When it comes to positioning elements on a page, including text, there are many ways to go about it in CSS — the literal position property with corresponding inset-* properties, translate, margin, anchor() (limited browser support at the moment), and so forth. The offset property is…
Some Things You Might Not Know About Custom Counter Styles
I was reading through Juan’s recent Almanac entry for the @counter-style at-rule and I’ll be darned if he didn’t uncover and unpack some extremely interesting things that we can do to style lists, notably the list marker. You’re probably already …
Some Things You Might Not Know…
Creating a “Starred” Feed
Chris wrote about “Likes” pages a long while back. The idea is rather simple: “Like” an item in your RSS reader and display it in a feed of other liked items. The little example Chris made is still really good.…
Creating a “Starred” Feed originally published on…
Fancy Menu Navigation Using Anchor Positioning
Anchor positioning can be great for little interactive effects — as Temani Afif shows off with this clever idea for a menu hover.
Fancy Menu Navigation Using Anchor Positioning originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter….
10 Best WordPress Plugins to Try Out in 2025
A feature-rich WordPress theme that offers “unlimited flexibility” may still not be able to handle certain demands you place upon it. You may have to accept the fact your need or needs will go unfulfilled, try to resolve the problem yourself through coding (or place it in the hands of a developer), or look for some other solution to your problem. That other solution, a WordPress plugin, could be readily available – assuming you know what to look for and where to look for it.
Plugins offer a wealth of valuable features, providing the flexibility and functionality needed to enhance a theme’s performance and, in turn, elevate a website’s overall quality. Certain plugins can be true game-changers, transforming the website-building process and significantly enhancing the final product’s attributes.
Amelia, Essential Grid, and the other leading WordPress plugins featured in this article have undoubtedly revolutionized what’s achievable in website design and functionality.
1. Brizy Website Builder: Noted for its Ease of Use and Easy Setup
The essential: Brizy users can focus on the task at hand without getting bogged down by technical or procedural hurdles.
This video shows one of Brizy’s most popular usages. Click on it to explore it.
As clients become more familiar with the Brizy builder for WordPress, three standout qualities quickly come to the fore:
- Brizy’s intuitive drag-and-drop editor shines in its user-friendliness, making it especially ideal for non-developers.
- Because Brizy Builder’s UI displays only the options that are currently in play, editing directly on the page becomes incredibly easy and efficient.
- Customizing content for tablets and mobile devices is virtually effortless.
Key Brizy WordPress Features:
- 500+ Pre-Made Blocks: Brizy’s Search Engine Optimization Agency one-page website campaign pre-made block illustrates how a pre-made block can be used to jump start a website building project.
- 4000+ easily searchable Icons are available in both outline and glyph styles.
- Switching to Mobile View makes customizing layouts for smaller screens easy and effective.
- Thanks to the Smart Text Editing feature, users can edit text directly on the page and change fonts, colors, and alignments as necessary.
- Users can effortlessly arrange columns, rows, and content by drag and drop.
Client average score: 4.6 out of 5 on Capterra
Immediate help via: Support manual, 101 videos YouTube videos, Academy
2. Amelia: Game Changing Appointment and Event Booking Plugin
The essential: Amelia automates the entire booking process from top to bottom.
This video shows one of Amelia’s most popular usages. Click on it to explore it.
As powerful as the Amelia WordPress plugin is, it’s UI is remarkably easy to navigate. Users quickly learn how to establish their schedules and manage their appointments with a minimum of effort.
Amelia’s customizable pre-built templates can be put into play to make things even easier. Take Booking Appointments at a Dog Walking Service for example. It doesn’t get much more straightforward than this.
The ability to fully automate appointment or event booking operations has been a true game changer, and Amelia’s standout feature, “Packages,” takes it to the next level. Packages bundles related services into complete, well-organized packages. By doing so Amelia-
- maximizes revenue opportunities for businesses while at the same time simplifying the booking process for clients.
- makes it possible for spas, salons, healthcare providers, fitness centers, and similar services-oriented businesses to tailor packages to meet their client’s specific needs and preferences.
Client average score: 4.9 out of 5 on Capterra
Key customer insight: Pros: “Best plugin I found for planning my (recurring) workshops. And great support if there are any issues.”
