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Choose the Perfect WordPress Theme – Try ASTRA!

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    Each WordPress theme serves a certain purpose. Some themes can serve multiple purposes, while others are designed perfectly for one field. For instance, if you’re starting a blog that features articles filled with your opinions, the perfect theme for you is one that will showcase your articles well.

    And if you’re a photographer who’s starting a website to display the photos you’ve taken, the best theme for you would be one that gives you many attractive options on how to exhibit your photos. This is why, according to your needs, the perfect WordPress theme for you would be one that meets all your expectations and showcases your work well.

    A lot of WordPress themes come with modified options. These options, if not programmed correctly, can cause you to face some problems. Such as changing the theme or using some plugins. And in this case, you need to pay a developer in order to modify your WordPress theme.

    On the other hand, some WordPress themes, even if they look professional and polished, can trigger your website to slow down. Nobody likes slow websites, especially not Google! As it identifies the fastest websites and ranks them higher in the SERPs.

    An attractive appearance is the interface of your site, and it plays an important role in the process of attracting users to your website. But you need to be careful not to choose appearance over your website’s speed.

    In this article, we’ll discuss 4 reasons that will make you choose Astra Theme for your website.

    Introducing Astra

    Astra is one of the most popular free WordPress themes. In fact, if you go to the WordPress theme guide you’ll find Astra with the highest rank for themes affiliated with a third party. Astra is a multipurpose WordPress feature. Meaning: you can use it for almost all kinds of WordPress websites. You can use it for a technical blog, an online shop, or guitar-learning lessons, etc.

    There Are Four Reasons Why Astra Is Successful

    In this section, we’re going to go more in-depth to explain the four features that make Astra the most popular. And after, we’ll demonstrate how Astra works.

    The Performance

    Astra is one of the fastest WordPress themes available. Owning a fast-loading WordPress website is necessary in order for your website to rank higher in search engines.

    When it comes to improving the performance of your website, Astra is one of the fastest WordPress themes that you can find. Astra’s size is less than 50 kilobytes. It also doesn’t use jQuery. Keeping in mind that most WordPress themes are around 250-350 kilobytes. 

    A Website to Start Right Away

    Most people don’t have the time or the knowledge to design their own website from scratch. In order to help you launch a website with the best WordPress theme, Astra comes with hundreds of demo sites that are ready for use. Which helps you start quickly. This is why Astra is considered to be very flexible.

    The best thing about those sites is that they’re designed with either page builders or with the original WordPress template editor. Meaning that you can easily customize all your explanatory content with a drag-and-drop visual editor. With no need for coding! Most of Astra’s websites use the page builder Elementor. 

    In conclusion: Astra provides you with more than 280 demo websites that are ready for use. (Although some of these sites might be repeated with other tools).

    You can find a demo website for any purpose such as:

    • Travel
    • Sports
    • Digital Agency
    • WooCommerce Store
    • And much more!

    Personalization options

    Astra allows you to personalize all that’s related to your website, with the help of the WordPress customization tool. This can be done easily and without the need for any coding.

    Astra is a multipurpose WordPress theme. Which means you can use it for any purpose. From a blog to an online store and much more. You can customize it with many different fields. It can go well with a fashion and lifestyle blog, as well as a technology blog.

    So, How can Astra Be Multipurpose?

    This can happen thanks to the pre-made websites we’ve talked about earlier. But the other thing that makes Astra flexible is its detailed options with the original WordPress theme customizer.

    In that theme customizer, you’ll find many options to customize your website as you wish:

    • Colors
    • Printing
    • Header
    • Blog posts (and blog menu)
    • Footer
    • Sidebar
    • Table of content

    Since all these settings are present in WordPress customizer, you’ll learn how each option affects your website by using a certain preview.

    Page Builder Integration

    Astra is designed to work perfectly with WordPress page builders. Which allows you to design your own content by using drag and drop. When you add a new post or page, Astra gives you detailed options that allow you full control of your page.

    Firstly, you can choose between different layouts. For instance, you can disable the sidebar and use the entire page for display. That way, you can have control over everything by using your favourite page builder.

    Secondly, you can disable some parts of your posts such as the title or the name of your website. If you’d like to use an extra page builder, like Elementor, then the page level controls in Astra can help you benefit as much as possible from your preferred page builder.

    Astra Theme Pricing

    Astra Theme is available for free on WordPress.org. However, if you need some more features, you can buy Astra Pro. Which is an extra element that provides the original, free features with some modifications, various designs and additional layouts.

