Astra vs Newspaper 12 Theme comparison 💥
ASTRA THEME (Newspaper vs Astra)
WP-Astra is the fastest Wordpress theme ever made...
For this Astra Theme review in 2024, let's look at why more than 2,369,964 users have picked Astra for their websites. It's not just a theme, it's a meticulously crafted tool, like a finely tuned sports car, designed for visually stunning, responsive online shops. Astra’s loading speeds are as swift as a cheetah.
The creators of Astra didn't just release another theme; they brought a powerful force in web design that quickly became a favorite, similar to a chart-topping song. In terms of performance, particularly speed, only Generatepress comes close. But in overall excellence and features, Astra shines like a blockbuster movie's leading star.
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Website speed is crucial: faster sites rank higher in Google, like climbing a digital Everest. Speed boosts user engagement, making visitors stay longer, like a magnet pulling them in. In today's online world, speed is a golden ticket to success.
Choosing Astra means your website is in the hands of speed optimization experts. Imagine your online store as a race car: the faster it is, the smoother the checkout process for your customers. Astra is built for beauty and speed, giving your site a performance boost akin to adding a turbocharger.
Astra 4.0 release
The launch of Astra 4.0 marks a major leap forward for WordPress themes. Start with the overview video linked above to see its new features and enhancements. Then, dive into the rest of this article for more details. Astra has always been a leader in the WordPress theme market, constantly evolving to meet user needs.
The latest version, Astra 4.0, reinforces its place as a must-have for any WordPress user. Whether you are a seasoned developer or a beginner in web design, Astra 4.0’s combination of flexibility, power, and ease of use makes it an invaluable tool for creating engaging, responsive websites.
Spectra 2.0 now available
With the addition of Spectra 2.0, Astra Theme becomes even more robust. Spectra 2.0, Astra's custom page builder, offers new levels of functionality and ease. While it's free now, future paid versions promise even more advanced features.
Astra is already a top-tier theme, but the integration of its own page builder, complete with a variety of widgets, takes it to new heights. This not only enhances user experience but also solidifies Astra’s status as a comprehensive solution for website building, suitable for both beginners and experienced developers.
Astra free & pro rating
Curious about Astra’s popularity? Check out Wordpress.org to see its acclaim – it has numerous 5-star ratings. Over a million websites use the free version of Astra, and when you include the Pro version, the total reaches an impressive 1.6 million. This widespread use highlights Astra’s significant impact, much like a blockbuster event drawing a massive crowd.
Astra for online stores
Think of Astra as the key to boosting your online store's sales. It's not just about looks; it’s about turning visitors into customers. An online store using Astra is like a high-performance sports car among bicycles – it’s noticeably faster. Want to see how Astra outperforms others? Check this page on Astra’s website for speed test comparisons with over 50 other top themes. These tests, like efficiency contests, are conducted by SEO experts, showcasing Astra’s superior performance.
On that page, you’ll find detailed information about combining Astra with WooCommerce. A fast-loading store isn’t just great for user experience; it’s also favored by Google’s search rankings. With Astra, picture your store quickly climbing Google’s SERP, like a turbo boost. It’s like giving your shop advanced SEO tools, attracting a flood of visitors, much like a grand celebration's excitement.
Astra makes customizing your online shop easy, even for those without technical skills. A few years ago, this ease of use seemed impossible, but now Astra works seamlessly with various WooCommerce plugins. It manages these integrations smoothly, like a skilled conductor leading an orchestra.
And that's just the start. Astra includes modern features to make your webshop stand out. Features like Infinite Scroll, customizable grid settings, off-canvas sidebar, Quickview, and a dropdown cart enhance the shopping experience. Check out these features here. Plus, you can use a variety of ready-to-use shopping demos with one-click integration, making design simple.
Astra starter demos
Astra impresses with its extensive collection of 180 complete website designs. These aren’t just templates; each is a fully functional website ready for use. It’s like walking into a store where everything is available for free. Choose a design, apply your branding, and launch a professional website quickly. These demos, created by Astra’s expert team, are compatible with four different page builders, providing diverse design possibilities. Astra raises the bar for comprehensive and varied demo content, setting itself apart in the template market.
Astra's responsiveness goes beyond the standard. It's as if the theme underwent specialized training to excel in mobile e-commerce. The focus isn't just on aesthetics; there's a concerted effort to ensure the mobile version of your site is exceptionally user-friendly. With the increasing prevalence of mobile shopping, this feature becomes increasingly crucial. In the near future, it wouldn't be surprising to see over half of online shoppers using their mobile devices, possibly while relaxing at home.