Cons: “It needs some getting used to, when you start using this plugin.”
Immediate help via: Support manual, YouTube videos
3. wpDataTables: Powerful Data Management and Visualization WordPress Plugin
The essential: wpDataTables is a powerful and easy to work with WordPress plugin for creating tables and charts from one or more sources.
This video shows one of wpDataTables’ most popular usages. Click on it to explore it.
wpDataTables was designed to ensure that data management and visualization tasks could be accomplished quickly, easily, and effectively. This WordPress plugin’s users have in fact found that they can process large datasets to create informative, responsive, and editable charts and tables quickly and effectively in three simple steps:
- Access and retrieve data from multiple sources – Excel to MySQL
- Customize and configure the table/chart as needed. It could be helpful to do so with the aid of a template like the WordPress Pricing Table
- Use Visual Composer or any standard WordPress editor to publish the table or chart.
wpDataTable has been considered to be a gamechanger for a long time because of the straightforwardness and effectiveness its users experience when working on what might otherwise be very difficult data management tasks. wpDataTables’ Multiple Database Connections capability sets it apart from any competition. This feature enables users to connect to multiple databases and process the data.
Client average score: 4.5 out of 5 on WordPress.org
Key customer insight: “The support team helped resolve the compatibility issues with my theme. Really helpful and willing to go the extra way to ensure that the plugin works well in any environment. 🙂”
Immediate help via: Support manual, YouTube videos
4. Slider Revolution: WordPress Plugin for Professional-Level Animations
The essential: Slider Revolution can be used by anyone to create professional-level visuals.
This video shows one of Slider Revolution’s most popular usages. Click on it to explore it.
It can be difficult for a website builder to know how to go about a creating beautiful and future-ready website. Slider Revolution’s developers have met the challenge head on by giving its users access to its constantly growing collection ultra-modern templates.
An eye-catching example of the possibilities these templates bring to the table is provided in this Serenity Hero with Focus Effect template which can serve both as an inspiration and a means of jump-starting an effort to create a stunning website.
New templates are released monthly, and when you start working with one of them, it quickly becomes clear that –
- much of the design effort has already been done.
- design or coding skills are not needed to customize a template.
- the templates have already been optimized for speed and responsiveness.
Unless you are satisfied with having your website designs blend in with everyone else’s you should consider taking a more innovative design approach. Revolution Slider can be your perfect guide.
Immediate help via: Support manual, YouTube videos
5. Fancy Product Designer: Best WooCommerce Online Product Designer
The essential: Fancy Product Designer gives you absolute freedom in determining how to customize a product or product part.
This video shows one of Fancy Product Designer’s most popular usages. Click on it to explore it.
A great thing about Fancy Product Designer is that it is not limited to a mere handful of products. It can in fact be applied to almost any type of product, and there are limitless possibilities when customizing a product, whether you’re tailoring the entire product or just a specific part of it.
Some plugins make performing certain tasks easier, faster, or both, but they often come with limitations on how they can be utilized. That’s not true with Fancy Product Designer,
If a product is capable of being customized to any extent at all, Fancy Product Designer can do it. Users can –
- upload text or images from social media as well as from any device.
- upload images in various formats: PNG,SVG, JPEG and PDF.
- integrate essential features into one solution.
- utilize AI techniques for image background removal.
- elevate text with a range of strokes, styles, and shadows to add depth and flair to your design.
- present multiple views of a product.
New templates are released on a monthly basis.
Immediate help via: YouTube videos, Support manual
Explore Fancy Product Designer
6. LayerSlider: Design Everything from Sleek Sliders to Animated Web Content
The essential: LayerSlider is an all-in-one solution designed to make a lasting impression on website visitors.
This video highlights one of the most popular applications of LayerSlider. Click to explore.
LayerSlider’s popularity stems from its ability to work seamlessly on any website, no matter the content. LayerSlider is much more than just a slider-building plugin. It is a creative tool with features that web designers, developers, and businesses can use to create websites that will compel their visitors to sit up and take notice.
Among LayerSlider’s many unique features you will find –
- scroll effects, stunning animations, and other eye-catching features.
