery products – Zakra implements dozens of demo layouts to get you started. Furthermore, you will also be able to extend your WooCommerce store with additional page designs included in this theme. Such as a blog, directories, customer lists, and more!

Botiga

If you’re not looking to do much of the design work yourself, a theme like Botiga might just be up your alley. It comes packed with layout variations that you can change with a single click. Particularly, this theme provides a lot of ways for you to display your products. Be it using card layouts, or implementing a grid structure.

You can then take your favorite style and apply it to your entire store. Which includes areas like related products, popular products, and more. Additionally, you can choose from a custom Checkout page design. In fact, you probably want to A/B test various checkout styles to find the one that is converting the most for the type of products you’re selling.

And while the theme does have so much to offer, it manages to keep things simple. As you recall simplicity is one of the current trends in eCommerce design.

Storefront

Well, one way to go about things is to use the official theme from the people who built WooCommerce in the first place. The Storefront theme is no stranger to people who run their online stores using WordPress.

One of the upsides of using a theme like Storefront is compatibility. Because it is maintained by the same people who build the official plugin, you never need to worry about something breaking because it isn’t properly implemented. All the while, the Storefront theme brings out all the modern features and tools that are necessary for eCommerce sites.

Those features include mobile-friendly design, an extensive customizations panel, and full compliance with the latest accessibility standards. It might look barebone for people with greater taste, but this is a theme that continues to make online store owners happy.

Own Shop

eCommerce stores come in all shapes and sizes. And in the case of the Own Shop theme – this is a brilliant choice for established brands who are dealing with thousands of products in their catalog. It’s a superbly well-executed design style that flows together effortlessly. The attention to detail in this theme is unparalleled as far as large online stores go.

On the header, you have both a search bar, but also a dedicated navigation menu for your product categories. This is complemented by a large hero introduction which you can use to promote your latest product collection. And right after that, you have the option to add your most popular categories. Making it easier for customers to find their way toward products that interest them.

Shopstar

If you feel like a minimalistic design approach is your forte, check out the Shopstar theme. It might not have all the bells and whistles of truly outstanding designs, but it certainly manages to capture the essence of online shopping. Store sections are kept to a bare minimum, letting you emphasize your products through the use of imagery.

The theme does have a blog design added to it as well, which will ensure you can post not only the latest news but also updates on new product arrivals. More importantly, thanks to integrated demo content – you can launch your shop in minutes by importing the pre-made design.

Open Shop

A lot of the theme developers make their money by developing themes and then upselling a “pro” version of that theme. Fortunately, there are brands like ThemeHunk who are able to provide for the WordPress community not only a free theme but also build it in multiple variations.

In this case, the Open Shop theme comes with pre-built designs for vegetable and fruit shops, cosmetic and beauty shops, and fashion outlets. Each theme has a set of custom variations, but overall – each theme maintains a structure that’s perfect for large-scale brands.

With a theme like Open Shop you can list out thousands of products in various categories. And, still, maintain a user experience that makes it easy for customers to find the products they need.

eCommerce Plus

If you’re familiar with Bootstrap – this theme will feel right at home. The eCommerce Plus theme is focused heavily on WooCommerce sites with a large catalog of products. And, as such, it adds design features that make it easy to navigate through store sections. But, also, to help you emphasize special deals and noteworthy sales that you’re offering.

Unique features to this theme include a floating “Add to Cart” button, which will stick to the sidebar area even when the customer is scrolling down the page. Additionally, you can do product comparisons with a custom-built widget. This can really help increase your conversion rates by giving customers an idea of how a certain product is better than that of the competition.

Gutenshop

It’s fair to say that the design features aren’t always the sole reason for making a sale. In terms of shopping online, the thing that will entice customers the most is the photography you use. Which is kind of the foundation of the Gutenshop theme. The design is relatively simple but does emphasize the use of product images that tie together the rest of the design.

This is further amplified by the design of product pages. Once again, the focus is on images, where you can add up to 5 different images for each product. As such, a theme like this is an ideal choice for businesses that sell fashion clothing, shoes, and other products that require visual examination.

Elegant Shop

Well, credit where it’s due. GLThemes certainly got it right by calling this theme “Elegant Shop”. The first impressions are really good, and the name lives up to all the expectations you may have. The professional look will suit both established brands, but also up and coming eCommerce business owners who wish to present themselves in as serious of a manner as possible. And that’s not all.

With this theme, you can easily highlight your best products in multiple ways. One of which is a customized navigation bar that customers can click on to switch between categories. This allows you to list a good amount of products on the homepage, without needing to make it feel like it is filled to the brim.

You can also add widgets that showcase your trending, best-selling, and top-rated products. Each listing can be modified to include a special price, and the old price will be grayed out. This is a tactic particularly effective for emptying your shelves off of products that haven’t sold all that well in the past.

Veggo Shop

Veggo Shop is probably the least known theme in this entire list. Not because it’s not good, but because it has only recently been released. And since a lot of eCommerce stores do tend to sell food products – we thought we’d give you the option. Rather than building everything yourself, a theme like this can serve as a boilerplate foundation for what you wish to build in the future.

The creative use of colors and content elements really puts this design in a league of its own. On product pages, you can add full-scale parallax photos to make a statement about the products you sell. And the smooth scrolling feature will make it easier for customers to quickly find the little details.

Selleradise

If you love a clean interface with a pinch of modernism – you’ll enjoy what Selleradise has to offer. It’s a new kind of eCommerce theme for WooCommerce users that implements the most advanced features of the Gutenberg Editor. The core principle in this theme is the use of a full-width layout in combination with large elements. Those elements include images, text, and navigation features.

It’s also customized to include support for some of the most popular WordPress plugins. For example, this theme works with Elementor, Mailchimp for WordPress, YITH Wishlist, Multi-step Checkout, and WPML for all your translation needs. Last but not least, almost all features in this theme come with a custom dashboard for customization.

Astra

The Astra theme is an all-time WordPress classic. It’s a theme that rose to popularity thanks to its easy-to-use interface. And, in recent years has managed to really attract a large following. Because the theme is multi-purpose – it can be adapted to practically any scenario you desire. Most commonly, it’s used for portfolio sites and business landing pages.

But the team at Brainstorm Force has done a lot of work to also provide a selection of WooCommerce templates. These templates are ideal to use for eCommerce stores that are just starting up. And, as your business grows and you’re able to scale things – the Astra theme will provide you with additional tools to further improve the user experience for your customers.

Rife

Building an online store with the Rife theme will take you a handful of minutes. From start to finish, this theme is optimized to include automated steps that will have you selling products the very same day. Apollo13Themes have a notorious reputation for putting in a lot of finishing touches to their designs. And that is definitely the case for this particular design.

Some interesting features in this theme include a typewriter effect for your header introduction. You also can lock your site into One Page mode where all your products are listed only on the homepage. You can list out products in multiple formats, including practical lists but also in a grid layout. Typography can be managed through Google Fonts, which gives you access to hundreds of custom font variations.

Woostify

With a little over 20,000 WooCommerce stores using the Woostify theme – it’s safe to say you’re going to be in good hands. This is one of those templates that keep things simple. There are no overly flashy background images to distract your customers. Instead, the design is structured through little tidbits like notifications for upcoming sales, or whenever a product is sold out.

In terms of the overall goal for this theme. It’s as though this theme is intended for businesses that sell niche products. As such, you can use the homepage not only as a means to list your products, but also to outline important information about your business. For example, if you’re selling a niche product – it helps to know that you have a dedicated support team readily available. In the Woostify theme, you have multiple options to display information on how potential customers can reach you.

Summary

It can be quite overwhelming to have so many creative designs at your disposal. That is typically the case with any kind of project where the design plays a significant role.

But, I do believe that if you have some idea of what you want to build, or what you wish your store to look like – finding the right theme won’t be all that difficult. It’s safe to say that these are some of the best designs you can get your hands on, at least as far as free themes go.

Last but not least, you have the freedom to use these themes with Gutenberg block plugins, but also all the major page builders that WordPress developers provide. Putting all that together, the amount of design flexibility that can be achieved is incredibly high.

The post 15+ Best Free WooCommerce Themes in 2023 appeared first on FameThemes.

Looking back, the traditional way for a person to find a spa experience would be to simply walk in into any salon they find on a street. And while this is still a popular way of doing it, many business owners are shifting their attention toward the digital world. Website management has advanced enormously in recent years – letting spa salon owners and freelance beauty professionals establish an online presence for their services.

In fact, if you combine a website with a combination of local SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and social media promotion – you might surprise yourself with how many more clients you can get from online bookings alone. In short, it’s a no-brainer for any business owner to establish a strong digital presence.

Using WordPress for Beauty Salons & Spa Parlors

WordPress is the best choice for such businesses because you can do more than just create a good-looking website. With WordPress, you get access to dozens of plugins and tools that have been tailored toward managing bookings & appointments. In particular, you can dedicate entire pages to testimonials, video reviews, but also blog posts that you can further use to promote your own products, and also the products that you’re affiliated with.

But it doesn’t stop there either, with WordPress you get:

• Great SEO. With just a few plugins, your website can be easily optimized for both local and global SEO. This gives you an opportunity to attract organic new customers to your business.
• Easy to work with. There is no such thing as problems with WordPress, if something goes wrong you can rest assured there is a solution available for it online.
• Fantastic themes. WordPress offers an enormously large directory of premium website designs. And many of them can be compared to the quality of professional design services. This article will highlight some of the best themes you can get for a beauty salon or your spa business.

And, in putting together this collection, we also took into consideration things like the current trends for beauty salon websites. Furthermore, each theme has been tested for best practices such as responsive design, good performance, and general functionality. The goal isn’t just to have a nice website layout but also features that put you in the driver’s seat of all the decision-making.

Glow Pro

One of the key elements of beauty & spa websites is the ability to talk about your services in great depth. Specifically, be able to do so through design elements such as featured boxes, testimonials, and video elements where applicable. And this is precisely the foundation upon which the Glow theme is built.

With Glow, you can not only talk about the services you provide but also put in the spotlight the people that work at your parlor. Additionally, with this theme, you have the ability to create a professional footer, where you can list your business hours and other important details.

And, for the header, you’re able to tap into a native mega menu navigation panel. This feature will help you highlight all of the great services that your salon provides. It has been designed to work across desktop and mobile devices alike, so you don’t need to fear losing out potential customers.

