The Best Theme For WordPress?

Hotfix

Hotfix

Active member
Hello. I'm thinking about creating a WordPress site for the forum. I would start publishing relevant and less relevant articles there.

The problem is that I don't know what theme to choose for the project. Every freemium theme seems to have some limitations that make little sense to me.

I've actually experimented with HelloElementor and Elementor Pro many years ago and I did like how versatile and customizable it was. But I've heard that it's slow, and that the free Gutenberg block builder has has caught up with Elementor.

So, what do you guys think? 🤔
 
Hotfix said:
've actually experimented with HelloElementor and Elementor Pro many years ago and I did like how versatile and customizable it was. But I've heard that it's slow
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Not only is it slow but it's apparently (Elementor Pro) had several Zero Day Exploits found over the past year in it.
 
Tracy Perry said:
Not only is it slow but it's apparently (Elementor Pro) had several Zero Day Exploits found over the past year in it.
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Not sure that is entirely the case. Some 3rd-party addons for Elementor have, maybe that is the confusion.

Elementor has come a long way in the past 12 months in addressing speed concerns. Next version (currently in dev branch), moves to containers / flexbox model. You can also greatly speed things up using the tools in the experiments section.

IMO, Gutenberg is not ready for prime time yet if you are looking for FSE (which isn't to really be a thing until next version).
 
Elegant Themes Divi is cracking, $89 for a full year of updates and it's well maintained. I've used it in the past and found it be very easy to use and versatile. It also works with just about any other theme out there. You also get access to ALL of ET's themes and plugins for your $89 there's currently 25% off in the CM sale but time is running out.

The Most Popular WordPress Themes In The World

WordPress Themes with Visual Drag & Drop Technology that empower a community of 974,872 customers. Home of Divi, the ultimate Visual Page Builder and Theme.
www.elegantthemes.com www.elegantthemes.com
 
RDR said:
Not sure that is entirely the case. Some 3rd-party addons for Elementor have, maybe that is the confusion.

Elementor has come a long way in the past 12 months in addressing speed concerns. Next version (currently in dev branch), moves to containers / flexbox model. You can also greatly speed things up using the tools in the experiments section.
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May 7, 2020
The Elementor Pro plugin for WordPress is prone to a critical zero-day vulnerability affecting version 2.9.3 and below.
The vulnerability, currently exploited by hackers, allows any logged-in user to upload and execute PHP scripts on the blog. Note that this affects the Elementor Pro version, not the free one from the wordpress.org repo.
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Then you have an add-on for Elemenator - which is apparently very popular:
Today, March 8, 2021, the Wordfence Threat Intelligence team became aware of a critical 0-day in The Plus Addons for Elementor, a premium plugin that we estimate has over 30,000 installations.
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Elemenator Pro got there's fixed but I think The Plus Addons was only partially fixed last I read... but I honestly don't keep up with WordPress much any more. No matter what you use, keeping up with any security info related to WordPress is vital.
 
I have been through loads of themes, easy to customise (hooks etc) versatile and without loads of clutter.

After years of experimenting I have settled on GeneratePress.

I won’t use Gutenberg, I use the classic plugin to avoid it.
 
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The free themes I have tried have all been a bit of a let down on both looks and features.
I have tried several paid themes and DIVI is now my goto theme of choice, it is so feature rich and flexible, along with having good support.
 
gib said:
let down on both looks and features
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This all depends on whether you want features. Personally all I have been after is speed of loading, Woocommerce compatible, ease of customising and ease of choosing page templates (sidebar or not mainly)
 
Oxygen is better then Elementor in terms of performance and security but has a much higher learning curve and takes twice as long to make look good.

But it's performance is off the walls better. Easy to get high 90s on Pagespeed even without spending time working on cache and all that CSS/JS ******** they make you do these days.
 
Mr Lucky said:
I won’t use Gutenberg, I use the classic plugin to avoid it.
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Yeah, it's pretty much rubbish.

I did use Gutenbloat to lay out static pages for a quick site I did and it worked ok for that. But for someone who regularly posts, and writes within WP, they want an editor that is similar to a word processor. Not something that has a mind of its own and reformats something at the press of the return key if you're positioned in the wrong place. And I've complained about it on a few of WP's sites. Gutenbloat is something written by developers for developers, not for actual end users who write content. They've pretty much lost their way.

As for themes, yeah, I've tried many myself. But my last few, I reformatted their stock themes a bit with CSS and used those. For a couple of my sites now, which have forums, I am going to create a landing page in XF as the home page, move WP posts over to articles, and kiss WP goodbye.
 
I can understand that. At its core, WP does work fairly well as a CMS, and I'll still use it for building out sites that don't need a forum attached. But my demands for a WordPress to XenForo bridge of some sort are not met by any existing product (most cannot work across domains--one of my projects has three or four satellite domains with individual WP sites that need to tie into the forum). The problem I have is that existing WP sites are pretty much ignored by staff, so I can't even get them to contribute there as opposed to the forum.

I'm tempted to try Resource Manager as a CMS system of sorts (reconfiguring it as needed, and changing phrases to make it work for what we need), but don't really want to buy a license I may not end up using if I can't configure it the way I'd like.
 
Wildcat Media said:
But my demands for a WordPress to XenForo bridge of some sort are not met by any existing product (most cannot work across domains--one of my projects has three or four satellite domains with individual WP sites that need to tie into the forum).
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I've seen you mention this a few times, but what are your demands? So far XFtoWP covers everything you've said here and I'm curious if what you say is on our roadmap.

I've gotten used to Gutenbloat (stealing that) and think it does alright for just blog posts. Trying to use it as a page builder is nuts-o to me, though I also dislike page builders for similar reasons.

-----

I'll throw my theme (arguably more than a theme), Marketers Delight, into the mix here.

It's built in a way people who use XF may appreciate and focuses on features that are actually important to writer's like easy email sign-up forms and cool content creation tools. The "more" part is that it's a framework that actually makes WordPress not suck in ways many free themes can't address, and most premium theme shops don't care to address because it doesn't fit their target market of people who only care about looking pretty rather than be effective.

Apart from nested blog comments and maybe a contact form plugin, I wouldn't use WP for most communication or in-depth discussion. That's where XF comes in and I certainly see enough potential to bet a big chunk of my own products on!
 
Mr Lucky said:
I have been through loads of themes, easy to customise (hooks etc) versatile and without loads of clutter.

After years of experimenting I have settled on GeneratePress.

I won’t use Gutenberg, I use the classic plugin to avoid it.
Click to expand...
Do you use the paid version of GeneratePress?
 
kolakube said:
I've seen you mention this a few times, but what are your demands? So far XFtoWP covers everything you've said here and I'm curious if what you say is on our roadmap.

I've gotten used to Gutenbloat (stealing that) and think it does alright for just blog posts. Trying to use it as a page builder is nuts-o to me, though I also dislike page builders for similar reasons.

-----

I'll throw my theme (arguably more than a theme), Marketers Delight, into the mix here.

It's built in a way people who use XF may appreciate and focuses on features that are actually important to writer's like easy email sign-up forms and cool content creation tools. The "more" part is that it's a framework that actually makes WordPress not suck in ways many free themes can't address, and most premium theme shops don't care to address because it doesn't fit their target market of people who only care about looking pretty rather than be effective.

Apart from nested blog comments and maybe a contact form plugin, I wouldn't use WP for most communication or in-depth discussion. That's where XF comes in and I certainly see enough potential to bet a big chunk of my own products on!
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Wow. I didn't realize that you're Alex Mangini from this forum 🤭

I was watching the video below. The profile picture looked too familiar.

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