- versatile templates like this Fashion Trends example that allows seamless text and image customization to serve as a standout centerpiece on any website.
- a Project Editor that places every tool and function front and center, precisely where you would expect to find them.
- seamless integration with third-party content, including Google Fonts and Pexels.
- Add-ons, including Countdown, Counter, 404, and Maintenance & Coming Soon, expand LayerSlider’s versatility to meet diverse project needs.
Key customer insight: “The scroll effects make my page come alive – it’s like magic seeing the animations unfold as you scroll.”
7. SSL Insecure Content Fixer: Addresses and Cleans Up Mixed Content Warnings
The essential: SSL Insecure Content Fixer solves the majority of insecure content warnings with minimal effort.
This video shows one of SSL Insecure Content Fixer’s most popular usages. Click on it to explore it.
The SSL Insecure Content Fixer plugin serves to clean up a WordPress website’s HTTPS insecure content and mixed content warnings. When installed, SSL Insecure Content Fixer’s default settings are activated, and basic website fixes are automatically performed using the Simple fix level.
If this suffices there is no more to be done. Otherwise, the SSL Insecure Content Fixer plugin can be operated at 4 additional content fixing levels:
- Content Fix Level that does everything the Simple fix level does. In addition it cleans up images and iframes, and it embeds (videos, tunes) in your page content and in Text widgets.
- Widgets fix level does everything the Content fix level does with the exception that it does not restrict its widget fixes to Text widgets.
- Capture fix level that captures an entire page, fixes scripts, images, stylesheets, and iframes, and embeds (videos/ tunes) in the page.
- Capture All fix level that does everything the Capture fix level does and in addition captures AJAX requests.
A note of caution: Care should be taken when operating at either the Capture fix or the Capture All fix level as these levels have been known to have an impact on website performance.
Client average score: 4.85 out of 5 on WordPress.org
Explore SSL Insecure Content Fixer
8. Essential Grid: Inspirational WordPress Gallery Plugin
The essential: If you can envision a gallery design, Essential Grid will help you create it.
This video shows one of Essential Grid’s most popular usages. Click on it to explore it.
Essential Grid is a game-changer that can save you a ton of time while at the same time ensuring that you will be able to attractively organize your content streams. You can put Essential Grid to good use on any website project that has a need for a filterable, sortable, or searchable grid listing of items.
Essential Grid’s standout feature is its collection of 50+ fully customizable grid skins, providing easy access to jumpstart your project with minimal effort. If you don’t find exactly what you think you need, you can easily build your with the Visual Editor and add it to the collection..
The Clark Gillies Blog Grid skin for example is minimal and functional in design. The optional lightbox also makes it a solid pick for a portfolio showcase.
With Essential Grid –
- You get a choice of even, masonry, and cobble layouts.
- You can source and upload content from Social Media sites.
Your Essential Grid galleries will display on all devices perfectly.
Client average score: 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot
9. Map SVG: Interactive WordPress Maps Plugin
The essential: Map SVG is the perfect map plugin for any project.
This video shows one of Map SVG’s most popular usages. Click on it to explore it.
Of all the mapping plugins out there, the MapSVG plugin is by far the most customizable. Map SVG offers customizable templates that integrate seamlessly with an embedded, highly flexible database, supporting vector, Google, and image maps.
These customizable templates enable you to easily create information windows of any complexity you choose. Your maps can in effect be treated as websites within a website.
Map SVG uses are many and varied. The more common uses include:
- Data visualization, which is accomplished with multicolored maps where each different color is associated with a specific meaning or value.
- Locations of sales or field representatives on a map as well as in a directory where additional information pertaining to each individual can be displayed.
- Showcasing land plots with associated information for real estate companies.
- Showcasing store locations for multi-store businesses.
A popular feature that sets Map SVG apart is the support it offers via an AI-assisted live chat. This feature, integrated into the plugin, has read all the Map SVG documents and can answer all the basic questions.
Key customer insight: Pretty flexible with most of the options.
Immediate help via: YouTube videos, Support manual, AI assistant, live chat
10. IvyForms: Easy to Operate WordPress Form Building Plugin
The essential: IvyForms enables its users to easily create WordPress forms without any need for code.
