Which WordPress theme or builder do you use/recommend?

LeeW

I have been converting a couple of websites to WordPress lately and wondered what people use or recommend as a theme or site builder.

Looking for something easy to use and feature-rich so that the time is spent on content not having to constantly code as I have been doing in the past. Much of my decision to move to Cloudron is about simplifying the whole end-to-end process.

I have looked at quite a few, some examples:

Divi - Nice enough, but not that flexible in parts though and remove it later it leaves way too much tag soup in the templates.

Elementor - Appears quite feature-rich, and easy enough to use, but I see mixed reviews about performance.

Blocksy - Very fast theme, with lots of options but more limited than the two above.

I seem to be gravitating to Elementor as the most flexible overall. Anyone else use it or have any other suggestions that you currently use?

Thanks

LeeW

Apologies, went and put this in the wrong forum, can someone move please.

marcusquinn

kadencewp.com all the way (I should get an affiliate link for how many times I say this).

Avoid Elementor. Gutenberg is more than capable now.

Lemme know if you have any commercial WP projects that need help, as probably know the optimal way to do almost anything with it after over a decade with it.

marcusquinn

TBH you can use any theme for inspiration, and recreate it cleaner with Kadence. Plus their child theme and cloud templates tools are perfect for continually adding to your repo of designs.

darkben

Hi,

we use Bricks Builder (theme) and Oxygen (plugin) here. I love Bricks Builder and what they do with their community. it is a very good theme builder. Oxygen is very good too but a bit more complex at the beginning. I recommend to try both. They perfectly work with plugins like ACF and GridBuilder and you can construct powerfull things with them.

RazielKanos

I guess it depends on what you want to build, and how shall update your built websites. Personally, I am using a mix of elementor, oxygen and brizy. If you would like to work time efficient, brizy is unbeatable. If you have some special stuff you have to integrate and do some coding, bricks or oxygen is your tool of trade. If you want features and blinking bells and wissles and stuff - take elementor, since it has the biggest ecosystem with additional plugins.

Personally, I don't like to use Gutenberg, since building in it is a pain in the butt, and it takes the longest. Its only feature: “fast loading times”, isn't really a thing, since every website I ever built, no matter the editor, loaded in less than 2 seconds,

RazielKanos

Oh and thumbs op for Blocksy as a theme, it's the only theme I am using, have a lifetime license

jdaviescoates

I've used the hugely popular and very powerful Astra theme for the last few quick WP sites I've knocked up.

It has loads of templates you can use as a starter and video instructions for everything too if need be.

https://wordpress.org/themes/astra/

d19dotca

Bricks Builder is what I use too like @darkben, it’s excellent (although can be buggy at times but so is most software). Their support is good. I’ve been slowly migrating client sites off Elementor to it and enjoying it, mostly it’s just new sites I’ve got using Bricks at the moment. But it’s a great builder with a fairly large community of people too, which makes for good tutorials.

humptydumpty

@marcusquinn Kadencewp is the fastest theme I've seen so far. I read that their Pro plugins smart load only what is used on that page, minimizing on the extra bloat that other builders have. Currently, I'm using Elementor + Astra (both free). I'm not looking for all the fancy bells & whistles that Kadence Pro offers. Can I build a decent site using their free products/tools like I could with my current setup?

Again, the speed/performance is jaw dropping. Loving the responsiveness of the demo site!

marcusquinn

@humptydumpty Yup. If you like speedy, take a look at these, too:

Helps a lot with Admin speed, and logged-in / shop pages.

No need for Elementor nowadays.

Astra, well:

https://startblogging101.com/astra-vs-kadence/

If you value your time, Kadence won't waste it, you can't really go wrong.

humptydumpty

@marcusquinn That article is pure gold. Jake covered all my questions about the differences between Astra and Kadence. As for the plugins, I'm not sure if some of them overlap in functionality. Do you use all of them simultaneously?

BTW, Wordfence has been my go-to security/firewall plugin, but it's resource heavy, and I'm looking to ditch it for something lighter. I don't want to compromise on security though. Any recommendations?

marcusquinn

@humptydumpty Yeah. That's just WordPress, you have to have a really good memory for what settings you implement in what. Mostly the above all do different things though. It's only RealSoul, Disable Dashboard, and Widget Disable that overlap a little. None can do any harm, you just have to remember you're using them, and which for what.

Also recommend Admin Menu Editor (ideally Pro), which I guess most people use, but if not, get on it.

marcusquinn

@humptydumpty Security. I like AIO, but same disclaimer, remember what settings you use that may also be set in other plugins. Wordfence I just find a bit verbose, like it's showing off for basic IP firewalling.

marcusquinn

@marcusquinn Checkout the "Code Profiler" plugin, too. Gives you a better idea what plugins are consuming the most compute time.

humptydumpty

I cloned my website from a backup, and I'm testing those plugins/settings. The code profiler plugin is pointing to the same two culprits that have the largest impact, Woocommerce & Jetpack at +0.3s each. In third place we have, you guessed it, Wordfence at 0.1s. Disable Bloat for WordPress & WooCommerce made a huge difference in backend loading times. It doesn't feel sluggish to manage my products anymore. Thanks, Marcus!

P.S. The more I delve into WP optimization, the more I hate the entire platform/ecosystem. Every plugin has a "pro" version, and they're all +$99 a year. If I want to get the best out of everything, I'm looking at hundreds of dollars a month. All these optimization and security plugins just to fix a bloated system is exhausting. Makes me wonder if hiring a developer to build an ecommerce store using some other platform might be better (& cheaper).

marcusquinn

@humptydumpty Be mindful of their note on "Composer" loading that skews the first plugin to pull that, and the ones following it then don't need to. Try FestingerVault if you need to try pro versions of anything, I've found it to be very safe and reliable for updates. Stick with WordPress, you won't beat it for learning, optionality, and demand for knowing it.

Tons more tips where those came from. Try "Plugin Toggle" for a quicker way to Activate/Deactivate when testing. Try "Disable All WordPress Updates" for only checking for updates when you want. "Hide Admin Notices" for solving that annoyance. "Antispam Bee" for that, free and good. "Manage Notification Emails" for that.

Overall, I have something like 200 plugins running with <1.5s TTFB times in Query Monitor, and disabling Query Monitor also speeds up Admin. Definitely possible to keep WP running fast, you just have to get to know the plugins that respect the standards, and therefore are speedy, and those that don't, and will tend to show up in Code Profiler.

marcusquinn

FWIW I've never used JetPack, don't see the need, when all the others I've found do each thing better.

robi

@marcusquinn said in Which WordPress theme or builder do you use/recommend?:

Overall, I have something like 200 plugins running

Is there a bulk plugin manager that saves the list of plugins you use for easy install on a new site all at once?

marcusquinn

@robi I use MainWP, but WP Favs is also good.

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Which WordPress theme or builder do you use/recommend?