OceanWP theme offers a lot of out-of-the-box features. But its characteristics can also be improved by a multitude of free or paid extensions. So it’s no surprise that the OceanWP theme has become extremely popular, with over 700,000 active installs. It has also obtained a score of 4.9/5 on the WordPress.org website, for more than 5,000 reviews.
Thanks to OceanWP theme, you can undoubtedly build a professional looking website. But for that it will be necessary to use the paid pack (called Core Extension Bundle by OceanWP) in order to have all the models and all the plugins. It is also possible to buy the extensions one by one but this does not seem very interesting given the small difference in price when comparing with the whole pack.
There are a total of 225 templates (15 of which are free) and 20 extensions (7 of which are free ).
Most were designed for a specific purpose, such as an online store or a small business website. That being said, all the templates can be used for all types of websites: with OceanWP you can not only change the colors and fonts but also the overall structure of your site.
The templates (called demos by OceanWP) are divided into several categories: Beauty, Blog, Photography, Tech, Bars, Health, Restaurants, Mediation, Coaching, Religion, Portfolio, Business, Ecommerce, Services, Fashion, Sports, Art & Desing, Meditation…
The integration of WooCommerce is great, with many modifications integrated directly into your WordPress site thanks to a pop-up window and a floating bar for the shopping cart. There is also a quick view mode that allows the customer to view a product without having to leave the current page.
Still in terms of compatibility, the OceanWP theme works perfectly with the menus and features of WPML, the plugin that allows you to make your WordPress site multilingual (66 languages).
The advantage of the Premium Pack over the Free Pack is that it gives you access to 12 months of support and updates, including new models and expansions to be released in the OceanWP Catalog.
If you want to check out some sample OceanWP models, they can be viewed here without having to install them.
Regarding the available plans, there are three licensing plans. These give you access to the same content, the difference being in the number of sites that it is possible to create: a single site for the “Personal” plan, 3 sites for the “Business” plan, 25 sites for the “Agency” plan. Each plan can be annual or lifetime.
Installing a template and its extensions
The OceanWP theme will be available for download from WordPress.org or directly from the themes page in the WordPress appearance section.
Once you’ve enabled OceanWP, you’ll see a message that recommends you install three WordPress plugins: Ocean Extra, Elementor, and WP Forms. In fact, Ocean extra is unthinkable, otherwise the essential features of the theme, like for example the OceanWP control panel, will not be displayed if Ocean Extra is not activated.
Once Ocean Extra is activated, the theme panel menu for OceanWP will be displayed in your admin menu.
Next, OceanWP advises the user to launch the installation wizard, then install the necessary extensions for the chosen model.
On the next page, you can customize the essential parameters of your website, such as logo, site title and tagline. This page also allows you to select the default colors for your website design and links.
It is also possible to import demos in one click thanks to OceanWP’s partnership with Cloudways.
Customize OceanWP
On the main page of the themes panel, you can activate and deactivate sections of the OceanWP Theme Customization Tool.
Below, you’ll find links to important customizer settings, like uploading your logo and changing your header or footer.
The configuration wizard can also be started again from this page.
New tabs and options
In the main menu of WordPress we can see that four tabs have appeared: the menu “Posts Slider “, the menu “Elementor “if you don’t have this extension yet, the menu”Appearance ” (which will be the most provided in options) and finally the menu “Theme Panel“.
All theme settings can be exported to a “.dat” file, which is useful if you want to save your settings, which can be useful just before installing another theme or extension.
You can deactivate certain parts of your website such as the header, footer and sidebars. You can also change the style of the header.
Shortcodes can be added before and after key parts of your pages, and you can change the logo and navigation menu used.
The titles can be completely changed. You can change the title, subtitle and style of the title. You can also turn them off completely.
In the Scripts and Styles page, you can enable and disable dozens of JavaScript and CSS elements. Disabling items that you are not using will help reduce your overall page size, making your pages load faster.
Important clarification: any modification made from the “Appearance” menu can be previewed in real time, which makes configuring pages much more pleasant than closing menus before discovering the result.
But where we really realize that the possibilities for customizing this OceanWP theme are almost endless is when we see that the pages can, in addition, be customized independently for desktops, tablets and smartphones! It is not a simple consultation or verification of the appearance of the website according to the size of the screens. The fact of being able to make independent adjustments on different types of devices makes OceanWP very powerful, and allows you to benefit from an excellent referencing in the eyes of Google.
In this ” Appearance ” menu, the ” General Options ” section contains 9 sub-menus and it is here that you can find most of the basic parameters to adjust the appearance of your WordPress site.