This video shows one of IvyForms’ most popular usages. Click on it to explore it.
The IvyForms WordPress form builder features a modern UI, no-nonsense customizing, and effective reporting. With IvyForms it becomes a simple matter to –
- create a Contact Form in mere seconds without having to worry about coding.
- take the Contact Form and with just a click integrate it into a contact page, a mailing list, a marketing service, or whatever.
- use smart conditional logic to capture valuable contact information from your visitors.
- Initiate an email campaign.
Fields you use, from file uploads, multi-page forms, or forms you create will always display correctly on devices.
You can also take advantage of IvyForms’ pre-built templates to kick-start a project, use interactive conversational forms to bring a WordPress form to life, and make use or reCAPTCHA or honeypot to protect against spam.
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It’s almost a given that one or more of the WordPress plugins in the above listing will be more than capable of solving whatever issue you may be facing if that issue involves:
- Difficulty of Use: These plugins simplify complex tasks.
- Substandard Performance: These plugins improve performance characteristics of a theme or website.
- Reliable Support and Updates: These plugins feature regular updates and attentive developer support.
- Future-Ready Features: These plugins can help to make a website future-ready.
- Versatility: These plugins address needs for added flexibility or special functionality.
If additional searching should be required on your part, you should find it easier to arrive at a solution to your problem because of the knowledge you have gained here.
Web-Slinger.css: Across the Swiper-Verse
Lee Meyer with a super clever idea using scroll-driven animations as an interaction to “like” or “dislike” something.
Web-Slinger.css: Across the Swiper-Verse originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter….
Top WordPress Themes to Elevate Your Website in 2025
What you can incorporate in a website design can have a definite impact on its performance and by extension on your business. What you are actually able to incorporate into that same website design depends heavily on the WordPress theme you choose.
When you are in the process of selecting a WordPress theme you quite naturally become familiar with all the design aids, tools, and other features a given theme has to offer. The more features a theme has, the more it should be able to do for you. But will that be enough?
At some point, you need to address two key questions. First, does the theme allow you to create a website that makes a strong first impression? Second, will it ensure your website is future-ready? For the latter, it’s essential to choose a theme that is continuously improved and updated.
Our experts have selected these 9 incredible WordPress themes for 2025 for your consideration. Each one is fully capable of helping you build a website that not only attracts visitors but is also future-ready.
1. UiCore Pro: The Only WordPress Theme You’ll Ever Need
Short Description: A true powerhouse for WordPress.
Click the video to explore UiCore Pro’s most downloaded template.
UiCore Pro invites you to discover its expanding collection of ready-made websites, perfect for launching your next design project. Any ready-made website can be accessed in one-click, plus you can mix-and-match sections, and adapt the results to your branding in no time.
Slate is an outstanding example of a UiCore Pro ready-made website. Slate provides the ideal foundation for setting up a starter company’s one-page informative website. Slate ranks among UiCore Pro’s top 10 most downloaded demos in 2024.
Other UiCore Pro features you’ll fall in love with include:
- Over 250 traffic-generating widgets designed to remove the need for extra plugins.
- The Admin Customizer enables users to customize the admin panel to their liking.
- The Theme Builder provides complete control over your site’s static elements, while the Next-Gen Theme Options ensure full customization of the website’s look and feel.
- 250+ traffic-generating widgets designed to minimize or even eliminate the need for additional plugins.
- A White Label capability for those who want to customize UiCore PRO to fit their brand.
Key UiCore Pro clients include Startups, Online Shop owners, SaaS providers, Agencies, and Architects.
Updates & New Content Releases: New demos and pre-built websites are added every month to the 60+ pre-built website library.
Product Rating: 4.6/5
Readily Accessible support materials: YouTube videos, Support manual. Our response time for user assistance requests is only a few hours.
2. Betheme: The Biggest WordPress & WooCommerce Theme with 700+ Pre-built Websites
Short Description: With its hundreds of WordPress pre-built sites and handful of builders Betheme gives you everything you need to design lightning-fast, feature-rich websites, and shops with ease.