    The priced version is 59 dollars, which allows you to use it on an unlimited number of websites. Later, we’ll show you what features you get out of the paid version. Which will help you choose between Astra Free and Astra Pro.

    How Does Astra Work?

    Now that you’re more familiar with some of Astra’s features, let’s talk about how to use Astra. In this section, we’ll explain how Astra works with WordPress.

    Use Pre-made Websites

    After installing Astra, one of the first things you can do is importing one of the hundreds of pre-made websites. The demo site import interface is considered easy to use and gives you some suitable options to choose what you’d like to use.

    For example you can:

    • Choose certain pages to import. You can choose the home page and blog only without the ‘contact us’ page.
    • Import the customizer settings only. This allows you to make the header, footer and Format options to look like the demo site.

    And still, it won’t import the experimental content itself. In order to reach the demo sites themselves, you need to install a separate plugin for starter templates through WordPress.org.  After installing, go to Appearance and from there, choose Starter Templates.

    At first, you’ll be asked to choose your favourite content editor. If you decide on importing your demo site’s content, it’ll be made using the editor you choose.

    The pre-made websites menu isn’t the same for every tool. Elementor includes the biggest number of pre-made websites. For example, if you want to use the original WordPress theme editor, you won’t have as many options.

    After selecting your content editing tool, a menu will show up which includes all the pre-made websites within that tool. You can use filtering and search box at the top to reduce your options in order to find the best website. Once you find the option that you like, you can click above it to see a bigger preview, as well as the importing options. 

    You can even import the entire demo website by clicking on ‘Full Site Import’. Choose a specific design from the page theme menu. That way, you’ll import just this element’s theme. If you choose to import the entire website, you’ll get more options to import what you need.

    Use a WordPress Customizer

    Once you’ve imported your website (Or decided to design your website from scratch), you can manage all the other settings of Astra from the WordPress Customizer. 

    It allows you to change the design of your website easily, and completely code-free. Amidst such changes, you’ll see them take place in real-time in the preview in front of you.

    For instance, if you open your URL settings. You can choose between various layout options, instead of trying to create everything from scratch. You can find a pre-designed website where you like the original design. Afterwards, you can just import the WordPress Customizer settings for this demo site. Once you have these customizing options as a base for your work, you can go in and change the small details according to your needs.

    Discovering the Features of Astra Pro

    If you decide to upgrade to Astro Pro, you’ll be able to enjoy a number of new features. You can also disable and enable any of the features you’d like. This standard method helps keep Astra Theme lightweight by allowing it to disable the features that you don’t use. 

    To control the features that you can automate: you can go to Appearance Astra Options

    For example: if you automate Blog Pro, you’ll get new formats and options to control the display of your blog. You can obtain 3 different layouts as well as other options to enable certain metadata and control the size of photos.

    Astra Pro Also Offers More Personalizing Options like:

    • Colors
    • Printing
    • Spacing
    • Headers
    • Navigating Menus
    • Footers

    Which Do You Need: Astra Free or Astra Pro?

    As we’ve previously mentioned, Astra Theme is available for free on WordPress.org. However, you have an option to buy Astra Pro. Which is an additional plugin that increases the features of Astra.

    So, what do you need to use when it comes to free vs. pro? Of course, you can use the free version to build a great looking website. As it can always provide you with plenty of websites for beginners. If you find, for example, a free website for starting a new blog that you like, then there’s no need to upgrade to Astra Pro. 

    So, What Could Lead You to Upgrade to Astra Pro?

    First of all, if you’d like to build your own website from scratch, or perhaps if you want to greatly modify an already-existing website. Astra Pro will be much more flexible to work with when it comes to:

    • Colors
    • Printing
    • Other style options
    • Formats (Blog posts, headers, footers, etc.)

    For example, the Pro version comes with a lot of new blog layouts. Which gives you more control over the display of the blog posts and the menu of your blog.

    Generally speaking, if you’d like to customize your website with something more than what the free version offers, Astra Pro will be more suitable for you.

    Another reason to upgrade to the Pro version is merging. If you’re building a website that is based on WooCommerce or LearnDash, as examples, then you surely need to upgrade.  Although the free version provides you with limited integrations for all the additional plugins. The Pro version with all its additional features is definitely worth the price!

    Lastly, if you’re a developer, Astra Pro provides you with plenty of other extra features. For instance, Code injection for a lot of Astra tools. You can demonstrate a detailed comparison of all features between both the Free and Pro on this page.

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