With over 610,000 licenses sold on ThemeForest, the Avada WordPress theme one of the world's best-selling premium themes. But what can the Avada theme do and what are its benefits and drawbacks? You'll find all the answers in this article.
You either love them or you hate them: multipurpose themes for WordPress that already come with many functions and design options. The WordPress theme Avada is one of them and does indeed have a lot to offer.
What is included in Avada?
At the moment, you can download the Avada theme from ThemeForest for 60$ and get an unlimited usage license of the theme for one domain. The license also includes six months of support from the development team. Moreover, Theme Fusion provides really extensive documentation on the theme too.
Avada full package download
In your ThemeForest account, you can download the Avada full package under "downloads" and save it on your computer. After unpacking the 265 MB zip file on your local computer, you will get the Avada theme full package and the corresponding child theme (more on this later).
Additionally, there is a folder with all photoshop files of the standard demo site. There is also a language folder with translated language files. These can be installed later via FTP to translate specific English terms.
In the extras folder you will find documentation on the included premium sliders "Layer Slider" and "Revolution Slider".
Installation of Avada, child theme and plugins
You can install the files Avada.zip and Avada-child.zip in the WordPress dashboard under themes and activate the Avada child theme afterwards.
Child Theme Installation Advantages:
- Own CSS modifications in the Child-Theme CSS file
- All basic settings of the Themes are saved in the Child-Theme (Topic Updates + Patches)
- PHP code additions can be placed in the supplied functions.php file
After activating the Avada Child Themes you still need to install the additionally required Plugins "Fusion Core" and "Fusion Builder" in the area of the supplied Plugins . But you will also get a hint for this.
In the area of Avada's own extensions you can choose between Premium and Free Plugins for activation. Among them the Slider Layer Slider and Revolution Slider, ACF PRO, Convert Plus and many more.
Licensing for updates and support
To get updates and support for the Avada-Theme you have to unlock the Theme via a token key. You can get this token key via your ThemeForest account. How this works exactly is also explained in the documentation in a short video explained in the documentation.
System requirements for the Avada theme
Since the Avada-Theme offers a lot of features and therefore needs a lot of resources, you should make sure to use a fast web hosting environment environment.
Under the tab "System Status", you can view information about your current WordPress and server environment. You should try to optimize areas marked in red:
The minimum server requirements of the Avada-Themes:
- WordPress 4.6 or higher
- PHP 5.6 or higher
- MySQL 5.6 or higher
Recommended PHP limits and configuration
- max_execution_time 180
- memory_limit 128M
- post_max_size 32M
- upload_max_filesize 32M
If you don't know how to adjust the PHP limits, just search for "WordPress max_execution_time" on Google. You can find plenty of how-to guides online.
Don't forget, at RAIDBOXES you can adjust the max_execution_time in your website settings with a single click.
You can find more information about the system requirements of Avada in the documentation under the point Requirements For Avada.
Avada demos
Over 40 demos on various industries and topics are available after installing the Themes . Here, the demosites can be installed either completely or page by page. With the demo import, however, it should be noted that the photos used are subject to copyright and should not be used for your own website or exchanged!
Here you can find an overview of all Avada demos: https://avada.theme-fusion.com/demos/
Avada theme options: basic settings and configuration
The Avada theme options are the heart of the theme. Here you can style and configure your complete website. The typography and colour scheme, the blog styling and much more - in the theme options you can make many detailed settings.
But that also means that you're going to need training time to understand all settings and to use them optimally. You can find an overview of the Avada Theme options here.
Website layouts with fusion builder
For the sites - and contribution organization an own page builder is to you in the Avada -Theme at the disposal. The Fusion Builder offers you countless possibilities to design a website by drag and drop.
To really list all the features here would certainly go beyond the scope of this blog post. But basically, column layouts are built with responsive containers and design elements are used in these containers (headlines, images, text blocks, sliders). On theme-fusion.com you can find a comprehensive overview of the functions that the Avada Fusion Builder brings along.
Mobile first designs
A great feature can be found in the options for column containers. Here you can specify whether a container should be displayed only for mobile views (mobile phone, tablet) or only for desktop screens. This saves an enormous amount of time when it comes to mobile views.
Create, save and reuse templates
Complete page layouts, containers and individual elements can be created in the Fusion Builder Library and can be inserted again at any point. This saves you a lot of time when it comes to recurring page structures or call-to-action elements, for example. With the additional function "Global save" you can save multiple instances of a built element globally. All changes you make to it later will be applied to all instances at the same time.
Performance optimization in the Avada theme
In the theme options, there is also an area for performance optimization of your website. In this area, you can choose between options to combine CSS and JavaScript files, Lazy Load for delayed loading of images or deactivation of emoji scripts.
But in addition to the performance options you should consider installing a professional caching Plugin in WordPress if your host doesn't come with server-side caching. Since I use the Avada-Theme myself, I have very good experiences with WP-Rocket made.
The advantages and disadvantages at a glance
The advantages:
- Unlimited design possibilities for the creation of website layouts
- Own drag and drop page builder
- Many premium plugins included, such as "ACF Pro" and "Revolution Slider"
- Over 40 demo versions for immediate use
- 7 different header variants incl. top navigation and Sticky Header
- Save page layouts and elements in a library
- Create portfolio and FAQ sites
- Integrated cookie notice for data protection notice
- Optional deactivation of unneeded scripts
- Options for performance optimization
- Integrated mega menu for complex page navigation
- Advanced settings of the navigation menus incl. mobile menu
- WooCommerce compatible plus additional options
- Advanced options for internal search
- Many own sidebar widgets
- Install custom font files
- Extensive documentation
- Large community forum
The disadvantages:
- Long training period
- High minimum requirements for webhosting/server
- Additional caching plugin advisable for optimal performance
- Theme change is problematic because shortcodes remain
- Documentation only in English
- Theme updates require updates to the plugins "Fusion Core" and "Fusion Builder"
- Additional updates through fusion patches
- Translation of backend into European languages is partly incomplete
- Additional upload of the European language files is sometimes required
- Somewhat cumbersome licensing via a token key
- No frontend editor (will be added in version 6)
Helpful Sources:
- Buy Avada-Theme via ThemeForest
- Avada Documentation
- Avada-Theme Support
- Avada Community Forum
- Facebook group of Avada Users
- Developer Team Theme Fusion
My Conclusion
It is safe to say that you really do have to factor in some time for training with the Avada theme. As the possibilities offered by this multipurpose theme are so extensive, you will only truly get to know some of them by trying them out first.
As a web designer, I work with this theme for my own website as well as for numerous customer projects. I also needed a fair amount of time to fully exploit all possibilities in the Avada theme. The design possibilities are virtually unlimited.
Avada is very well suited to implement extensive websites, such as for associations, larger companies or online shops. For a simple blog site, the Theme is certainly too oversized, there are better solutions. If you miss a frontend editor a la Elementor , you should wait until version 6.
Article image: José Alejandro Cuffia | Unsplash
Do you have any further questions about using Avada, or would you like to share your experience with it? Then please leave me a comment!
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