Biagiotti

The Biagiotti theme is a nice blend of two concepts – a design for beauty services, but also beauty products. So, whether you wish to focus on one specific purpose or combine both – this theme offers not only the appropriate design structure but also features to help you set everything up properly.

From the custom admin interface, you’ll have the ability to specifically tailor this theme to your unique needs. This includes the ability to add custom testimonial widgets from your customers, but also the logos of brands that you’re working with.

Furthermore, to help you get the best exposure for your business – you can customize a separate section that includes a contact form, but also a Google Maps widget so your future customers know where to look if they decide to sign up for your services.

Spa Lab

Beauty salons and spa parlors have many “sub-niches”. You know, maybe you’re specialized in hairdressing or perhaps a particular massage style. Whatever your specialty is, a WordPress theme tailored to this niche should give you the tools to talk about your expertise in an in-depth manner. And that’s precisely what the Spa Lab theme is trying to do.

Notable elements for this theme include Parallax which gives a nice and modern feel to your website. But also has elements like content section animations, which will bring your designs to life. And you’ll particularly enjoy the bold navigation section. The use of a dynamic color scheme really helps to bring attention to the overall feel of the website.

Léonie

I think in some cases, a thing that helps to bring out your design is also the distinction of your personal brand. If you know your values well, a design can help you present those values through visual elements. Which is one of the things that the Léonie theme is trying to do – a creative WordPress theme for nail and beauty salon owners.

The well-polished homepage presentation is complemented with various modern effects. Such as waterfall images, transition animations, and exceptional choice of typography. And you can easily add a video preview of your salon, too!

Naturally, you will want to also add a separate section to display your treatment types and their respective prices. As it happens, the Léonie has a custom-built widget just for this purpose. So, it will be easier for your customers to understand the full repertoire of services that you’re providing.

Beaux

The team at Design Themes has a fairly keen eye for things that look good on first impression. And in the case of Beaux – a cosmetics/beauty theme – it’s hard to overlook the professional touch added by their designers. The fluidity of large-scale images combined with service sections is what makes this theme stand out.

In saying that, for a theme like this – you’ll definitely want to hire a professional photographer to help you capture the best photos of your salon. This is due to the fact that the design structure is so rich, that a poor-quality image might just ruin the whole thing. But, then again, most of your competitors are already taking their photos with the help of professionals, so it only makes sense that you do as well.

Chérie

So far, many of the beauty themes we’ve looked at have taken a more fluid design approach. This means the design flows throughout various sections without a clear design separation. It’s not a bad thing inherently, it’s just that some people prefer themes to be more modular. Which is how the Chérie theme is structured.

The design approach is modular in the sense that each section is divided through the use of various colors. But, as far as the features of those sections go – I think you’re in for a treat.

I particularly love the “Service Menu” section right below the hero section. In this once, you can add various services that you provide (Nails, Makeup, Hair, etc.) and add a short description about your expertise in that area.

If you like or plan to – there’s an option to integrate your Chérie website with WooCommerce.

Iva

A feature often overlooked in premium themes is that many of them offer multiple demo layouts. Which is the case with the Iva theme. This theme emanates a clean yet versatile structure, giving you quite a lot of room to talk about not only your services but also your journey as a wellness specialist.

In addition to multiple designs, this theme also comes with plugins such as Slider Revolution, the Unyson framework, Contact Form 7, and WooCommerce. Mind you, a lot of these plugins would be an additional investment, but because they are in-built into the Iva theme; there’s no additional cost to you.

Passim

The transparent-like approach to the design in this theme is targeted toward established brands. More than a theme to talk about your services, it is a perfect blend of themes to highlight your brand as the leader in a specific self-care field.

You also have the option to open up your own personal online store. And whether it services you wish to sell or beauty products – Passim is optimized for all use cases.

Check out the demo to get a feel for this sleek theme. And, you won’t want to miss out on the full list of features either. They’re packed with shortcodes and icon modules that will give you that final edge over your competition.

Parris

The Parris theme might not have multiple demo layouts on offer, but it certainly won’t be a problem because it works well with the Elementor Page Builder plugin. With this plugin, you can take the already-exceptional design and begin adding your own style to it.

But even if you took the theme at face value as it is – it’s still a fantastic design to help bring out the best about your beauty business. The main features of this theme are delegated towards the use of photography and large sections. So, a wonderful choice for businesses who want to convey a professional stance.

Cosma

A particular design feature implemented in modern projects is that web page content appears as the user scrolls into it. In other words, this effect creates a more refined user experience. This is also one of the effects that the Cosma theme implements.

It might be a small detail in the bigger picture, but it does have its uses in presenting yourself as a professional brand. As for other features of this theme, it’s quite flexible. It does seem to have a stronger focus on helping you sell products rather than services. But I don’t see why you couldn’t repurpose this for a specific type of wellness business you’re running.

If you like the overall design, I’d say take the leap of faith and commit to it. Since this theme works with Elementor, you can go all out in editing and making personal changes to it.

Atura

Looking for a pixel-perfect theme for your nail & beauty salon? Atura is designed from the ground up to reflect the quintessential necessities of such businesses. With stunning website effects and transitional animations, it is a one-of-a-kind theme to take your business to the next level. And you even have a choice of several pre-made demo layouts – providing numerous variations in design choices.

The theme features a custom admin interface where you can change practically everything. It’s also automatically updated, so in case of a security issue – you can rest assured that your theme will be protected from any misbehavior. And lastly, you don’t need to know any programming to work with the Atura theme. Everything is customized so that it can be edited from the admin dashboard.

Jacqueline

With thousands of active wellness sites using the Jacqueline theme – you can rest assured this particular choice covers all imaginable avenues for concern. To start things off, you can pick and choose from six unique designs. And, on top of that, you have the option to mix these designs together to achieve a layout that you’re truly satisfied with.

This is further complemented with the in-built support for Elementor. Elementor is probably the most used page-building solution in WordPress and trivializes the need to write code in order to design a homepage you can be happy about.

Iniya

Iniya from BuddhaThemes is a prime choice for beauty stores, cosmetics experts, boutique center owners, artists, and anyone specializing in the beauty business. This design is thoughtfully crafted to reflect the best elements and sections that make up popular beauty business websites. It’s also extremely well documented, letting you dive deep into the inner workings of this theme.

The more you know, the more ability you have to add or remove features that aren’t of particular interest to you. Overall, the Iniya theme does a fantastic job of mixing together various design ideologies. The typography helps to tie together the broader picture, letting your customers find the information they need at a rapid pace.

Salon

Visualmodo has quite a track record in building WordPress themes. And if we take a closer look at Salon – it’s more of a culmination of their web design experience than it is a statement of a particular approach. This hand-built theme is going to be an exceptional pick for wellness centers, beauty salons, and any business specializing in providing healthcare services.

Almost all design elements in this theme have multiple design variations. And, you can go ahead and make custom additions by using a practical drag & drop interface. Furthermore, all of the demo websites provided by Visualmodo can be imported with a 1-click approach. Just click import and your site will be ready in a matter of minutes.

From thereon, you can start adding your services, customizing bookings information, and anything else that’s relevant to the type of business you’re going to be using this theme for.

Kathy

So, while a lot of themes in this collection are focused on beauty sites, there is one area we didn’t explore that much. And that area is coaching, personal trainers, and personal wellness experts. As such, if you fall under this category – we wanted to include the Kathy theme just for you. It’s a superb theme that is intended to be used by individuals who aren’t running a full-scale business just yet.

With this theme, you can not only talk about yourself and who you are but also what you have to offer. There’s room for sales pages, testimonials, blog posts, and everything else that would be relevant to making sure your future customers understand what you’re all about.

Aqua

Would you believe that the Aqua theme has been around since 2015? Well, don’t fret. The team at JWS Themes has kept this beauty updated frequently. And the most recent update was in March 2022.

During this time, thousands of businesses have chosen Aqua as their choice for a spa and beauty theme. It is crafted to be suitable for wellness centers that are run by multiple people. In other words, with this theme, you can put your wellness experts in the spotlight through various widgets and content sections.

Above all, the clean and minimal structure is something to appreciate. While everyone loves a bit of flash in their design, sometimes keeping things simple is the way to go. And as always, a theme like this provides a multitude of solutions for making your own customizations.

Summary

You’ve made it to the very end! I do hope that at least one of these themes will be the next home for your beauty services business. Overall, I’d say that a lot of the designs listed here do hit the mark on being both modern, but also flexible to work with. And, best of all, many of these themes actually give you additional plugins and tools at no extra cost. That’s yet another reason to love WordPress developers!

If you struggle to make a decision, my last piece of advice would be to check out what other beauty salons are doing. Maybe even your competitors. It doesn’t hurt to take a peek at their design and see if some of it resonates with your personal needs. You can go as far as looking at designs not only from WordPress sites, but also from the likes of Shopify, Wix, and many other popular eCommerce services.

The post 15+ Best Beauty Salon & Spa WordPress Themes 2023 appeared first on FameThemes.

Not only can you find discounts and special deals for digital products, but also real physical items. And this creates real and tangible demand for coupon and deal websites.

If you create your own coupons website, you have the freedom to offer exclusive deals on specific or trending products. And the more you invest in finding and offering great deals, the higher is your chance to attract attention from premium businesses that would like to advertise their special deals on your coupon site exclusively.

Not to mention, a well-maintained deals website can easily attract a community around it, which gives you the freedom to manage a mailing list and have community members contribute their own special tips and secrets for finding good deals.

As for choosing a platform with which to create a coupons site — we recommend going with WordPress. Not only is WordPress easy to manage, but the highly customizable theme choices also allow you to create a site design that matches your style and vision.

Luckily for you, there are a dozen of amazing WordPress Coupon Themes available for download right now. We have taken the time to round up what we believe to be the most versatile, unique, and feature-packed coupon themes on the market.

Continue reading to learn about our opinions, the things we liked about each theme, and how you can get these themes today.

#1: Coupon WP

Our in-house created theme Coupon WP is packed with exciting features, modern design elements, and the right kind of flexibility to let you customize your new site to your liking.

Whether your goal is to promote coupons through affiliate marketing or by adding unique coupon deals individually, our theme lets you do both with zero hassle on your end.

For example, adding new coupons includes an option to set expiry date. As a result, once a coupon expires, your site won’t feel like a database of spam content as the expired deals get pushed back and not displayed on the main homepage.