Click the video to explore Betheme’s most downloaded template.
A Betheme prebuilt website allows you to have a fully loaded website up and running in less than a minute. With just a few hours of customization, your website will be ready to launch. That’s even true for more complex websites, as long as you have your content readily available.
A long-standing favorite among users is Betheme’s library of 700+ pre-built websites, all accessible with just a single click. Betheme’s Be Business pre-built website ranked among the top 10 downloaded demos of 2024 for a good reason. It offers an excellent design approach for advertising a new business, particularly a service-oriented one.
Additional features include a wealth of super-fast builders like:
- Be Builder: which has been completely rewritten to be faster than ever and WooBuilder together with more than 40 WooCommerce demos makes it easy to create a web store at your fingertips.
- a Header Builder, a footer Builder, a WooCommerce Builder for sellers, a Popup Builder, and a Query Loop Builder for Developers.
Include multiple customizable layouts for your portfolio, blog, and shop pages and you are still at the tip of the iceberg.
New pre-built websites and demos are released monthly.
Readily Accessible support materials: Support documentation along with an extensive library of Video Tutorials.
3. Blocksy: fast and lightweight WordPress theme for Gutenberg and page builders
Short Description: Blocksy is responsive, WooCommerce ready, SEO optimized and has many customization options.
Click the video to explore Blocksy’s most downloaded template.
Blocksy’s remarkable feature is a Header Builder together with accompanying header elements you can use to design a header designed precisely to your specifications.
Additional standout features include:
- WooCommerce features designed for shop owners.
- A popup content block designed for marketers.
- A library of design templates.
- A White Label option for developers, along with features designed to easily extend existing functionality.
Have you ever experienced “designer’s block” trying to start a new project? The e-Bike Starter Shop template might be just what you need to get started, whether your business involves e-bikes or something totally different. There are many other popular sites worth exploring, and new pre-built websites are added every month.
Readily Accessible support materials: The average support ticket resolution time is under 24 hours.
Product Rating: 4.97/5 on WordPress.org
User Review: I’m using Blocksy with the premium extension since December 2020 and so far the experience has been really positive. Found some bugs, but they were successfully squashed by the extremely helpful support team. How they keep adding helpful features and extensions is great and definitely not standard in the WordPress world.
4. Litho: Creative & Responsive Multipurpose Elementor WordPress Theme
Short Description: Litho WordPress theme is an all-around versatile and robust choice for those who want to create a professional website.
Click the video to explore Litho’s most downloaded template.
Litho is a creative multi-purpose Elementor WordPress theme you can use to create any type of business niche website, blog, plus portfolio, and eCommerce sites.
Litho features 300+ single-click importable templates you can customize to fit your specific needs. For example, Litho’s Journey to The Self through Meditation template features a straightforward approach with some clever special effects. In short, as a basis for website design it opens up all sorts of possibilities.
Additional features of Litho include:
- Ready access to the WordPress Customizer and and a variety of custom Elementor widgets for seamless customization.
- A selection of 37+ ready-to-use home pages and over 200 creative elements.
- Compatibility with most free and premium plugins, including WooCommerce. The premium Slider Revolution plugin is included.
Readily Accessible support materials: The average response time for support tickets is less than 24 hours. Immediate assistance is available through online documentation, a quick start guide, and comprehensive installation and update guidelines.
User Review: Very good response time and help in resolving situations. We are very satisfied. Good customer support.
5. Uncode: a Pixel-perfect Creative WordPress Theme
Short Description: Uncode is designed with pixel-perfect attention to all details.
Click the video to explore Uncode’s most downloaded template.
Uncode is one of the top-selling creative themes of all time. People keep returning to use Uncode for more projects because of the results they can achieve.
A host of other design aids are at the ready, but it’s the demos that serve as the foundation and inspiration, ensuring projects get off to a successful start. Uncode’s Shop Bold demo, featuring clever hover effects, ranks among the 10 most downloaded demos for 2024.
Check out several of these demos to get an even better picture of the ideas and inspirations that await you. New demos and pre-built websites are released every 3 to 6 months.
Uncode’s other standout features include –
- An upgraded Frontend Page Builder with an accompanying selection of 85 design modules.
