Friday, April 24, 2020

Whats New in Hestia 2.0 We Remastered Our Material Design WordPress Theme

A year and a half ago, we  welcomed Hestia  to the ThemeIsle family after months of hard work. Since then, it has become our flagship project, and we never left it aside for a single minute. This translates into we kept updating and improving Hestia on a regular basis. And all that hard work culminates in Hestia 2.0, a complete remaster of our material design WordPress theme.If youre already a Hestia user, this is awesome news for you. And if you dont know what Hestia is, well, youre about to discover a great WordPress theme thats kind of good at everything. You can use it for any type of site (and thats even easier now thanks to Hestia 2.0).As part of this release,  which we internally, refer to as Hestia 2.0, we improved  both the free and the premium version. And dont worry we didnt remove any of the existing features just added a bunch of awesome new stuff that enhances all the features youve already been using. A lot of things actually, but Ill only cover the really co ol features. Youll find the following improvements in  both the free and premium versions:Compatibility with Elementor and Gutenberg. You can customize Hestia via your front-end by using blocks and drag-and-drop elements (we assure you that nothing will break). Team Hestia up with the free Orbit Fox plugin to have access to even more free templates that can be customized with the best page builders.  Three new pre-built demos. We built the default Hestia design as a multipurpose theme. But now, its even multipurposer with three new niche-specific demo sites. They are:Online shopPet centerEnergy companyNew homepage sections. Now, you can get even more creative with your homepage with extra ribbons with a call-to-action, as well as a Clients bar to let everyone know which companies youve worked with.Flexible Big Title layout. You can change the position of the Big Title, while also being able to display widgets (with a call-to-action) next to it. Moreover, you can make the section friendlier with the new parallax effect.You can now change the font size for both the homepage and internal sections. This adjustment was not available before.While we previously recommended pairing Hestia together with WPForms for the contact form section, now were leaving this totally up to you. Just paste in the shortcode for your favorite contact form plugin and it will automatically work.Youll get  new style options for the blog page, too. And youll also be able to add featured posts by categories.Fresh blog layouts (two in the lite version and three in the pro). If youre just getting tired of using the same design, theres space for diversity now.New styling options for buttons. You get more control over the padding, border radius, and shadow.Whats new in Hestia Pro 2.0?Hestia Pro users get all the stuff from above,  plus these bonus goodies:Refined scrolling and animations. Hestia had elegant animations before, but now we revamped it which makes it more interactive and a ppealing. It just gives you a good vibe, thats all Im saying.If you feel like improving your online shop from a marketing standpoint, youll be happy to know that you can add ANY WooCommerce shortcode to your pages/sections  now.Remember when I said that the Big Title section is more flexible now? In the pro version, you can also  change the fixed image in the header with a video. Furthermore, you can use different headers across your website  (that is, you dont have to use the same header design on all the pages, you can change them up as needed).You can also customize the Features section by replacing the icons with images if you feel that they represent you and your company better.Hestia Pro is translation-ready  and should work with any WordPress translation plugin, including WPML, Weglot, and Polylang.You can also  reuse shortcodes from the homepage. For example, you can repeat a section from your homepage on your about page just by adding its shortcode.Even more pre-b uilt demos! You get four additional designs: lawyers, travel, coffee shops, and gym  salons. Which brings us to seven demos in total (together with the three free ones).LawyersTravelCoffee shop/cafeteriaGymWhen it comes to your blog, you can choose between many grid layouts (from 1 to 4-column layouts) and use a  masonry effect on the pages. You can add infinite scroll to your blog posts, too.The layout extendability applies to the shop section as well. Now you have two different ways (and two hover styles) to display your product pages, the option to hide the categories, and the possibility to select the style of the pagination (numbers or infinite scroll). The checkout page was also improved with new settings.Where to get Hestia 2.0?If you want to play with the new Hestia, you can try it for free by downloading the Lite version: Download Hestia Free Version If you want access to all the new and existing Pro features, upgrade to the premium version. We have three pricing plans for you in this case: Essential $89, Business $129, and VIP $199. You can opt for either yearly or lifetime packages. Get Hestia Pro Even though we believe (thereby recommend) that buying the whole package of goodies would be a more advantageous choice for you (if you think of both the price and the value that youll be going to receive), we do have a single theme option in case youre not interested in buying all the products. With the following link, you can buy Hestia Pro alone, without additional tools.A new theme in the worksReleasing Hestia 2.0 doesnt mean were going on vacation! Were actually hard at work on a brand new theme thats going to be fully compatible with Gutenberg (we are all preparing for the big event, its kind of mandatory if you want to survive the new wave of trends).But we wont be offering more spoilers on this segment yet, we just wanted to let you know what will be the next priority in the ThemeIsle office over the next month. Call it a teaser if you will. When will the new theme be released?, you may ask. We dont have an official date, but expect it sometime towards the end of November. Which is not that far, by the way. 🙂Wrapping upSo these are the fresh stories from our  office. Before starting off with the next project, we would love to hear your feedback on the Hestia remastering. Do you find the new features useful? If youre planning to launch a website with Hestia, we would love to see the final result, so feel free to share it here in the comments.Also, if you have any questions or need more info on a specific aspect, let us know and well be happy to clarify the things for you. Check out the new features in Hestia 2.0. #WordPress #theme