Additionally, a smooth Ajax integration results in a streamlined user experience for your visitors. No need to browse pages separately and visitors can keep browsing the homepage until they find a deal that feels right. This integration is particularly great for mobile users of which there are many these days.

Unique Features:

• Coupon success meter to crowdsource user feedback and showcase the validity of a specific coupon code.
• Social sharing links that visitors can use to share the coupon with friends, family, and social followers.
• Coupon Box widget that shows on-page whenever a user clicks a specific coupon. The widget includes redirect URL (for affiliate marketing), and useful stats like success rating and overall usage for any given day.
• Additional add-ons to further extend site functionality, specifically — addons for mass-adding new coupons, and also for accepting front-end submissions.

#2: Clipper

At number two we have Clipper — an AppThemes creation, which in their own words is a theme intended for quickly monetizing your website traffic. With a traditional and laid-back design, Clipper feels familiar and user-friendly, yet is extremely powerful in its back-end feature versatility.

The installation process takes you through the most important steps to get your site up and ready as quickly as possible. From thereon, your main focus is to add new coupons and keep improving your monetization tactics.

One of the ways in which Clipper helps you monetize your traffic is by allowing business owners to submit exclusive coupon deals in exchange for a fee. You can collect royalties through PayPal and direct Bank Payments, but additional payment gateways can be added through plugins.

Further, AppThemes have built-in a ‘link masking’ feature, which automatically ‘hides’ your affiliate links to make them look more friendly, and thus reduce the risk that any new visitor would consider your site as spammy or untrustworthy. These kinds of features become extremely important as your site grows in size and popularity.

Unique Features:

• Sitemap-style pages for Categories and Stores. Visitors can choose to browse deals based on a specific category, but also for specific stores/retailers. Great if you manage a large database of coupons and want to make it easier for visitors to find what they need.
• Custom email templates — modify the email style and information that you wish to deliver to your registered users and subscribers. No more static messages, which should lead to greater user engagement overall.
• Anyone can submit coupons and deals as long as they are a registered member. Submissions are protected by a CAPTCHA, but consider adding tighter security measures to prevent spammers from over-bloating your site.
• API access for developers who want to modify Clipper’s design without the need to dig into the original core files.

#3: Couponer

For the last four years, Pebas has kept Couponer in active development, and the theme has been refined multiple times to meet modern standards but also to implement user feedback. As a result, Couponer delivers an enriching coupon theme experience based on concise design structure, specific features, and flexibility for customization.

The design focuses on a premium build with elements like boxed layout, in-depth search functionality, and versatile categorization for a smoother browsing experience. Couponer uses multiple page templates to divide website content into sections and categories. For example, users can see all the stores/brands for which you are listing coupons. Additionally, visitors can view the newest daily offers or check out coupon codes that are about to expire.

You also get some interesting features for listing your coupons. For example, you can add Features or Top 10 coupons and shuffle them every day. There’s the option to display Popular deals which are aggregated based on the number of clicks that a specific coupon gets.

Unique Features:

• Widgets that display social media, website information, and even things like newsletters and daily deals.
• An integrated membership system to allow users to become members of your site and in some cases even to submit their own deals.
• The said system allows you to publish coupons that only members can see. This feature is ideal if you wish to make your site more of a community than an open-ended site for everyone.
• Numerous Ajax implementations for Navigation and Search to make the user experience more pleasing.

#4: Coupon Theme (PremiumPress)

PremiumPress is a name you will come across whenever you’re on the hunt for a solid business-related WordPress theme. Coupons sites are definitely business-oriented, so it’s not a surprise that PremiumPress built its own unique theme to reflect the demand for this niche category. Coupon Theme is a professional deals-websites theme that bridges the gap between professional and modern.

The number one feature we see right away is a Drag & Drop page building interface, which can be used to design your site using pre-existing elements. This saves a lot of time in having to write your own code to make the site look the way you want. And during our inspection, we found that there’s a good amount of pre-made styles you can pick from. Furthermore, the styles themselves can be further customized using the customization options provided by this theme.

One aspect that we found unique compared to other coupon themes is the importing tool called iCodes. Basically, iCodes lets you import pre-existing deals/coupons from an external database so as to quickly populate your site. This tool would be ideal for anyone who wishes to quickly populate their site with content and get to work with the marketing aspect of things.

Unique Features:

• Users can find Coupons through location-targeting. The GEO-targeting system uses Google Maps to identify user locations and showcase the nearest deals to them.
• As a webmaster you can choose the type of a deal you wish to offer, whether it’s a coupon, an exclusive offer, or a specific deal — each deal has a pre-designed template to provide a seamless user experience.
• Users can rate coupons based on success rate, leave feedback, or share the special deals on their social media within a single click.

#5: CouponXL

This is yet another theme from Pebas, but this time around we’re talking about a theme that excels in professionalism and feature diversity — unlike anything we have seen so far, to put it bluntly. CouponXL feels like Craigslist for Coupons to put it simply. There’s the unique design element of simplicity combined with authentic elements that put together make for a memorable visitor experience.

Most of all, we feel that CouponXL provides a blend of design that feels more like a brand than a simple deals website. So, if you plan to invest in your coupons site seriously, this theme would be an ideal starting point to get your journey moving forward at a steady pace.

The homepage design is based on Blocks such as Sliders, Search, and Categories to display content in a unique yet readable manner. The Search widget for example lets users search deals not only by Stores but also based on Location. You can add Features sections for Coupons but also the latest News. And there’s plenty of room for customization.

CouponXL uses site categorization as a means for deeper exploration, but overall we feel you have a lot of tools to use in order to style the site in a way that reflects your ideals.

Unique Features:

• A membership system that is structured around helping you make a profit. This means that members can register and become premium users by submitting their personal deals, submitting products, and providing services. You can get paid through royalties that members have to pay in order to advertise on your site.
• Ajax Search with implemented Prediction algorithms. Whenever a user searches for something, this theme will automatically show a list of suggestions based on the keyword.
• Users Profiles where members can save deals, see their browsing history, and modify additional member settings.
• A variety of page styles for submissions. So, you can submit all kinds of special offers and not just coupons alone. Just another feature to help you make a bigger profit.

#6: CouponHut

CouponHut takes on the form of a premium style with luxury-type of elements ideal for coupons sites that enlist deals for luxurious and/or expensive products. The overall design structure feels refined, with a silky user experience and smooth navigation features.

These days visitors tend to access the web mostly from their mobile on-the-go devices, which means that having a design that can adapt to handheld devices is crucial. Whether it’s a smartphone or a tablet, providing the same design experience to all devices is critically important. SubSolar takes its design adaptation to the next level using new generation implementation methods to ensure guaranteed compatibility for devices of all sizes.

Coupon pages feel authentic and with a refined WordPress style that implements elements like sliders, statistics, and detailed instructions for any coupon you publish. This implementation is ideal if you want to improve your SEO by adding written instructions and details for your coupons. Some themes and indeed sites only focus on adding the coupon code alone, whereas CouponHut allows you to add additional content as well.

Unique Features:

• Since users always look for signs of trust, CouponHut implements a clean rating system that allows users to vote and vouch for listed coupons. And because this system is integrated into the theme, you don’t need to rely on external plugins to achieve a star rating result.
• Nothing is more important than search functionality that works! Visitors love to explore their options in a diverse manner, and this shouldn’t be an issue if you decide to use CouponHut. The majority of site elements, sliders, in particular, are built so that users can quickly navigate to categories and sections of the site to find the deals that match their criteria.
• And if you feel like avoiding the hassle of designing, you can just use the 1-Click installation process to quickly import a pre-built Demo design and start your site on the right foot instantly.

#7: Couponis

The focus of Couponis is built towards user submissions and also mass-importing of coupon codes that you might have already available on your computer. Some affiliate networks provide databases of coupons to use, so if you’re a part of such a network then this theme is ideal to get your site started quickly and with little to no effort.

The design emphasizes clean style, minimalistic navigation, a unique utility like coupon sorting, and ease of finding categories. The homepage area features a stylish slider element populated by category names and the number of coupons in each category. This gives users a feel for your site, and what they can expect to find on their first visit.

Further, you can add Featured & Trending stores, and use images rather than links alone. Using images helps visitors to quickly recognize brands that they already love and are passionate about. Overall, the design feels natural and without any specific hindrances to the user experience.

Unique Features:

• Coupons can be submitted in three different ways: as a code, an online link, or a printable version. Each different type provides a different experience. Users can print a coupon to take it directly to the store, or they can use a provided link to have a discount added to a product instantly. The latter gives you plenty of room for integrating affiliate marketing elements into your site.
• Couponis saves user search history so that returning visitors can always find the deals they want without having to create search history all over again.
• All coupon listings have a feedback system or ratings and success rates, so people can avoid clicking on links/pages that are deemed not working by other users.

#8: YourCoupon

YourCoupon is a top-choice theme for a project in which you wish to promote unique deals, provide discounts, or list out thousands of coupons. The overall design structure is tailored toward sites with a large volume of deals and offers. And, on top of that, the theme manages to stay relatively easy to navigate.

Some of the more intricate features in this theme include a custom Modal Box. This box will show up when users click on an individual coupon listing. Inside the modal, users will find information about the coupon, its rating, and also the coupon code itself. Interestingly, the theme also integrates a mega menu option – although we have already covered such functionality in a separate tutorial.

#9: Coupon (MyThemeShop)

The Coupon theme from MyThemeShop has managed to retain a strong position in this specific niche. Over the years, their demo sites have grown from just 2 to 5 pre-made coupon designs. And their theme also includes a custom design for an online store (WooCommerce), but also a blog.

One of the ways in which you will promote your coupon codes is through content marketing, so having a separate blog design to do just that is a nice feature.

As for the general design structure. I’d say for this theme, the designers have gone for a more clean layout. It’s well structured and has the capacity to showcase hundreds or even more coupon codes, without obstructing the user experience.

#10: REHub

REHub is definitely not the typical standalone WordPress theme. At its core, REHub is built to be used in a multitude of special deals websites. Particularly, sites that are meant for promoting affiliate products, price comparison pages, landing pages, but also coupons, and special deals platforms.

The nice thing about using a theme like REHub is that you can always repurpose many of the features into something else. Looking at the design of the REDeal (the coupon version) demo – it feels as though the main goal is to have a professional look to the design. The coupon pages have a ton of interactive features to make those pages stand out individually.