Additionally, Astra offers extensive customization options for the checkout process, shopping cart, and product pages, all without the need for intricate coding skills. A seamless checkout experience is vital as a complicated one can deter customers quickly. Astra ensures a fluid and enjoyable shopping journey. The Astra team's approach to e-commerce solutions isn't just innovative; it's a complete reimagining of what's possible in online retail.
Astra loading time
Astra is serious about loading times, achieving remarkably fast speeds. Its performance in Google, GTmetrix, Y-Slow, and Pingdom tests is consistently outstanding, as if the theme has been optimized with a unique speed-enhancing formula. The results speak for themselves, demonstrating Astra's superior performance. When it comes to competition, Generatepress is the closest contender. The data presented below is telling – Astra regularly secures top rankings in speed tests, distinguishing itself significantly from slower-performing themes.
Astra with page builders
Astra works seamlessly with the Elementor page builder...
Using Astra is like having intuitive control over your website, offering both ease of use and enjoyment. It provides a streamlined panel and integration with the WordPress customizer for a seamless experience. Adding to its versatility, Astra pairs exceptionally well with renowned page builders, particularly Elementor. The combination of Astra Pro and Elementor Pro is a harmonious and efficient pairing, akin to two perfectly matched components. For those mindful of budget, both Astra and Elementor offer free versions. While these versions may have fewer features, they still provide a substantial and enjoyable user experience.
Elementor in Astra
Astra schema markup
Have you ever wanted to effectively communicate the contents of your page to search engines? This is where Schema markup plays a crucial role. These structured data snippets act as guides, aiding search engines in comprehending the context and content of your pages. It's akin to providing a clearer, more direct understanding of your site's content to search engines like Google. Astra simplifies this process by automatically incorporating Schema markup into your pages, as detailed here. This feature acts like an unseen assistant within Astra, working diligently to enhance your website's visibility and performance in search results, playing a pivotal role in your SEO strategy.
Astra + LearnDash
Envision yourself as a creator of online courses, with Astra and LearnDash serving as your essential tools. Developing an online course using Astra combined with LearnDash is a streamlined and enjoyable process, comparable to assembling a complex structure with ease. Astra offers a plethora of design options and features, enabling you to make your online course as captivating as a top-rated TV show.
LearnDash, on the other hand, acts as the orchestrator of your website's structure, focusing on creating an environment conducive to learning and conversion. The synergy of Astra's design flexibility and LearnDash's structured approach results in more than just a website – it's the creation of an immersive digital learning environment. Embrace this opportunity to craft an exceptional online course experience.
Astra + LifterLMS
When combining Astra with LifterLMS, you get a formidable pair in the world of online education. In this partnership, Astra excels as the design expert, offering you full control over your website's aesthetic and functionality. Whether you aim for the sophistication of a high-end magazine or the versatility of a multifunctional tool, Astra provides the necessary support.
Integrating LifterLMS into this equation enhances your site's educational efficacy. It creates a focused learning environment, minimizing distractions and optimizing user engagement. The synergy of LifterLMS's educational framework with Astra's design capabilities not only facilitates learning but also boosts conversion efficiency. Imagine a checkout process so seamless it feels like an extension of the learning journey itself. Together, Astra and LifterLMS elevate your website to the highest echelons of online learning platforms.
Astra headers, footers, and 404 customization
Introducing Astra Transparent Headers, Astra Custom Header, and Astra Custom Footers – the PRO features that provide a sophisticated edge to your website. These tools serve as your digital design experts, allowing you to create customized headers and footers with ease and without the need for technical expertise. Envision crafting your site's header and footer to be as elegant as a tuxedo or as casual as sneakers, achievable through simple clicks. Even the typically overlooked 404 pages can be enhanced for a cohesive look. Moreover, you have the flexibility to tailor these elements differently for various user groups, offering a bespoke experience. It's like having both creative control and strategic oversight over your website's upper and lower navigational areas.
Astra more features
Astra encompasses a wide range of features, and you can explore a comprehensive overview here. This extensive list showcases the breadth and depth of functionalities available in Astra. We recommend taking the time to review these features, as they collectively represent a significant array of tools and options that can enhance your website's capabilities.
