Save yourself the trouble – go with Astra

You know how so many reviews on the web are phoney, and WordPress is no exception, right? Some famous site authors write a review, it gets copied with a few word changes by other ‘big site’ authors, a top-list has items jiggled around a little, and the effect cascades. Often they didn’t take the time to perform a meaningful review, simply whizzed through it to get it published and the kickbacks from linking to the product. It’s how they make a living, and good luck to them, I get it. So, I somewhat distrusted reviews of Astra simply because, from my own experience, so many supposedly great themes and plugins etc. turn out to be … rather rubbish. But now, I’m using Astra (free), and I rate it highly.

Astra simply works. Neve looks great but man, the hamburger menu on certain mobiles doesn’t work and drove me nuts trying to fix it. Zakra is a nice alternative to Neve (hamburgers work) but still too many tweaks were needed for my particular site. I’m using the LearnDash plugin – superb but non-responsive quizzes in tables needs your own tweaks for mobiles – and Astra works so well with it, as LearnDash themselves make clear.

The nice thing with Astra? Style sheet changes won’t drive you insane. You can override Astra’s styles in your own CSS relatively easily. They didn’t fill their style with ‘!important’ flags that are pure pain, as some themes have. I still have some styling issues to resolve but after only a couple of hours using Astra, I am absolutely sure I’ll resolve them with a little effort. You read that right – I’m writing my first review of a theme, ever, after only two hours using it – because I’ve spent two whole days on other themes prior to this, trying to tweak basic things. Two hours versus two days, that’s the take-home. And speed tests show it loads as fast as, and for some posts faster, than Neve so I’m happy there.

Save yourself the trouble and go with Astra, it works. Or be cheeky and install Neve to get their funky demo home page, then switch to Astra to actually make a site that works.