In particular, you are able to talk about the products you are providing the coupons for. This includes tabs for instructions, custom reviews, a table chart, but also related products with their respective coupon codes.

Conclusion

After examining and sampling the enlisted themes, we know for a fact that even the most quirky web developers are going to find someone worth their while. As with any new endeavor, the most important step is to simply begin, and the rest will fall into place by itself.

Whichever theme you decide upon, know that you can always change your mind and go for something else down the road. All the same, you can stick to one theme and simply ‘borrow’ design concepts from other designs presented in this roundup.

That being said, we hope that your new coupons site turns out to be a success. Please don’t hesitate to leave feedback, ask questions, or recommend additional tools that can help to create and manage a functional coupons website.

The post 10 Best WordPress Coupon Themes in 2023 appeared first on FameThemes.

How to build a personal blog with WordPress

What kind of features should you look for when creating a blog site with WordPress? For one, the theme should be either recently published or frequently updated. This will ensure that your theme of choice complies with the latest WordPress features, but also security standards.

Apart from that, here is the criteria we use when choosing to highlight a theme:

• Mobile-friendly. With so many people using their smartphones to consume content, it goes without saying that responsive design is a must-have.
• Performance. Nobody wants to visit a website and have it take 10 seconds to load. Especially us! As such, our theme selection process weighted site performance heavily.
• SEO Optimization. Some people don’t care about search engines, but I imagine that many of you do. So it only makes sense to include themes have are SEO-friendly.

And lastly, we looked at each design individually. What kind of unique features does it have? Who is the design intended for in terms of personality? Little things like this can narrow down a broad list of themes to a dozen, ensuring that everyone can find something that feels good to their taste.

So, without further ado – let’s take a closer look.

Boston

If you’re looking to use your personal blog to document stories for a long period of time, I think you’ll enjoy how pleasing the Boston theme is. It’s built specifically for bloggers who like to keep things simple, but still have a few design elements that make your content stand out.

In particular, you’ll love the ability to highlight individual words in your post titles. And, the category design will make it so readers can immediately recognize what the story is about. But, more than that, the Boston theme just feels really good. I think it’s easy to go overboard with site design, in hopes of a more creative touch, but that can also backfire because the design becomes too cluttered.

As such, we recommend Boston to anyone who likes a clean design combined with some modern design features to help emphasize your best content.

Personal Blogily

Personal Blogily is definitely up there with other refined WordPress themes. The boxed layout separated by carefully crafted borders gives a more unique feel to your site. And, with the addition of custom widgets like About Me – you can go ahead and make a strong impression of what your personal blog is all about.

I think this theme also does a great job of highlighting the use of simplicity. If your only goal is to share stories, it goes a long way to ensure they’re easy to read and navigate. In this theme, you can make a strong first impression by adding your personal logo at the top of the page. And, also by adding navigation links that link to your categories and other important pages.

Blogstream

As someone who works in web design on a daily basis, it’s not uncommon for me to see a design that makes me go, “Yeah, that’s pretty neat!”. And, the Blogstream theme definitely has those vibes going for it. It’s a personal blogging theme that uses a stylish design concept that you probably won’t find in any other theme. As such, that also makes Blogstream a truly unique theme.

The compact header design has room for a practical logo, your social media links, but also a search icon, and, of course, your site categories. The categories can even be nested, so if you write about a lot of topics – having them nested can help improve the site navigation experience.

A custom widget can be added to your sidebar to display your most popular posts, but also the most commented ones. Likewise, you can individually highlight your best of the best content through a custom Featured Posts widget. All in all, this theme provides plenty of tools to make your articles discoverable.

Elsie

My first impression of Elsie is that the demo has been designed to have a lot of feminine elements to it. And, I also feel the same way about typography choices. As such, the Elsie theme is an ideal pick for our fellow female bloggers who wish to kickstart their blogging journey. I think you’ll quite like this one.

On the sidebar, you’ll have plenty of room to add your personal bio with a photo. But also a subscription form, and links to your most recent blog posts. On the homepage, you can utilize the “featured boxes” to link out to your best pages, such as your contact page among others. The design of articles pages is clean, includes social sharing buttons, and has all the other WordPress features you’d expect.

Patricia Blog

Calling the Patricia Blog theme elegant would be quite an understatement. The way the design flows together from header to footer is as smooth as it can get. And, honestly, you could probably sell this theme, but it is in fact available for free. So, let’s talk about some of the design features.

First is the minimal navigation design. Social links, navigation, and other custom buttons are all included in a single container. This helps you save a lot of design space and put more emphasis on your initial header introduction. In this case, that introduction would be a slider of your featured posts.

After that, you have a nice and flowing grid-style blog presentation, with the addition of a right-hand sidebar. Overall, the theme feels natural. After going through the various pages and examples, at no time did it feel as if something (an element or widget) was out of context. Check it out for yourself below.

TravelBee

As we said at the beginning of the article, personal blogging themes are typically used for sites with a specific purpose. Be it food blogs, travel stories, personal experiences, and more. In the case of TravelBee, this theme is designed for anyone looking to start up a personal travel blog. And, I do believe you’re going to love the included features. Let’s look at them one by one.

• Featured Slider. Promote your best (or latest) travel stories with a stylish featured slider.
• Featured Boxes. Showcase your eBook, link to your About Me page, and anything else.
• Hero Introduction. A full-width section to tell your readers all about who you are.
• Her Promotion. Put a product or a book you’re selling in the spotlight.

So, in a sense, TravelBee is a theme that’s not only for personal blogs but also for anyone looking to market themselves as an expert on a specific topic. As is with any other WordPress theme, the idea that you can only use it for travel sites is superficial. A theme like this will work on any particular topic that you’re most interested in, all you need to do is adapt the style for it.

Occasio

Thomas Weichselbaumer has been building WordPress themes since 2011. And his company ThemeZee is extremely popular among the free themes community. And, in the case of Occasio – it’s a personal blogging theme for writers who appreciate the little things in life.

Not only is the theme simple, but it also does an excellent job at letting you focus on what’s most important – the ability to write and publish new content.

EnjoyBlog

EnjoyBlog brings forth a bit of a unique twist. It has not one but two sidebars. And both of those sidebars implement a “sticky” effect. So, they roll down the page alongside the main content as the reader navigates the page. This can make it easier for readers to find your blog post categories, but also give you an opportunity to promote ads in a more defined fashion. If you plan to use ads, that is.

The article design is quite compact. I think if you’re someone who wishes to write about technological topics, a theme like this can go a long way. The narrow design approach actually has an effect on making the page more engaging, and easier for the reader.

But, outside of all that. This is a practical theme without all the fancy stuff to distract readers.

Dashscroll

The first thing that the Dashscroll theme reminded me of was the Twitter timeline. Blog posts are shown as a timeline card, including a small circular logo of your featured image. The boxed design remains consistent across all pages, so there’s a familiarity with the design.

You also get a compact sidebar on the right-hand side, which can be used to promote links to your social media. On the other hand side, you have a widget that can display your most interesting posts. And, also to showcase a photo of you and a description of what your personal blog is about.

In conclusion, a theme like this with its quirks and twists is definitely for the more creative writers. If you like it, then I am sure you won’t mind using it. Others might feel the design is too unfamiliar.

Strike Blog

Crafthemes are no strangers to producing lovely WordPress templates. And the Strike Blog theme was built specifically to help writers find a good home for their blog posts. It’s a traditional blogging-style theme that does have a few interesting features. In particular, Strike Blog provides a “Featured Article” section where you can highlight both older posts, but also your best recent articles.

Even though you’ll see a few custom colors used for various elements, I do think that it all blends together without much obstruction. Specifically, looking at the design of the blog posts page – I couldn’t notice anything that was drawing my attention away from the content itself.

Sheen

The thing I love about the Sheen theme is that it’s a bit of a mix. On one hand, it’s a portfolio theme using photography as the main content presentation, but on the other – it’s also a spectacular theme to use for a personal blogging site. If you are someone with a passion for photography but also writing, I do believe the Sheen theme was built just for you.

I’d say the design, apart from images, is kept to an absolute bare minimum. The typography is neat and blends well with the overall empty spaces you find on pages. And the theme supports all the WordPress features you already know and love – comments, videos, featured photos, and a clean footer.

Writers Blogily

Writers Blogily is very much in line with the Personal Blogily theme we saw earlier. And, in a lot of ways, follows the same style guidelines. It’s clean and uses a boxed grid layout in combination with a full-width hero section to highlight what your blog is about.

Inside blog posts, you have the option to use a full-width featured image. The footer elements are neatly put together to include tags, an author box, related posts, and a comment section.

Personalias

It’s going to be hard to overlook the amount of customization and personal touch that has gone into the Personalias theme. So, let’s unpack one by one. First, you’ll notice the design is based on 3 different sections. One is for the featured article, the second for all your blog posts, and then finally you have a sidebar on the far right-hand side. This same concept follows inside blog articles themselves, too.

The only difference is that inside the blog post – the featured article is replaced with the author’s information. And, also has social media links your readers can use to share your posts with their friends. I’d say it’s a fairly compact design, overall. I do believe the choices that the authors of this theme have made are going to help increase engagement with your readers.

If you do plan on using blog comments, look at our spam prevention article to make sure you don’t get overwhelmed with poor-quality comments.

Blockfold

Blockfold is a Blocks-based theme (we have an article on those here) – so expect all the Gutenberg Blocks features to work well with this template. In fact, one of those features is Full Site Editing – also known as a website builder inside WordPress. With Full Site Editing, you can customize your blog style and design directly from the homepage. And you have full control over each element. Include even the smallest of details, such as button styles, or border styles for your headlines. It’s creativity in action.

But, you can also use Blockfold just for the base design alone. Which, as you’ll see in the live preview, is more than sufficient for publishing a blog. Everything from carefully aligned content displays to individual sections is already included. All you need to do is populate those sections with your own content.

Oscura

And for the last theme in our collection, we have Oscure. Another excellent choice for anyone who loves the idea of writing blogs through photography. It’s quite clear to me that Alexandre Buffet (the author) has put a few of his personal touches into this design. Specifically, a parallax effect that makes the homepage experience feel lively and will surely catch the attention of anyone coming to your blog.