Astra theme review conclusion
This concludes my comprehensive review of the Astra Theme. For those who have followed through to this point, I extend my appreciation. It's clear that Astra is not just another option among many in the world of web design; it stands out distinctively. The Astra PRO version, in particular, offers enhanced capabilities compared to the free version, akin to the difference between gourmet and fast-food offerings. Personally, I favor the combination of Astra and Elementor, which allows for sophisticated and seamless web design. Astra is on par with the Divi Theme, known for its versatility and readiness to tackle various challenges. As for shortcomings in Astra? They are as rare as finding a needle in a well-organized, vast haystack.
Astra theme pricing
At an annual cost of only $59, Astra offers remarkable value. Imagine having the capability to deploy on unlimited sites for such an affordable fee. This is akin to enjoying an expansive buffet at the cost of a simple snack. In contrast, many other themes often require separate fees per site, resembling pricey cafes with per-item charges. For those with a budget to spare, consider enhancing your Astra experience with one of their bundle packages, which frequently come with significant discounts, making them ideal for businesses striving for excellence in web design. Astra's policy of unlimited use, whether for a single website or multiple projects, underscores its commitment to providing exceptional value. If Astra were personified as a superhero, it would indeed be celebrated for its 'Value for Money'. Moreover, the lifetime deals present an opportunity akin to uncovering hidden treasure, offering long-term benefits and savings.
Newspaper 12 Theme (Newspaper 12 vs Astra)
Newspaper 12 REVIEW
In our search for the best theme to build a news website, we quickly came across the best-selling theme in this category. The Newspaper theme recently released its latest version, Newspaper 12 or the 11th version already.
The Newspaper 12 theme was developed by Tag-Div, a Power Elite author on Themeforest. The Newspaper theme is made to handle large amounts of content and has a bold and elegant design combined with the power of versatility. Moreover, Newspaper is perfect to give websites a professional look. It can easily be considered the best news theme for WordPress and is an indispensable theme in the collection of new and experienced WP-users in [2024].
Newspaper 12 design
One does not have to be a professional web designer to make a fantastic news website with this theme. This theme is perfect for magazine, blog, and news websites. It offers a multitude of responsive & retina-ready options for beautiful display of your website on small screen devices. Newspaper also allows you to choose how to display your content on desktop, laptop, mobile, and tablet.
The Newspaper Theme is always an excellent choice whether you want a website with a beautiful design, a lightning-fast one, or one that is flexible. It comes with over 90+ great pre-made demo designs (30 new ones since the last upgrade) and a gallery of 1000+ pre-built design templates named Tag-Div Cloud Library.
Import ready-made website demos
With the WordPress theme Newspaper, you no longer have to search and test to find the right design. It comes with many ready-made sites for you to choose from. Newspaper offers you a custom import system, so you can preview a demo and install it with a simple click. You can also load the demo with content or just the design. If you decide to uninstall, the import system clears the website of all demo components, leaving your pages as they were before.
Newspaper 12 front-end
Newspaper has a frontend page builder called Tag-Div Composer. This tool helps you edit pages effortlessly by way of drag & drop. Place the elements exactly how you envisioned it. To make things even easier, you can make difficult CSS customizations with just a few clicks.
Arranging and styling elements is now even easier. So you no longer need coding knowledge to make your dream come true. With this powerful tool, you can build amazingly beautiful pages super fast. Newspaper comes with 22 multifunctional shortcodes that you can use to create corporate, personal, and e-commerce websites. With the Tag-Div Composer, you can work quickly and easily. That way, people really feel like working on their website.
So 1000+ elements, layouts, sections, headers, footers, and home pages await you in the Tag-Div Cloud Library. Just click on what you want. For example, a 404 page, author design, footer, or search page, and import the elements you like from the Tag-Div servers to your website.
Tag-Div composer video
As you can see the video gives to Newspaper 9, but this is the latest Tag-Div video out there at the moment.
Pages and categories
The theme offers a large number of elements and shortcodes, numerous large grid style combinations, ready-made category page templates, and 25 predefined blocks. There are also five Flex Block elements that provide additional flexibility and allow you to publish and customize articles in a versatile way. You can emphasize the "above the fold" section by using large grids that are displayed across the entire width. Your website will have a professional look with its custom features such as image slider gallery, lightbox effects, social media counters, news ticker, video menus, and many different widgets.