- Advanced professional features like the Dynamic Contents and Content Block.
- A Wireframes plugin with access to more than 750 wireframes.
- A host of design elements and options.
Free and reliable updates are consistently released to meet customer needs and preferences.
Product Rating: 4.89/5
Readily Accessible support materials: Narrated video tutorials are available, along with a dedicated support group on Facebook. Uncode also offers customer support with ticket resolutions typically under 24 hours.
User Review: I don’t know what is better. The theme or the support. The theme is very nice and the support is rapid fast! Well done!
6. Avada: the #1-Selling Theme for WordPress
Short Description: Avada is a versatile and powerful website builder for WordPress and WooCommerce that works for beginners, marketers, and professionals.
Click the video to explore Avada’s most downloaded template.
Avada is fully responsive, SEO and speed-optimized, WooCommerce-ready, and an excellent choice for both first-time web designers and seasoned developers managing multiple clients. It has been called the Swiss Army Knife of WordPress themes.
Whether you’re creating a simple one-page business website or a bustling online marketplace, Avada provides a wealth of powerful tools and plugins for building websites that include –
- Fusion Builder, Fusion Slider, a Shortcode Generator, a Mega Menu, and more
- Fusion Page and Theme Options include over 50 design elements, allowing you to customize virtually anything and everything.
- 400+ pre-built web pages, more than 120 design and layout elements, and 40+ one-click importable customizable demos.
With over 750,000 satisfied clients, Avada has earned its place as an all-time best-seller among WordPress themes.
Updates & New Content Releases: Free lifetime updates.
Product Rating: 4.77 /5
Readily Accessible support materials: Comprehensive documentation, an extensive video library, and exceptional assistance from Avada’s Customer Support team.
User Review: Has many options to adjust post information! I like it a lot!
7. Total Theme: a Complete Theme with All the Features Needed to Create an Outstanding Website
Short Description: Total is a WordPress theme optimized for WPBakery, offering exclusive features, unique elements, and enhancements you won’t find anywhere else.
Click the video to explore Total’s most downloaded template.
With its unmatched flexibility and efficient, time-saving features, Total can handle any website design project you throw at it.
For example:
- The WPBakery page builder. The page builder that Total’s developers consider to be superior to any other used on WordPress.
- 90+ WPBakery patterns, 100+ builder elements, and 50+ premade demos.
- Built-in compatibility with both Elementor and Gutenberg.
- Tons of builder elements, boxed and full-width layouts, custom backgrounds, mobile menu styles, dynamic layout templates, animations, etc.
Total’s demos provide an excellent starting point for your projects, offering a quick launch option while also serving as valuable sources of inspiration. Total’s Bryce demo provides a strong foundation for a one-page introductory site to a startup business.
Product Rating: 4.86/5
User Review: The Total Theme is really great. Very flexible to use, and the author, AJ, has gone to great pains to integrate his other plugins to work seamlessly with Total and also to open additional features when used together. It is a really great ecosystem that is being built. The support for this theme is, in a word, unbelievably-incredibly-awesome.
8. Woodmart: an Ultrafast, Easy to Use WooCommerce Theme
Short Description: Begin with one of WoodMart’s pre-built websites and customize it to your needs using the powerful Elementor and WPBakery plugins.
Click the video to explore Woodmart’s most downloaded template.
Whether you’re building a small store, a high-volume shop, or a multivendor marketplace, size doesn’t matter – WoodMart provides everything you need for success.
Woodmart demos can be used to design websites for any type or niche, but Woodmart offers much more than just shops, product sales, and furniture. Woodmart’s Pottery demo for a pottery workshop or class can be customized to fit a variety of uses. But that is what you can expect from Woodmart, even though you need to provide your own content!
- Since Woodmart is a WooCommerce theme, it allows you to build your store without requiring additional plugins.
- Woodmart’s key feature is its custom shop layout builder, offering client-focused options like “Dynamic Discounts” and “Frequently Bought Together”.
- Custom features for clients include a White Label option designed for developers and seamless social integrations tailored for Marketers.
Updates & New Content Releases: New pre-built websites and demos are released monthly.