In terms of publishing content with this theme, it’s up to you. It works just as fine to use for a standalone photo-based blog. But if writing text is your thing, I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t combine both.

Summary

I’ve done design work for quite a number of years. And, on top of that, I’ve also dug deep into various templates and theme designs during that time. As such, being impressed with a free design – I think you really need to put something special into the design for that to happen. And, I do believe that this roundup was quite an interesting journey into what is possible with WordPress.

You can choose to use these themes as is, or take it a step further by adding a website builder, or at the very least one of the many interesting WordPress plugins. All in all, I hope that this roundup helped you to find the design that reflects your personality and style choices the best.

The post 15+ Best Free Personal Blog WordPress Themes 2023 appeared first on FameThemes.

Unlike personal blogs, magazines typically deal with a lot of content at the same time. As such, it’s imperative that the theme you choose offers ways to display a lot of news posts at once. That is also going to be the premise for this collection. We are going to be focusing on the best magazine themes that provide both a clean design, but also the ability to make your news content stand out.

Responsive design & site performance

When putting together this roundup, our priority was both mobile-friendly design, but also good site performance. While it’s not entirely dependent on the theme alone, it certainly helps when the codebase is written in clean code and doesn’t use scripts that slow down your site.

Here are some other factors we considered when picking each theme:

• Design. News and magazine sites have varying layouts depending on the type of content you publish. As such, our focus was both on themes ideal for fashion magazines, but also tech news sites, and a lot more.
• Customization. A pre-made template is nice, but what makes it all together is the ability to do your own customizations. Each theme in this roundup offers, at the very least, plenty of configuration options through the WordPress Customizer feature.
• Active users. Lastly, having a theme used by more than just a handful of people is an indication that it works as intended. As such, our goal was to highlight themes past a certain usage threshold.

And, of course, we’ll talk about individual features below each theme in a concise description.

So, if you feel like all that makes sense – let’s get going!

1. Glob

Glob is one of the flagship designs at FameThemes. There’s a high chance that you have probably read a news site before using this very theme. So, let’s try and understand what makes it so desirable.

First off, a magazine site typically operates within multiple categories at once. In a traditional WordPress blog theme, all content on the homepage is displayed at the same time. However, with the Glob theme – you can divide your content into category sections. And each category can be displayed on the homepage separately. This makes it an ideal choice for editorials with a persistent content pipeline.

The theme does include various widgets to help you better highlight your best content. On top of this, Glob has features like a featured posts section, social icons, and a breaking news widget.

2. EasyMag

One of the first things to note about the EasyMag theme is how well it is able to present content. In my experience, a lot of publishers fail to emphasize their best content. So, in that context alone – EasyMag gets a lot of credit for utilizing clean typography and layout sections.

Another feature to note is how well EasyMag integrates internal content into the overall design. In other words, there are several widgets that help you display both related, but also popular posts. In the live preview, you can click on any published article and you’ll see how well the content is presented.

The theme is also translation-ready. A lot of news sites tend to translate their content into multiple languages, so having native support for translation is super nice. Last but not least, you can choose from a boxed or a full-width layout, both of which are optimized for readability.

3. Codilight Lite

If you’re looking for a theme that bridges a combination of editorial and blogging experience, I think Codilight Lite might be a prime choice. The compact (boxed) layout helps to keep things as organized as possible. Your news articles will be displayed in a grid format, each with its own section for the specific categories you want to showcase on the homepage.

Here are a few other top features for this theme:

• Works well with Customizer to let you change the little details.
• Optimized for SEO – makes it easier for search engines to discover your content.
• Custom widgets to help you display advertising banners.

The theme also has a Pro version available, but the free version is plenty to get you started with.

4. Techone

If you’re being serious about getting into daily publishing, let us introduce the Techone theme. This is the only theme in this list that requires a monetary investment. However, due to its custom design and carefully crafted features – that investment will pay itself back tenfold.

The attention to detail in Techone is unparalleled to what you find in an average template. Individual posts are designed to feature a full-width hero image. And there you can place not only static images but also video media. This makes Techone a brilliant theme for review magazines. In fact, the theme does have a custom review widget which you can use to highlight products that you’re writing about.

Additionally, the attention to detail in presenting site elements is superb. More often than not, design is what guides readers to a specific outcome. So, it’s hard to ignore the fact that Techone makes that experience seamless.

5. Newsup

Newsup manages to take the concept of a card-based design, and turn it into a pleasant editorial experience. The full-width layout combined with a definitive header section makes this an appealing choice for professional magazines and news sites.

Speaking of the header – Newsup includes both a “Latest News” widget, but also a way for you to display trending tags. This is helpful because it makes it easier for your readers to find trending content. But, at the same time, encourages search crawlers to explore your site on a deeper level.

I think if you do a bit of customization, this can be a great theme for your site. My top priority would be to change the typography to something more refined. But, perhaps that’s me being subjective.

6. Cream Magazine

Cream Magazine is a WordPress theme for publishers who love a little flare in their designs. The thoughtful use of a red-on-black color scheme helps to quickly highlight the news that is both trending but also relevant to your site.

I’m also a big fan of the header navigation, which implements a separate header section for social links and your categories. And, there’s plenty of space to place your magazine logo, too.

The free version is being used on nearly 10,000 magazine sites already. Although, that comes as no surprise thanks to how easy it is to use the Cream Magazine theme.

7. ChromeNews

ChromeNews takes an interesting approach to building a WordPress news site. Even though the theme comes with a custom design, you can actually rearrange the design yourself. As always, this is thanks to the flexibility of Blocks and the fact that AF Themes added this functionality.

Once you have the theme – you can download the Blockspare and Elespare plugins, both of which have a combined total of more than 200+ custom blocks. And many of those are tailored specifically to news sites, such as editorials and magazines.

And even if that isn’t your cup of tea. ChromeNews has several designs to choose from, all available to install with a single demo import. Check out the live preview below to see them in action!

8. Refined Magazine

Refined Magazine has quite a lot going on visually, though manages to maintain a minimalistic look and feel. The all-in-one header will let you categorize your news categories, but also implement banners ads. On top of all that, you can also add links to your social media channels, and have a custom-built breaking news widget. This widget in particular features images inside the rolling effect.

On the customization side, one of the things that popped out for me was the use of multiple sidebars. So, for example, you can switch between having no sidebar (on content pages) or add use a sidebar on either the left or right side. Likewise, that same approach can be applied to your homepage.

I think the only thing missing is a mega menu. But, you can achieve that by reading our tutorial for it.

9. PixaNews

Do you want to create a fashion magazine? Perhaps an editorial for a health and fitness publication? Well, I think you’re going to like what PixaNews brings to the table. The theme is built right from the start with a color variation that blends extremely well with trendy news sites.

But aside from all that, we have to talk about the features, too. PixaNews lets you choose from various layout styles, with each one providing its own featured content areas. Additionally, you can go inside the Customizer to select your preferred Google Fonts combination. In fact, there are also settings to customize backgrounds, text colors, widget styles, and a lot more.

And lastly, you can style your news post layouts using in-built templates.

10. NewsMedia

You might notice that this theme looks a bit different from what we have seen so far. And that’s because NewsMedia has a native dark mode as its default style. But not to worry, the other demo layouts do provide a light theme, also.

Having said that, I think quite a few major publications are embracing the use of a dark mode. The Verge, for example, uses quite a bit of dimmer elements. And so does Ars Technica.

In terms of features, NewsMedia feels like it has been built with the help of a modern front-end framework. The use of transitions and CSS animations really helps the site to come together, feel modern, and yet maintain that editorial style guide. I think words won’t do it justice, so make sure to check out the live preview and see how you like it.

11. News Block

We’ve been looking at quite a few magazine themes that implement a traditional boxed layout. So, with News Block – it’s a nice change of pace to see a design style that’s more focused on typography. And, perhaps for you – it also means the focus is more on readability.

After taking the theme for a spin and going through its pages. I can say that News Block does have a lot of editorial style elements to it. In particular, the use of dropcap letters, custom blockquote designs, and the ability to add quotes on top of a full-width image.

12. Reminiscence Lite

Reminiscence Lite is a relatively new theme, a few months old. But, I couldn’t resist including it in this collection because it really has a fluid vibe to it. If you’re familiar with the old design that The Insider was using – this theme reminds me of that, a lot.

Inside news posts, there are a few things to note on the design side. First, the layout uses 2 sidebars. One is for all your WordPress widgets, and the other is to showcase your social links, back to top button, and your brand logo.

Because the layout is squeezed in like this, it’s actually very easy on the eyes. And if anything – feels like reading a traditional blog post.

13. ColorMag

ThemeGrill has been publishing WordPress themes for many years. And their expertise in design has translated to thousands upon thousands of users. ColorMag lets you quickly build a simple yet efficient news site. It’s ideal for review magazines, and tech sites that publish a lot of content daily.

It’s also quite easy to navigate in terms of customization. All the tools you need to define the design layers are included in the Customizer panel. Choose from various color options, or go a bit deeper and start customizing the footer and header sections of your site.

14. Moral Magazine

Once more, we have a magazine theme that uses dark mode by default. Moral Magazine stands out not only with clean typography, but the sheer amount of content sections you can add.

As such, it’s the ideal theme for an editorial site that deals with multiple authors and journalists. At the end of the day, most people will be browsing your homepage to find the latest news – it only makes sense to show all the daily news at once.

News columns (the actual posts) are complemented with a stunning full-page hero section. This lets you captivate the essence of the stories that you wish to publish in your magazine. Likewise, you have the option to remove the sidebar to build more immersive news experiences for your readers.

15. HitMag

How do you categorize something as stylish? Well, I think the HitMag theme kind of sends that message through its design. Built for magazines and newspaper sites – this theme provides all the basic functionality to get your news site going.

The custom-built slider at the top of the homepage adds a nice touch for displaying featured content. As does the trending news widget – letting your readers keep up with the hottest stories as they come to the site. It’s also a well-documented theme and provides plenty of answers to common questions.

16. Metro Magazine

Metro is typically the word used to describe the Metro style from Microsoft. Well, I’d have to say a few similarities are there when looking at the Metro Magazine theme. But, overall, I do feel that this design has a personality of its own.

As it is the last theme in this collection – I think it manages to stand out really well. Unlike a lot of the typical blended-together designs, Metro Magazine focuses on separate sections individually.