The Tag-Div Composer recently introduced a Fonts Style tab that allows you to create custom typography for any existing block or element. You can combine nice fonts, size, or line height. So the process is natural, without implying code knowledge or additional font customization plugins that might slow down your website's performance. Another handy tool is the Translation Panel, which helps you load one of the dozens of available translations and automatically convert a list of strings. Practically every other theme needs extra plugins for this.
Intelligent advertisements
In this Newspaper 12 review, we also observed Tag-Div's modern ad system that allows you to monetize ads without compromising the reader's experience. You can easily earn money with your website by placing ads in the 18 permanent advertising spaces. These are in prominent places such as the header, footer, article, and sidebar areas. Moreover, the Newspaper theme comes with an option to display ads on individual posts or pages, using Tag-Div Composer's page editor and the Single Post Content or Ad Box elements. You can use AdSense or HTML code.
Newspaper 12 review functionality
All options and settings, the plugins, demo sites, and website monitoring are collected in one place, the Theme Panel of Newspaper. Everything is neatly and clearly organized, and all options of the theme are easy to use for every layperson. The Tag-Div Composer is specially prepared for building blogs, news, and magazine websites, and gives you a unique way to create pages, posts, and headers. All results can be viewed in real-time, which makes the editor extra powerful. The Tag-Div Composer offers you performance and reliability.
Newspaper theme header builder
More and more themes have a header builder. Newspaper also has a header builder that is very handy. In the past, people wanted to change their header but only had a few options that just did not work out how they wanted it. Then no progress was made without knowledge of HTML. Those days are over with these skilled header builders who are practically capable of anything.
Free premium plugins and widgets
The theme offers eight premium plugins: Tag-Div Composer, Tag-Div Cloud Library, Social Counter, Tag-Div Mobile Theme, and Tag-Div Newsletter. The theme also features the top slider plugin Revolution Slider and the Bakery Pagebuilder. You can keep your audience informed through the newsletter plugin. It is equipped with eight beautiful standard designs, so that your newsletter is always in the style of your website. The plugin for Tag-Div Newsletter is compatible with well-known sites such as MailChimp, Mailerlite, and Feedburner.
The Newspaper 12 theme has also been tested with the WP Super Cache, Contact Form 7, bbPress, BuddyPress, WP Avatar plugins, Font Awesome 4 Menus, Jetpack, WooCommerce, and Yoast. Newspaper also comes with a custom plugin to help you show off your social networking stats - the Tag-Div Social Counter plugin. You also have two unique social media widgets (Instagram and Pinterest). In addition, the Tag-Div author has created 35 custom widgets that you can easily drag to your website.
Newspaper is ready for AMP. The functionality is already integrated into the mobile-theme plugin for fast results, so you can take advantage of all the mobile-theme functionality on your AMP-pages. In addition, the theme raises standards for page loading and mobile optimization.
Fast charging times
As can be seen below, Newspaper has 10 beautiful load time notes in the main speed tests like those of Google and GT-Metrix.
Newspaper design examples
Newspaper 12 review conclusion
We are dealing with one of the better themes for [2024]. It is not yet in my top 10 of the best WordPress themes, but maybe that will change for next year. Newspaper 12 has proven to be the best theme for blogs and news sites for me. Well there are other very good themes that are certainly close. Newspaper 12 is equipped with the WP Bakery Pagebuilder which is another thorn in my side. This is a good but very outdated page builder, it could be much better. Apart from that, I only see very good qualities for the rest. With this theme you can go in any direction. It is not only a news theme but just a multipurpose theme. The theme costs $59, a more or less standard price for good themes and the theme is definitely worth the money.
Rating features with stars ⭐
| Feature | Astra | Newspaper 12 |
|---|---|---|
| Page Builder | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Speed | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| SEO Optimization | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Customization | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Mobile Design | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Customer Support | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Updates | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Ease of Use | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Price | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Demo Sites | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
FAQs
1. Is Astra better for e-commerce than Newspaper 12?
Both themes are excellent, but Astra offers faster loading times and more flexibility, making it a better choice for e-commerce.
2. Can I use Elementor with both themes?
Yes, both Astra and Newspaper 12 are compatible with Elementor. However, Astra integrates more seamlessly with it.
3. Which theme is more cost-effective?
Astra is more cost-effective as it can be used on multiple sites with one license, whereas Newspaper 12 requires a separate license for each site.
4. Do both themes offer good customer support?
Yes, both themes provide excellent customer support, but Astra's support is often praised for being more responsive.
5. Which theme has better SEO features?
Astra has slightly better SEO features due to its faster loading times and built-in schema markup.
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