9. Pro Theme + Cornerstone Builder: Redefining Advanced Website Building
Short Description: Pro Theme with its powerful Cornerstone feature gives you website building at its very best.
Click the video to explore Pro Theme’s most downloaded template.
Pro Theme’s key feature is its continuous stream of updates and new features, offering more than you’ll find with any other WordPress theme. In 2024 alone, Pro Theme released 27 updates, including –
- Comprehensive Suite of Builders – includes Page, Header and Footer builders, along with Layout Builder, Blog Builder, Shop Builder, and much more.
- Design Cloud – a collection of premium design assets.
- Max – A curated collection of premium plugins, templates, and custom-designed websites created by a top personal brand agency known for crafting websites for leading brands and celebrities.
When it comes to custom-designed websites, are you planning to open or advertise a Spa? Perhaps not, but this short but sweet Pro Theme demo gives you a taste of how easy it might be to customize it to perfectly fit your own planned business niche.
Updates & New Content Releases: New updates are released every two weeks.
Readily Accessible support materials: a forum, a support manual, and collection of YouTube tutorial videos.
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It’s almost guaranteed that any of these 9 incredible WordPress themes has all the tools you need to create a stunning, future-proof website. However, we recommend taking the time to explore each option to find the one that feels most intuitive to use or helps you achieve your goals with greater ease.
Rather than listing every possible feature you might need, we’ve concentrated on highlighting the key points in the theme summaries. When you explore specific themes, you’ll find it simple to gain a clear understanding of how they can meet your needs.
| WordPress Theme | Quick Overview |
| UiCore PRO | Intuitive interface with premium design packs |
| Betheme | Integrated tools for SEO optimization |
| Blocksy | Best for visually stunning WooCommerce sites |
| Uncode | Dynamic theme with creative features |
| Avada | Comprehensive tools for website customization |
| Litho | Tailored for photographers and designers |
| Woodmart | Offers multi-language support out of the box |
| Pro Theme + Cornerstone Builder | Enhanced for marketing-focused designs |
| Total Theme | Flexible layouts with drag-and-drop editor |
A Few Ways That Cloudways Makes Running This Site a Little Easier
(This is a sponsored post.)
It’s probably no surprise to you that CSS-Tricks is (proudly) hosted on Cloudways, DigitalOcean’s managed hosting arm. Given both CSS-Tricks and Cloudways are part of DigitalOcean, it was just a matter of time …
A Few Ways That Cloudways Makes Running This Site…
How to Wait for the sibling-count() and sibling-index() Functions
Today, I want to look into one of those cases of impatient and how the community has waited for that feature, to be specific, two upcoming functions: sibling-count() and sibling-index().
How to Wait for the sibling-count() and sibling-index() Functions originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of…
Minimizing the carbon footprint of bridges and other structures
Awed as a young child by the majesty of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, civil engineer and MIT Morningside Academy for Design (MAD) Fellow Zane Schemmer has retained his fascination with bridges: what they look like, why they work, and how they’re designed and built.
He weighed the choice between architecture and engineering when heading off to college, but, motivated by the why and how of structural engineering, selected the latter. Now he incorporates design as an iterative process in the writing of algorithms that perfectly balance the forces involved in discrete portions of a structure to create an overall design that optimizes function, minimizes carbon footprint, and still produces a manufacturable result.
While this may sound like an obvious goal in structural design, it’s not. It’s new. It’s a more holistic way of looking at the design process that can optimize even down to the materials, angles, and number of elements in the nodes or joints that connect the larger components of a building, bridge, tower, etc.
According to Schemmer, there hasn’t been much progress on optimizing structural design to minimize embodied carbon, and the work that exists often results in designs that are “too complex to be built in real life,” he says. The embodied carbon of a structure is the total carbon dioxide emissions of its life cycle: from the extraction or manufacture of its materials to their transport and use and through the demolition of the structure and disposal of the materials. Schemmer, who works with Josephine V. Carstensen, the Gilbert W. Winslow Career Development Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT, is focusing on the portion of that cycle that runs through construction.