You have the featured section, which is then followed by your trending news. Immediately you will notice how clean the design is. After, you can add a separate section for any other news you’re publishing, and customize that section with a background image or a plain color.

Depending on the type of magazine site you’re building, a more practical theme like Metro Magazine might just be what you’re looking for.

Wrapping up

It’s clear as day that WordPress offers plenty of opportunities for building a magazine site. Above all, you can do so completely for free. Lastly, WordPress is making a fast-paced transition towards having all of its themes be supported by WordPress Blocks. So, in the future – designing a magazine site will be as easy as putting together pre-made patterns provided by theme designers and developers.

And finally, make sure to check out our previous collection of the best one-page WordPress themes.

The post 15+ Best Free Magazine WordPress Themes 2023 appeared first on FameThemes.

It’s no secret that WordPress offers enormous flexibility for building a website. You can do the simplest of blog websites, or go in-depth and create complex business sites. And, for the most part, it can be done completely for free. This is thanks to developers and theme creators who have spent their time producing free themes for all of the WordPress community to use.

And in this article, we are going to review the top performing free one-page WordPress themes.

Who Should Build a One-Page WordPress Site?

The modern era of creative WordPress themes is all about cool features and layout options. But, how often do all of those features get used on a live website? Not that often. So, in this context, a One Page theme offers the ability to focus on what is important to you. Without all the feature overhead.

Here are some use cases in which a One-Page WordPress theme is often the best choice:

• Landing pages. A landing page lets you explain your product or service without needing to redirect the user to multiple other pages.
• Portfolio. This can be both a personal portfolio with blog posts or a portfolio of your past work, such as photography or digital artwork.
• Introduction. An intro page can range from a practical introduction to yourself as a person, but also your business, services, or vital information about a project.

Our selection of One Page themes is focused on quality and design features. So, whether you’re a creative designer or someone who loves minimalism – our picks should suffice plenty.

All themes reviewed in this collection are responsive (mobile-friendly) and tested for best performance (site speed). Both features are important to provide a good user experience, but also to comply with standards like Web Vitals. And, of course, to meet the requirements of modern SEO.

1. OnePress

As far as themes that stay true to their name go, it’s hard to overlook OnePress. A one-of-a-kind WordPress theme for building one-page websites. And with over 100,000 active users (according to WordPress.org) – it’s easily the best theme for the job.

So, what makes OnePress such a popular choice? For one, it works completely out of the box. Other than adding your own content, there is nothing else you need to customize. However, if you do wish to change things – the OnePress theme makes it enjoyable to do so.

This is thanks to the modular block structure. Whether you need to add or remove testimonials, you can do so by choosing the specific block. The same goes for in-depth customization options inside the WordPress Customizer panel. From there, you get complete design freedom to change colors, typography, and anything else your heart desires.

It’s also a fast theme. In our independent benchmark, reports show that OnePress has a Cumulative Layout Shift of 0, ensuring that it follows the Google guidelines of website performance.

2. Screenr

Screenr is a full-page parallax WordPress theme that embodies the one-page concept. It’s built on the back of Bootstrap and delivers both a familiar but also a modern feel to it. Our data (we built this theme!) shows that Screenr is the most popular among digital agencies and portfolio sites.

The first thing you will notice is how Screenr implements the one-page concept. In the demo (see below), you can scroll down the page and the navigation will follow each new section. This also means that you can add new sections or remove them as you please. The in-built content blocks make it very easy to achieve a layout that is able to convey your website’s purpose to your site visitors.

Other notable features include a custom-built footer (which you can edit), but also a separate design for your blog posts. It doesn’t matter if your site is one-page or not, keeping your readers updated with the latest news is important. And with Screenr, you get the best of both worlds.

3. Qi

The Qi theme is the latest WordPress design from the folks at Qode Interactive. If we look at the way in which WordPress is evolving, it’s crucial that designers keep adapting to the latest trends. And, in the case of Qi – the unique feel for its one-page designs is palpable.

As for the demo we chose to showcase above – it’s both stylish and practical. A blend of modern features like border dividers, but also separate sections to showcase your portfolio.

The approach to typography is a mix of creative yet professional fonts. If you are a web agency specializing in digital services, a theme like Qi can help elevate your digital presence to a new level.

4. Deep

The Deep theme is part of a bigger framework, though the free version still manages to impress. The first thing you’ll notice is the integration of modern web design patterns. Notably, the use of various blob effects, wave dividers, transition animations, and interactive widgets.

The theme has support for all major page builders and works nicely with external plugins, too. E.g. You can use our EasyMega plugin to add a mega menu to your site.

In the in-built features department, there’s plenty to play around with. Deep provides a simple 1-click import of any demo layout it has available. And, styling the landing page can be done using simple copy & paste from a library of pre-built elements. Last but not least, you’ll have plenty of options to customize each layout yourself. The Customizer features are exceptional in that regard.

5. Chaplin

A lot of WordPress theme development has shifted towards the usage of Blocks. So, it comes as no surprise that more and more themes utilize the concept to its full potential. The Chaplin theme is built as a blocks-first theme, making it easy for you to design page layouts directly from the WordPress Editor itself. And, because it’s built with developers in mind, it plays quite well with external block plugins.

But, who is the target audience for the Chaplin theme? Our first impressions tell us that Chaplin is ideal for product pages, business portfolios, and personal introductions. You could even use it to build a website for an online course. All the features are there, including a blog design.

The author of this theme – Anders Norén – has done quite a bit of work for the WordPress community, so expect his themes to be both fast, but also easy to work with.

6. Neve

ThemeIsle (the authors) are no strangers to WordPress development. I think at one point or another, we all have interacted with their work during our WordPress journeys. And, in the case of the Neve theme – it’s a remarkable example of the attention that the ThemeIsle designers put into their work.

One of the core features of this theme is the flexibility of layout options. The in-built grid system helps you to align your content in a way that’s easy to read but also accessible. Also, on top of the responsive-first design, Neve also provides support for AMP. This will ensure that your pages load extremely fast for mobile users, despite their location or connectivity potential.

Lastly, the block structure of the Neve theme means you can weave together various layouts to come up with a design that you’re happy with. Despite there being a Pro version, you’ll find plenty of features in the Free version to satisfy even the most creative of design ideas.

7. BusinessFocus

In a lot of cases, businesses use WordPress as the storefront for their actual services. Some do it because WordPress is easy to work with, others because of the availability of free themes and layouts. And, a theme like BusinessFocus is a prime example of that.

BusinessFocus is also the first theme in our collection that implements a native dark mode. The use of dark mode has risen in popularity in recent years, and if not enabled by default – most modern websites today also offer a dark mode option.

So, keep that in mind if you love the idea of a more twilight-like design.

As for other features – the theme has reusable sections which can be rearranged in custom order. Also, the inclusion of various grid layouts gives you a lot of flexibility to display your most important content.

8. Shapely

The Shapely theme has been around for a while. And, has managed to withstand the different changes and updates that WordPress has gone through. Needless to say, it does a heck of a job to stay on point as a true One-Page WordPress theme. The design flows from top to bottom, providing seamless exposure to your most important content sections.

The inclusion of a sticky navigation menu ensures that your visitors have a accessible browsing experience. Likewise, with a ton of creative modules – you can make your landing page stand out. You can display projecs using traditional photo-based grids. But also have the option add a more personal touch through hero sections which support custom images, and typography through Google Fonts.

9. Bravada

It’s easy to forget that even slightest of design changes can have a huge impact. And, in the case of themes and templates, it’s best to leave all the hard work to experts! The Bravada theme, a phenomenal fullscreen experience, is designed to be both creative, but also to leave a good first impression.

The addition of custom fonts and various color backdrops really helps to put your site content into perspective. An example of this is the “features section” which adds a small background to the headings, further emphasizing that it’s an important part of your page. Interestingly, despite the usage of creative elements – the Bravada theme does manage to retain a minimalistic yet sleek feel to it.

All in all, it’s an ideal choice for portfolio sites where you might need a creative touch added. The portfolio block for example can be used to filter out different items by their category. And all of it happens on the same page that the visitor is viewing. As you can see in the screenshot above, even the demo itself manages to leave a very strong first impression.

10. Blocksy

Do you love design features like rounded borders, colorful buttons, and stylish sections? Well, in that case, the Blocksy theme should be right up your alley. This blocks-based theme offers plenty of features to make your one page WordPress site stand out in the crowd.

As a Gutenberg theme, it works well with the default WordPress editor. However, it’s just as easy to use with Elementor, Brizy, Beaver Builder, and other design editing plugins. Features like a custom header builder will ensure you can design the best possible navigation for your site.

And, the ability to add custom shapes and patterns to backgrounds will help enrich the visual appearance of your site. Blocksy includes a number of starter sites – pre-designed layouts you can import with a single click. And, likewise, reuse each of their components to blend together one finalized design.

11. Sydney

A good WordPress theme isn’t just about its features. It’s also about the amount of time it takes to set everything up. Which also happens to be one of the main selling points for the Sydney theme. (It’s a play on words, the theme is 100% free!) The use of a fullscren hero section alone is going to give your readers a clear idea of what your page is about. Granted, you need to use the appropriate images for it!

If you love using custom fonts, then Sydney will make it easy for you to use Google Fonts or add your own custom fonts. Additionally, the authors have put in the work to ensure that Sydney is translation-friendly. This will make it easier for you to translate your content into other languages, whether because you’re a non-native English speaker or simply wish to run a foreign website.

12. Pliska

The Pliska theme from Nasio Themes is hard to ignore. The fact that it is WCAG 2.0 valid (accessibility-friendly), with native support for Schema markup makes it a strong contender for one of the more refined WordPress one-page themes. But who is it for exactly?

Upon closer inspection and a deep dive into the theme demo, it seems as though Pliska has more than one use. While we think it’s a fantastic one-page theme out of the box, you could very well use it for running a traditional blog, or even a magazine if need be. We also found that a native dark & light theme is quite useful, and practical to have a toggle switch inside the navigation menu.

Some of the creative effects in this theme include button animations, transition effects, parallax, text marker effects, and native image zoom. So, all kinds of interesting features to give your website a modern yet stylish feel to it.

13. Costello

The Costello theme is an ideal contender for photographers and digital artists. Though, it’s just as good to use for other purposes, too. The theme is effectively a mix between portfolio elements, but also an integrated blog to help you publish interesting stories.

