The Avada theme has been very popular recently and with good reason. It’s a beautiful, clean design with lots of customization options. As a developer, I love it. It just takes a while to learn the shortcode. As a non-developer, how much you love it will depend on how much you can read between the brackets. For example, to get this page below:
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You basically have to be able to read and edit this:
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For me, this is easy because I’m used to reading code, but other people may not be as comfortable using their Ctrl+F key to find the words they are looking for so they can replace them with their own content. Most of the code within the brackets is pretty easy if you are familiar with HTML. There are places to put class & id info; places for color and size, etc. So if you feel comfortable with this page of shortcode, that Avada could be a good choice for you.
What I like about Avada
- Excellent documentation
Everything is written down and easy to find in their documentation here: http://theme-fusion.com/support/documentation/avada-documentation/ I had no problem finding answers to any question I had. But they also have a forum (although I never needed it) and video tutorials if the documentation is not enough for you. - Extensive sample content
With a lot of themes, you see the demo and you are amazed at how beautiful it is, and then you install it on your new WordPress site and are disappointed to find that it is completely empty. None of the beautiful images, sliders, and styled content is there. Avada gives you the shortcode (like seen above) to copy and paste into your own theme and viola! You’re theme is beautifully styled, just like the demo. You can choose to grab just a few pages so you aren’t overwhelmed or you can download it all. Even the sliders come with several examples which make it easy to change out the text and have a completely working site that looks just like the demo. - You don’t have to use the shortcode
The shortcode makes it easy to style your pages with responsive columns and separators, images, sliders and more, but if you just like the overall clean look and want to create your pages with no shortcode at all, it still works like a regular WordPress site. - Avada comes with a huge number of Theme Options so you don’t have to touch the CSS file
But if you do want to touch it, there is a Custom CSS section too, so that your changes will persist through any updates. You can see the huge number of options below including typography and basic styling. Add padding, change colors, and more without knowing any CSS. There are way too many options to go over here, but head over to the Avada site for all the details on that. Unfortunately, you’ll need a login to see their documentation.
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What I don’t like about Avada
- I worry about themes that offer too much
And Avada offers a lot! Three sliders come included. I worry about my site being bloated with so many options I don’t need – which could slow down my site. I haven’t done a side by side comparison, but I know the less code there is, the less opportunity for something to go wrong and for code to be vulnerable.
Conclusion
I like Avada a lot. If you like the look of the theme a lot but all that shortcode is making your eyes water, why not hire me to set up your Avada site for you? I’ve recently completed 3 Avada sites and I think they all look great.
Dave says
Your post is really inaccurate even from a year ago! You do not have to read code for avada but can use the fusion builder which is all drag and drop functionality. Time to update.
Laura Hartwig says
You’re absolutely right, you don’t have to use the shortcode, you can use the fusion builder. However, I do not like the fusion builder at all. I find it confusing and not as intuitive as it should be. I find it hard to tell what sections are in the back end. It also slows down the site. And if you disable it, it leaves a lot of unintelligible shortcode on your site. I’m a much bigger fan of BeaverBuilder. My new thinking on this theme (you’re right, this review was written a year ago), is that I, personally, would never choose the Avada theme. I can understand why a non-developer would choose it, but I don’t think it’s the right choice if you want a speedy site. None of the theme-option heavy templates are. There is just too much code needed to make them easy to build that slows them down.