In September, at the IASS 2024 symposium “Redefining the Art of Structural Design in Zurich,” Schemmer and Carstensen presented their work on Discrete Topology Optimization algorithms that are able to minimize the embodied carbon in a bridge or other structure by up to 20 percent. This comes through materials selection that considers not only a material’s appearance and its ability to get the job done, but also the ease of procurement, its proximity to the building site, and the carbon embodied in its manufacture and transport.
“The real novelty of our algorithm is its ability to consider multiple materials in a highly constrained solution space to produce manufacturable designs with a user-specified force flow,” Schemmer says. “Real-life problems are complex and often have many constraints associated with them. In traditional formulations, it can be difficult to have a long list of complicated constraints. Our goal is to incorporate these constraints to make it easier to take our designs out of the computer and create them in real life.”
Take, for instance, a steel tower, which could be a “super lightweight, efficient design solution,” Schemmer explains. Because steel is so strong, you don’t need as much of it compared to concrete or timber to build a big building. But steel is also very carbon-intensive to produce and transport. Shipping it across the country or especially from a different continent can sharply increase its embodied carbon price tag. Schemmer’s topology optimization will replace some of the steel with timber elements or decrease the amount of steel in other elements to create a hybrid structure that will function effectively and minimize the carbon footprint. “This is why using the same steel in two different parts of the world can lead to two different optimized designs,” he explains.
Schemmer, who grew up in the mountains of Utah, earned a BS and MS in civil and environmental engineering from University of California at Berkeley, where his graduate work focused on seismic design. He describes that education as providing a “very traditional, super-strong engineering background that tackled some of the toughest engineering problems,” along with knowledge of structural engineering’s traditions and current methods.
But at MIT, he says, a lot of the work he sees “looks at removing the constraints of current societal conventions of doing things, and asks how could we do things if it was in a more ideal form; what are we looking at then? Which I think is really cool,” he says. “But I think sometimes too, there’s a jump between the most-perfect version of something and where we are now, that there needs to be a bridge between those two. And I feel like my education helps me see that bridge.”
The bridge he’s referring to is the topology optimization algorithms that make good designs better in terms of decreased global warming potential.
“That’s where the optimization algorithm comes in,” Schemmer says. “In contrast to a standard structure designed in the past, the algorithm can take the same design space and come up with a much more efficient material usage that still meets all the structural requirements, be up to code, and have everything we want from a safety standpoint.”
That’s also where the MAD Design Fellowship comes in. The program provides yearlong fellowships with full financial support to graduate students from all across the Institute who network with each other, with the MAD faculty, and with outside speakers who use design in new ways in a surprising variety of fields. This helps the fellows gain a better understanding of how to use iterative design in their own work.
“Usually people think of their own work like, ‘Oh, I had this background. I’ve been looking at this one way for a very long time.’ And when you look at it from an outside perspective, I think it opens your mind to be like, ‘Oh my God. I never would have thought about doing this that way. Maybe I should try that.’ And then we can move to new ideas, new inspiration for better work,” Schemmer says.
He chose civil and structural engineering over architecture some seven years ago, but says that “100 years ago, I don’t think architecture and structural engineering were two separate professions. I think there was an understanding of how things looked and how things worked, and it was merged together. Maybe from an efficiency standpoint, it’s better to have things done separately. But I think there’s something to be said for having knowledge about how the whole system works, potentially more intermingling between the free-form architectural design and the mathematical design of a civil engineer. Merging it back together, I think, has a lot of benefits.”
Which brings us back to the Golden Gate Bridge, Schemmer’s longtime favorite. You can still hear that excited 3-year-old in his voice when he talks about it.
“It’s so iconic,” he says. “It’s connecting these two spits of land that just rise straight up out of the ocean. There’s this fog that comes in and out a lot of days. It’s a really magical place, from the size of the cable strands and everything. It’s just, ‘Wow.’ People built this over 100 years ago, before the existence of a lot of the computational tools that we have now. So, all the math, everything in the design, was all done by hand and from the mind. Nothing was computerized, which I think is crazy to think about.”
As Schemmer continues work on his doctoral degree at MIT, the MAD fellowship will expose him to many more awe-inspiring ideas in other fields, leading him to incorporate some of these in some way with his engineering knowledge to design better ways of building bridges and other structures.