One thing you will notice is the lack of colorful elements. This is great because it will help you put your portfolio items into spotlight. And it’s also great because a more practical design makes it easier for your site visitors to navigate the page itself.

The creative testamonials widget will give you plenty of opportunity to showcase social proof. Though, it shouldn’t be hard to transform that into a portfolio slider by itself. You can do this using the in-built Customizer features, of which there are plenty. Almost any design element you see in the demo can in some shape or form be customized from the theme editing dashboard.

14. Bricksy

The Bricksy theme is one of the few WordPress themes that are adding Full Site Editing experience. This new concept is also what the future of WordPress themes is going to look like. And, in case you aren’t familiar – FSE means that you can edit the design of your WordPress site directly from the homepage. As opposed to the admin dashboard.

Bricksy stands out with a comprehensive set of features to help you set custom variables for your buttons, sections, typography and more. Each element can also be selected independently and edited as a WordPress Block. And, despite the rich set of features – Bricksy does manage to stay both lightweight, but also a joy to work with.

15. Posterity

Do you want to build a portfolio website for a creative business? Perhaps you’re an artist who wants to build a modern portfolio website? In any case, the Posterity theme has plenty to offer in both scenarios.

You’re probably already familiar with transition effects which make site content slide-in as the user navigates down the page. Well, with Posterity – such a feature is built-in into the theme itself.

Although, you do have the option to turn it off.

Other notable features include an organized color scheme, with an emphasis on colors that convey which parts of your site are most important. And, of course, the dedicated (sticky) navigation will make it possible for you to include your social media links, as well as a phone number.

16. Parallel

The Parallel theme offers a full-screen website experience which includes the most important elements for a business site. Those features include a custom-design contact form (including support for newsletters), Google Maps integration, custom video backgrounds, and a lot more.

You have the option to highlight projects as individual hero sections, but also to include numerous portfolio items and show them as a photo grid. There’s also a custom section for displaying the logo of the brands that you have worked with, or the ones that are supporting you.

The custom counter section will help you showcase your past experience.

Even if it’s only a personal portfolio, showing the numbers of clients you have worked with can do wonders for attracting new business opportunities.

Wrapping up

Was this collection of free One-Page themes helpful for you? We’d love to hear which design you chose in the end. And yes, it’s a lot of work to go through each one. But, with the help of demo pages and the screenshots we provided – it shouldn’t take long to find something that captures your heart.

Best of all, some of the themes actually have multiple layouts to choose from! Either way, it was our pleasure to put together this roundup for you – see you in the next one.

The post 15+ Best Free One Page WordPress Themes 2023 appeared first on FameThemes.

If you look at when the idea of blogging started and where it is now – the difference is quite stark. In the early days, blog posts consisted mostly of text and an occasional image. Maybe, just maybe there was a custom-styled button or a submission form, but for the most part – blog pages were plain and bland.

These days things are a bit different. With the evolution of browser features and the rise of technical CSS and JavaScript capabilities – the average blogger can go to great lengths at making their blog, and blog posts, feel both unique and authentic.

It’s arguably one of the reasons why WordPress has remained so popular.

Being able to browse a directory of hundreds of custom block plugins gives bloggers plenty of opportunities to make their blog post designs stand out from the rest. But before we got into the nitty-gritty parts of the article, let’s answer the following question first.

What determines a blog post is creative?

Typically, creativity is achieved when you start adding a personal touch to your blog posts. It could be something as simple as a background color for headings. But, it could also be more complex – such as custom table designs, interactive images, galleries, and much more.

But, there is another aspect of content creation, which is the type of things you write and blog about. The traditional approach to blogging is to write informative blog posts, with numerous headlines either explaining a topic or answering questions related to that topic. There’s nothing wrong with this approach, but as a blogger – this will sooner or later start to become boring and tedious.

The image above is a good example of how colors and other layouts elements can be used to add a little bit of life to your blog content. And thanks to WordPress Blocks – we can achieve similar results without needing to write any code ourselves.

How important is it to use creative design elements?

If we look at the current data, there are millions of blog posts being published daily. In fact, the exact number is right around 5 million blog posts – published every single day.

And because blogging is so popular, it takes a little creative touch to stand out.

If all the blogs looked the same, it would be quite difficult to weed out information that is of low quality. So, to summarize, creative design elements play a significant role in ensuring that readers feel like they can trust the information you provide. Because, unless you have an established following – one of the main ways of attracting readership is specifically through design that you apply to your content.

How to get started with WordPress blocks

Chances are, you’re already familiar with the WordPress Gutenberg editor.

It is, after all, the default editor for all WordPress blogs. So, it’s safe to assume that you already know how to use the basic blocks that WordPress provides by default.

By default, there are probably around 20 usable blocks that WordPress provides out of the box. I would imagine that some of these you’re using on a daily basis, already.

You can do things like line breaks (see above) to divide different sections of your article.

You can also do things like creating a list:

• Lists are typically used to highlight a lot of features at once.
• But, they can also be used to highlight important talking points.
• Some bloggers use lists to summarize their talking points at the end of a blog post.

Recently, WordPress has also added the option to create buttons, like so:

Last but not least, you can also do full-scale text overlays for images:

An example of the WP Media Text Block.

– FameThemes

Just with these aforementioned elements alone, you can start making your blog posts feel more authentic. But, unfortunately, as for the default blocks provided by WordPress – this is also just about as far as it goes. It’s enough to get you started, but not exactly sufficient to give you total creative freedom.

So, what is the solution? In this case, the solution is to use WordPress block plugins. There are dozens of fantastic choices available in the WordPress plugin repository. And each one is built to provide unique concepts of design elements that you can insert into your blogs using the Blocks interface.

WordPress Block Plugins: The Best Picks for Creative Elements

So, this next section is dedicated entirely to highlighting the best WordPress block plugins. We’ll do a brief introduction and a review for each one, but ultimately you can browse each of the plugins on your own to see the full repertoire of elements that they provide.

#1: CoBlocks

CoBlocks was one of the first WordPress blocks plugins once Gutenberg was released. And, since then the plugin has amassed a whopping half a million users, which speaks volumes for the quality of blocks the plugin provides. It is also my personal recommendation, and I use it on all WordPress sites I manage.

Here are some of the creative design elements this plugin provides:

• A compact “click to tweet” button to help you engage your readers.
• Notification blocks (alerts, notices, warnings, etc.).
• Text highlight – wrap a text around a specific color to highlight it.
• Shape Divider – a custom block to help you create creative dividers. E.g. A full-width divider that looks like a shape pattern. Very popular in modern design.

And a lot more! One interesting note about CoBlocks is that it is also possible to use it to design full-scale pages and not just blog posts. Since GoDaddy acquired the plugin, the developers have been pushing out more features to integrate the plugin with what WordPress calls Full Site Editing.

Download: wordpress.org/plugins/coblocks/

#2: Qubely

The Qubely plugin features more than 30 unique blocks – each with a custom design and a variety of customization options. Getting started is as simple as grabbing the plugin and going to your post editor. From there, you can start adding blocks like creative buttons, timeline events, a Table of Contents widget, social media icons, and various card-based elements.

In terms of improving blog posts, Qubely stands out with features to style your headings, but also its integrated grid features. A custom grid can help you rearrange the way that certain content appears inside your blog posts. Think of the “media text” example we saw earlier, but with a lot more flexibility.

Download: wordpress.org/plugins/qubely/

#3: Essential Blocks

Is it necessary to have more than one or two blocks plugins? Well, it depends. In my opinion, it is nice to have alternatives. And as is the case with these types of plugins – each one is based on a completely different design structure. And, where Essential Blocks is concerned – it is also a lightweight plugin.

As such, adding it to your site on top of other plugins won’t take up so many resources. In terms of the block variety, the Essential Blocks plugin includes elements like flip boxes, image comparison, informative blocks, notices, and advanced headings.

Download: wordpress.org/plugins/essential-blocks/

#4: GutenBee

And finally, we have the GutenBee – a refined toolkit of WordPress blocks that will leave a lasting impression on your readers. Not to be confused with the Antispam Bee plugin we discussed in our WordPress spam prevention article. I guess both developers just happened to like bees!

One of the things that GutenBee provides is blocks specific to creating presentable blog posts. So, blocks like tabbed content, food menu, accordions, galleries, and reviews will help you emphasize the things you love to write about the most.

Once you add any of the blocks to a blog post – you’ll gain access to a fully-featured customization panel. From there, you can adjust colors, fonts, positioning, and many other presentation options.

Download: wordpress.org/plugins/gutenbee/

Closing words

It’s safe to say there is no “one for all” recipe when it comes to creativity. In the context of blocks, you have to consider a number of things. First of which is the type of WordPress theme you’re using.

The initial web design of your site is going to play a significant role in which blocks integrate the best in your articles and blog posts. And second, you need to consider what it is that you’re writing about on a daily basis. If it is news posts – then having a way to highlight text is going to be useful.

And if it is articles with a lot of discussion points, in that case, you’re going to need a Table of Contents at the very least. My recommendation is to also explore what other bloggers are doing with their sites. You don’t have to copy everything “word by word” – but yielding some inspiration can go a long way.

The post How to Use WordPress Blocks for Creative Blog Posts appeared first on FameThemes.

Fortunately, it only takes a few steps to configure your WordPress site so that it becomes resilient against comments of unnatural nature. And this article will discuss in detail how to prevent spam comments, which plugins to use, and whether you should consider alternative comment systems.

Let’s answer the following question first, though.

Why do blogs get spam comments?

We live in 2022, and yet blog spam is as present as it ever has been. Sometimes I think to myself that someone simply forgot to turn off their automated tools many years ago. Because, in reality, the benefits of bombarding sites with poorly written comments are practically non-existent.

Still, here are the two main reasons blogs get spammed:

• Spammers want to increase the number of websites pointing (backlinks) to their site, hoping that it will increase their SEO rankings.
• Shady marketers use spamming techniques to try and attract customers to their products.

The first reason, despite its popularity, is quite laughable. Google has long devalued links that are tagged with tags such as “ugc” and “nofollow”. And, as we know, WordPress by default marks all links as nofollow when they are shared in a comment.

The example screenshot above shows a small variety of comments you might get from spammers. The pattern is immediately visible. The comments are mostly pointing back to malicious software websites, casino platforms, or otherwise services that are not to be trusted.