You can easily modify:
- the style of your site design (header style and colors, background color or image, link color),
- the layout style (“General Settings” tab), with specific options for the search page,
- the options relating to the title of the pages (visibility, tag, style, internal margin, text and background colors) as well as the breadcrumb trail (separator, taxonomy, etc.),
- the options for scrolling up (style, position, colors),
- pagination options (alignment, font, border, colors),
- form settings (border styles, colors, font, etc.),
- the styles of the buttons (margin, border, colors, etc.),
- define a 404 error page template or its layout,
- the icons (choice between “Simple Line Icons” and “Font Awesome Icons”),
- some settings related to SEO (images),
- CSS settings to speed up the display speed of your pages.
The ” Typography “ section can be edited for each element of your website, including blog titles independently.
The “header” section is also provided: colors, size, margins and other options for your header can be changed easily. Large images and video banners can be uploaded to appear in the header.
Finally, the “footer” section allows you, among other options, to define your own copyright message.
The extensions offered by OceanWP
The free extensions are: Stick Anything, Modal Window, Posts Slider, Demo import, Custom Sidebar, Product Sharing, Social Sharing, and most importantly, Ocean Extra. All of these plugins can be downloaded from the wordpress.org site or directly from your WordPress admin area.
The Premium extensions are: Full Screen, Cookie Notice, Popup Login, White Label, Portfolio, Woo Popup, Sticky Footer, Ocean Hooks, Elementor Widgets, Side Panel, Sticky Header and Footer Callout.
OceanWP free extensions
- Stick Anything is a simple plugin that allows you to paste a particular CSS element to your page. It can be used for logos, forms …
- Modal Window can be used to add content to a modal window, and display the button anywhere you want.
- Posts Slider allows you to display your blog posts as beautiful slides. You have full control over the size of the thumbnails used, the number of slides and their speed. You can also limit the slides to articles of a single category, or on the contrary choose the “random” option.
- Demo Import allows one-click import of demos, widgets and user custom settings. Rather practical to save time.
- Sidebars can be created in an unlimited number and be fully personalized thanks to the Custom Sidebar extension.
- The plugin Product Sharing allows WooCommerce users to display social media sharing buttons under products.
- If you want to add sharing buttons below blog posts, you need to use the Social Sharing plugin. This plugin supports several social media services, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, as well as Telegram and Vkontakte, among others.
- And finally Ocean Extra, which we have already seen: this extension is necessary for the theme panel, scripts and styles, and much more.
Premium OceanWP extensions
- Extension Full Screen allows you to create a full screen scrolling website. You can adjust the scrolling speed, add a side navigation bar, and adjust the navigation color to help you display your desired content. You must activate Elementor to use this extension.
- The Cookie Notice extension allows visitors to display the warning that the website uses cookies, in order to comply with European legislation on cookies and the GDPR regulation. The content as well as the button are fully customizable, and there is a choice between two styles of messages.
- The Popup Login extension allows you to create a form for account creation and connection of site users, as well as password reset. You can configure the background image, content, titles, description and style of your form.
- The White Label extension allows the OceanWP brand to be replaced by its own brand, a useful option for freelance developers and web agencies. You can also add your own description, your own image, as well as the author’s name and URL.
- The Portfolio extension will be particularly welcome for all those who want to customize the display of photos on their presentation site to the extreme. It is also possible to configure the margins, the padding, the colors, the typography.
- The Woo Popup extension will display a message to buyers when they click to purchase an item and notify them that the product has been added to their cart. You can configure your own texts, as well as the dimensions, padding and borders of your message.
- The Sticky Footer extension will allow you to display and configure the menu, text and colors of your footer. You can also choose not to display this footer only on desktops and not on tablet or smartphone screens.
- The Ocean Hooks extension will allow you to display personalized content in the different areas of a site without having to use a child theme, thanks to simple shortcodes and PHP codes. You can differentiate your content depending on whether or not visitors are connected to your site. These codes can be added to a page, a blog post, or a taxonomy.
- The Elementor Widgets extension will allow you to configure the layout of the site, in addition to the well-known Elementor extension. You will have access to an impressive list of very useful Widgets: buttons, WooCommerce, password management, Google Maps, animations, titles, links, forms, navigation bars, …
- Extension Side Panel will add a side panel. This panel is responsive: it will not be displayed on tablets or smartphones, depending on the settings you have defined. The panel is completely customizable: it is possible to define the widgets that will be part of it, the side where it will be displayed, its width, colors, …
- The Sticky Header extension will be used to keep the header fixed at the top of the page, allowing you to determine the header height and specific configurations for tablets and smartphones. It is still possible to add an element between the top of the page and the fixed header.
- The latest extension of the OceanWP catalog, Footer Callou t , will be used to display a specific bar above the footer, which can be activated or deactivated according to the desired pages.
In conclusion, OceanWP is a very interesting theme because of the number of demos available, its possibility of customization, its reliability and its speed of display. This is the one that I used for my own website, in the category Blog : the model Tech .
You can consult this article on the latest demos as well as the partnership with Cloudways to install your demos in 1 click.
