Getting the Most Out of Astra Theme

Free Theme and Constantly Evolving

Astra theme started in 2017, and in 2020 it already had more than 1+ million active installs. Very quickly it became one of the Fastest, most Lightweight, and Highly Customizable themes for WordPress.

As you probably know WordPress is an open-source content management system. Being an open-source means that anybody can contribute to it. 

Keeping in mind that all of them have kind of unique living styles, you can imagine that the developers can have more or less different coding styles. That is why we have WordPress Coding Standards. Astra theme strictly follows these standards, using constantly very clean code, so it’s very simple for anybody to work with it. 

One of the reasons that theme is so popular, is that it’s constantly evolving and becoming more advanced while staying completely free. Since its beginnings we have released more than 200 theme updates, more than 270 templates, integrations with WooCommerce, LearnDash, LifterLMS, Easy Digital Downloads, etc.

When Gutenberg builder was added to WordPress 5.0 we made the Astra theme fully compatible from the start. We also added our free Spectra that come already included with the Astra theme. And not to forget, the Astra themes’ compatibility with Elementor, Beaver Builder, and Brizy too. 

All of this was coupled with the constantly expanding list of the theme features as well as a solid number of fully compatible free and paid plugins.

Astra 3.0 Theme Improved the Customizer Speed

With each Astra theme update, we are working on improving the performance of the theme and especially the Customizer. And with Astra 3.0 we made quite a leap forward – our already fast Customizer became 70% faster!

Using React JS combined with a lazy-loading feature which is also incorporated in the customizer, our customizer dropped from great 3.5 seconds to loading in around 1 second.

Since then, most Astra theme updates continuously bring further improvements and optimizations.

Astra Theme 3.0 also Brought a lot of Other Changes

Besides the Customizer speed increase, Astra 3.0 brought even more advancements and functions.

We optimized HTML and CSS significantly reducing the amount of code. The result is that our average page load times were reduced from 0.9 seconds to 0.7 seconds!

The biggest improvement that came with Astra 3.0 was our new Header Footer Builder. This created a completely new experience of visual Header and Footer building with a significant number of available elements and options, different Header and Footer design layers (Above, Primary, and Below), and much more.

With the following major updates, came the completely redesigned customizer UI that was covered by this guide, as well as new controls to duplicate and delete header and footer elements, Google Web Stories, SVG Icons support, Related posts… and there are many more to come.

Education

On top of the Astra theme and our products, we are proud to provide great support for both our free and Pro users. Our Blog and extensive Knowledge base cover a massive amount of detailed documentation, articles, and guides for building websites with Astra.

Though our products are simple to use and developed with user-friendliness on our minds, they are continually evolving. That is why we regularly update and expand our Knowledge base.

Next to the docs that will clarify any bump or issue you might encounter with Astra, we also create detailed guides, walkthroughs, and blog articles to make your work easy and help you get the most out of the Astra theme and our other products.

Support & Community

On top of the Astra theme and our products, we are proud to provide great support for both our free and Pro users. Our Blog and extensive knowledge base cover a massive amount of detailed documentation, articles, and guides for building websites with Astra. 

Further, our Support team is available to help you 24/7, all year round with any issues you can’t solve on your own or couldn’t find in our knowledge base or blogs. Just drop us a message here and our support engineers will help you out in no time. 

Last but not least Astra theme is backed by a huge community ready to help and share knowledge at all times. Join our Facebook groups to become a part of Astra Comunity:

• Astra WordPress Theme Community
• Astra and Elementor Users

Astra Pro

We hope that you enjoyed this Astra Theme Walkthrough. As we work on constantly improving our free theme, we know that some of our users require more powerful features, an enhanced list of customization options, and premium support. For this reason, we created Astra Pro Addon. 

Please check the full list of features available with Astra Pro and our comparison with the Astra free theme.

We invite you to visit our official website and find out more about the world of Astra.

Growth and Essential Toolkit

Having Astra Pro is a great addition to your theme, but you might also need additional options for your content or a boost in your online sales. Also, if you build websites for your clients, you might be dealing with a number of different requests and preferences.

This is where our Toolkits step in. Next to Astra Pro which is included in our bundles, you would be getting additional products to help you expand your business and premium support.

Essential Toolkit is a great choice to boost your online business or start the agency or freelancer work. Mini-Business Toolkit gives you a balanced mix with just the right combination of products you would need like:

• Ultimate Addons for Elementor to expand your preferred Page builder capabilities and help you build amazing website designs.
• Elementor – Premium Starter Templates
• Spectra Pro – Page Builder
• Spectra – Premium Starter Templates, and
• Priority Support

You can find more details about the Essential Toolkit in this article.

Furthermore, our Business Toolkit will increase your website conversions (CartFlows), offers best collaborative platform to get feedback and creative input from clients and internal teams (SureFeedback), offers writing tool that is energized by Artificial Intelligence (SureWriter), and access to our SkillJet Academy. You can find more details about Business Toolkit in this article.