Above all, letting such comments slip through leaves a bad impression on your site visitors.

This brings me to my next point.

Is it worth having a comment section?

If you have been actively involved with websites over the last 10 years, you’ll know that blog comments are slowly fading away. Platforms like Twitter and Reddit have become the go-to platforms for having conversations, and fewer people are leaving comments on published blog content.

It used to be that blogs were written specifically for readers. And those blogs would naturally attract comments and engaging discussions. And while such blogs are still out there, it is worth asking yourself if you need a comment section at all.

You could very well move your entire discussion environment to a site like Twitter. And, in turn, encourage your site visitors to join a discussion there. Which would also help you grow your social media following.

It’s just a thought, of course, but one worth considering.

How to prevent spam in WordPress comments

The following section is dedicated entirely to various methods you can apply to start dealing with spam effectively. We’re going to focus on 3 different techniques: using in-built tools from WordPress, activating a plugin, and lastly – exploring the option of using 3rd-party comment systems.

Setting up the correct Discussion Settings

The very first thing you can do is go to your WordPress dashboard. From there, navigate to Settings and select Discussion Settings. This will open up a panel where you can customize a variety of options for how you wish comments to be managed on your site.

The setting of interest here is under the “Before a comment appears” option. Here you want to tick the checkbox that says, “Comment author must have a previously approved comment”. It will do exactly what it says. Once you save the settings, any new comments on your site will be held for moderation.

You can go a step further and also tick the box that says that comments must be manually approved. In fact, the latter option is quite popular among reputable publisher platforms. It is a good alternative to having a plugin that automatically detects spam, however – you will need to check each comment manually, including all the spammy ones. It can turn into quite a lot of work!

So, it is highly recommended to use a plugin. And for this purpose, we have two solid choices.

Using plugins to prevent spam

The advantage of using a plugin is that you can automate the entire spam detection process. But, what are the best plugins for the job? Over the years, things have changed slightly in the WordPress plugin ecosystem. A lot of the plugins that once were “free” are now crippled with freemium and pro plans that have a limited number of features unless you pay up.

So, our goal is to highlight the plugins that can help protect you against spam for free.

Here are the picks.

#1: Akismet

The one and only Akismet Spam Protection plugin. Brought to you by the same lovely people who built WordPress in the first place. Now, Akismet is a fantastic solution. There is no question. However, in recent years they have shifted their model a little bit. It is free to use the plugin only on non-commercial sites!

So, if you show advertisements or promote affiliate links on your site – you (technically) have to become a paid customer. However, it’s worth noting that Akismet does not enforce this overly strictly. As long as your site doesn’t get millions of spam requests every day – you should be in the clear.

Once you download and activate the plugin, you’ll need to obtain a unique API key from Akismet. This process is automated inside your WordPress dashboard. Follow along the steps to create an Akismet account, get your API key, and then activate it inside the plugin. That’s it. Your comments will now be automatically moderated, and of course, protected against spam!

Download: wordpress.org/plugins/akismet/

#2: Antispam Bee

Our second recommendation is the Antispam Bee plugin. Because the plugin is completely open-source, it means you will never need to worry about any licenses. Use it on both commercial and non-commercial sites as you please.

Let’s look at some of the features that Antispam Bee provides in the fight against spam:

• You can disable comments in any language other than the one you prefer to use.
• You can create a pre-approved database of trusted commenters.
• Add custom indicators that can automatically judge whether a comment is spam.

And other custom features. Overall, the goal of Antispam Bee is to help you customize a list of settings and regulations that will determine whether a comment is spam or not.

Download: wordpress.org/plugins/antispam-bee/

Comment systems with in-built spam protection

It’s unlikely that the concept of “spamming” websites is going to go away any time soon. For people who do it, even a 0.01% success rate can be considered “worth the effort”. But, as a website owner – you’re the one having to deal with all that noise directly. So, an alternative is to use a comment system that does a lot of the heavy lifting on your behalf. Here are some of our recommendations.

Jetpack

Jetpack is yet another plugin built by the original WordPress team. And, the plugin comes with its own custom comment system which is based on the type that is used on WordPress.com websites.

The nice thing about Jetpack is that it provides a lot more than just an alternative commenting solution. The plugin covers areas like website security, backup management, migration, and other useful features.

And since Akismet is also part of Jetpack – you can rest assured that spam will be dealt with the right way.

Disqus

Disqus is one of the more refined commenting systems. It is completely separate from WordPress and requires you to create an account on their platform. It is nonetheless an incredibly popular system that is used by both publishers, bloggers, and everyday writers.

The WordPress plugin lets you embed Disqus comments directly as a replacement for the native WordPress commenting system. The advantage of Disqus is that it supports a variety of login methods, including a Disqus account but also social media profiles.

In fact, adding Disqus to your site can have some great benefits in regard to discussions. Because people already have an account, they might feel more inclined to comment on your site since it won’t require them to write out their personal details.

And, as is outlined in their documentation – Disqus implements a custom-made spam protection software. All in all, it’s not a commenting system known for being invaded by spammers.

Conclusion

All in all, this article covered all there is to know about fighting back against spammers. The in-built tools from WordPress are decent, but certainly not exhaustive. And, we also looked at some other options that you can consider if you feel like the default comments system is too plain, or simply too easy to attack.

In fact, if you use something like the Wordfence security plugin – you’ll get frequent alerts when your blog starts attracting unsavory commenters. In other words, spammers. At the very least, you can block out the most commonly known IP addresses and then let the plugins mentioned in this article do the rest.

The post How to Stop Spam Comments in WordPress appeared first on FameThemes.

And, in this article, we are going to cover multiple use cases on how to add or remove code from a WordPress site.

One of the reasons people love WordPress so much is because it requires little to no technical expertise. In fact, with the addition of blocks and full-site editing, website builders, and custom themes – you can go about using WordPress without ever worrying about needing to know how to program.

However, there are those few pesky use cases where you might need to know it. Take for example a custom button design. It’s very rare for WordPress themes to offer the ability to change details of a button element unless you go ahead and do it yourself. And, in this case, the solution would be to use the in-built Customizer feature and add Additional CSS.

You can access the Additional CSS code editor by first going to your WordPress homepage. You need to be logged in. Then, from the admin toolbar select Customise, and on the bottom-left of the sidebar, select Additional CSS. This will open a new panel where you can type in custom CSS snippets that will change the appearance of your site.

If you're looking for a theme that lets you customize your WordPress site without writing any code - check out our theme collection. All of FameThemes designs include robust and comprehensive tools to help you style and design site elements through in-built site editing features.

But, ultimately, where CSS is concerned – it is only useful to modify the visual appearance of your site. So, the question is – what other options are there to edit code? One of the more efficient ways is to use the official Theme File Editor. This option is available from the admin dashboard by going to the Appearance -> Theme File Editor tab.

Once you go to this page, you will see a screen just like the one shown above. So, this is also where you can do more in-depth optimization of your site by either adding or removing code snippets. And, to be fair – a lot of the tutorials online provide plenty of copy & paste solutions, so even if you’re not familiar with PHP or HTML – editing and adding pre-written code should be easy enough.

Let’s look at a specific example.

How to change the footer copyright text

Every single WordPress theme has an in-built copyright text, which says either “Powered by WordPress” or “Powered by {the theme you’re using}”.

For some people, it’s not a problem to leave that text there while others want to remove it to add a custom message at the footer. So, how exactly can you edit the code to change it yourself?

If you go back to the Theme File Editor, on this page you will see a list of files on the right-hand side. These are all the files that are included in your WordPress theme. And the specific file we want to edit is footer.php – the file that contains the footer copyright information.

In our case, when we open the file we are looking for a line that looks something like this:

<div class="site-info">
<p>
<?php printf( esc_html__( 'Copyright &copy; %1$s %2$s. All Rights Reserved.', 'boston' ), date('Y'), get_bloginfo( 'name' ) ); ?>
</p>
</div><!-- .site-info -->

This code is what shows the copyright text while also displaying the name of your blog. You have two options here:

1. You can remove it completely.
2. You can change it to display something else.

For the sake of the demo, we are going to change the snippet to a basic HTML footer that links back to our website.

<div class="site-info">
<p>
Copyright &copy; <a href="https://famethemes.com/">FameThemes</a>
</p>
</div><!-- .site-info -->

You can then copy and paste this back inside the footer.php file and click Update File. That’s it. Now your WordPress footer text will be what you specified for it to be. Worth noting is that this is a rather primitive example because most modern WordPress themes let you edit the footer text directly from the Customizer panel. (The same one where you can also customize the CSS as we saw earlier.)

Last but not least, we don’t recommend leaving your Update File function enabled at all times. It is a well-known WordPress security risk, and you can read our article on the topic to learn how to mitigate it.

Add HTML code with Gutenberg Blocks

The Gutenberg Editor uses a Blocks-based interface for writing and editing blog posts. And, one of the Gutenberg blocks is specific to adding HTML code to your pages. This HTML can be anything from a custom layout you saw on another website or a snippet that adds a creative style element you copy and pasted from a tutorial.

From your WordPress post editor dashboard, you can click on the + sign to open the available Blocks. Then select Custom HTML – and if the option isn’t there, you can search for “HTML” to find it.

This will add a new block that lets you type raw HTML inside of it. If it is a “creative” element, remember that you will need to specify the custom CSS for it, as well. And this can be done with the method we showed earlier.

How to add code snippets with a plugin

Understandably, for beginners, it might seem daunting to try and understand how code editing works in WordPress. So, if you want to avoid the risk of breaking something, an alternative solution is to use a plugin. And for adding code snippets to your WordPress blog, there is none better than the Code Snippets plugin.

The basic premise of the plugin is that it lets you add PHP code snippets without needing to edit the functions.php file manually. So, if you have been reading a tutorial about customizing WordPress but are not sure how to add the code yourself, this plugin will help to mitigate the issue.

Conclusion

Just from a few examples, you now know how to edit CSS, HTML, and PHP code in your WordPress site. What you wish to add or remove is dependent on your particular needs. As we mentioned earlier, popular website builders like Elementor and Visual Composer provide extensive tools to help you customize your site without needing to write any code.

But, there are definitely quite a few specific cases where knowing how to do it is going to come in handy. Even for simple things like applying verification snippets for various services, or adding the Google Analytics code to your website.

The post How to Edit Code in WordPress appeared first on FameThemes.