Astra vs Twenty Twenty-Two comparison [2023] 💥
ASTRA THEME (2022 vs Astra)
WP-Astra is the fastest Wordpress theme ever made...
In this Astra Theme review for [2023], I'll be the first to tell you that 2.369.964+ people entrust the health of their website to Astra. The Astra Theme was specially built from scratch to be able to build the most beautiful shops and more importantly, it had to load very fast. The Astra team has started a highly successful theme with this which is becoming increasingly popular. The only theme that stands up to speed against Astra is Generatepress but imposes it all other fronts against Astra.
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The faster your website, the higher it ranks in Google, the longer visitors stay on your site and there are many more benefits associated with it. Speed is very valuable today. With Astra you are in professional hands in that regard. Web shops also have to be fast, which results in more turnover. Let's start with that because Astra is built to build beautiful super fast charging shops with it.
ASTRA FREE & PRO: RATING
If we check on Wordpress.org Astra's rating, we see that practically all raters gave 5 stars on a couple of haters after that. The image above also shows that the free theme alone has already been installed on more than 1 million websites. Together with the pro version, that goes above 1.6 million.
ASTRA WEBSHOPS
Astra is optimized to achieve more conversion for your shop and generate more sales. A shop made with Astra is just much faster than with any other theme. Here on the Astra website you can see how this was tested against 50 other top themes by SEO- experts.
On the above-mentioned page you will also find all information about Astra + Woocommerce. A fast-loading webshop is not only appreciated by your visitors, but also by Google. This brings your shop higher in the SERP of Google and this attracts extra visitors. Your visitor numbers and their appreciation therefore increase exponentially.
Astra offers great possibilities to style your shop exactly the way you want without any technical knowledge being required. A few years ago this was unthinkable. Ok you can install all existing Woocommerce plugins without worrying about compatibility issues.
Furthermore, Astra offers a range of modern options for shops that will make your webshop a real success, such as: Infinite Scroll, Adaptable grid settings, Off-canvas sidebar, Quickview, Dropdown cart and more. More on this here. Check out some of the many complete shopping demo sites below that you can install in your site with 1 click.
ASTRA: STARTER DEMOS
As for starter demos (templates), Astra offers a total of 180 complete websites. So these are not individual pages or sections, but complete websites that you can take over and start adding your house style to them. These demos were prepared by the Astra programmers for the 4 different page builders you see in the screenshot below. Few themes offer better demo options than this.
I would also like to say that the theme is not only responsive, but special attention has been paid to create a perfect design and ease of use for mobile webshops. This in view of the increasing sales via mobile devices which will probably exceed 50% next year.
It is also worth noting that you can adjust the complete check-out page, shopping cart and product pages to your wishes, HTML or other technical knowledge is not required. A poorly constructed checkout page can quickly cost you a percentage of your sales. You see, when it comes to E-commerce, the Astra team has thought of everything.
ASTRA: LOADING TIME
As can be seen below, the Astra theme has incredibly fast loading times. Wherever you test, at Google, GtMetrix, Y-Slow or Pingdom, it always scores phenomenally. These are known speed tests and as I said before, the only theme that can match such results is Generatepress.
ASTRA: PAGEBUILDERS
Astra works as a whole with the Elementor page builder...
You can operate Astra through its own panel and the Wordpress customizer, but the theme is prepared to use an elite pagebuilder. My first choice, Elementor, has a free and a pro version. It's great to work with Astra Pro + Elementor Pro as the 2 go hand-in-hand as if they were made for each other. But it doesn't necessarily have to cost you money since Astra and Elementor also have a free version, although unfortunately with a lot less options.
Elementor in Astra
ASTRA SCHEMA MARK-UP
Schema are short snippets of information that the search engines would like us to add to our pages so that they have a better idea of what exactly is on that page. Doing so will be rewarded with a better display of your website in search results. Astra automatically adds Schema markup to your pages for you as they indicate here.
ASTRA + LEARNDASH
It is easy to design and create a website that offers an online course using the Astra + LearnDash integration. Astra offers many design options and features that help you provide a better learning experience. LearnDash lets you create a distraction-free, conversion-focused website for your next online class. Combine it with Astra to discover the many customizations that can be made.
ASTRA + LIFTER-LMS
You can provide students with the best online learning experience by integrating Astra + LifterLMS. Astra gives you full control over the design of your website. You can make it look great and customize it as much as you want. You can create a website that focuses on learning and driving more conversions with features such as distraction-free learning, a conversion-focused checkout page, and many others.
ASTRA HEADERS, FOOTERS, 404
Astra Transparent Headers, Astra Custom Header and Astra Custom Footers are PRO features that allow you to style your complete header and footer however you want without technical knowledge. The same goes for your 404 pages, by the way. You can offer different headers to different user groups in your system.
ASTRA: MORE FEATURES
Astra has so much more to offer, here you will find a wonderful overview with all the features that are available. sit in Astra. Sit down for it because it's a huge laundry list.
ASTRA THEME REVIEW: CONCLUSION
Thank you for reading my Astra Theme review to the end. You will agree with me that Astra is a very special theme that stands head and shoulders above most other themes. I am only talking about the PRO version of course because the free version of no theme can compete with the top themes today of course. I personally work with Astra in combination with Elementor and as a professional designer it is one of my favorite themes along with the Divi Theme which can also be used anytime and anywhere . Astra has no weaknesses.
ASTRA THEME REVIEW: DE PRICING
Astra costs only 59 dollars for a year, you can build as many sites with it as you want, that is not money compared to other themes that are less good and require a separate license for each website on which you want to use it. If you have a little more to spend, supercharge your Astra with one of the many Bundle packages that usually come with big discounts. That is the best option for companies who want to have their business website at the highest level. Regardless of which package you purchase, at Astra the number of websites on which you can use the theme and extras is always unlimited. All in all, Astra is highly recommended and has very interesting deals if you purchase a lifetime package with huge discounts.
TWENTY TWENTY-TWO (2022 vs Astra)
WordPress 5.9 introduces its first "Block Theme" named Twenty Twenty-Two with Full-Site Editing (FSE). This new WordPress theme uses blocks to create all areas of your website, including your header, navigation area and footer. The new Site Editor allows you to create and edit blocks and provides additional control for styling and typography. To give you complete control over the design of your website, a new template system was introduced.
TWENTY TWENTY-TWO THEME RATING
One would almost feel sorry for the Wordpress developpers as they try really hard and come up with new stuff but their themes get very bad ratings. Have a look at the image below and see how almost the same amount of people score it 1 or 2 stars as 5 stars. In total giving it an average rating of 3.4 which is just extremely bad.
HOW START WITH THE TWENTY TWENTY-TWO THEME?
Well, if you have Wordpress 5.9 on your website then you also have this new theme. Just go to the theme section and activate it. The theme has already built up 200,000+ active installations within a few months. Quite logical, since the theme is already in Wordpress, it is of course widely used. Also because people are curious about it.
TWENTY TWENTY-TWO SITE EDITOR
The new Site Editor is used instead of the WordPress theme customizer for block themes like Twenty Twenty-Two. This menu can be accessed via the WordPress appearance menu. The WordPress theme customizer may still be used whenever a theme requiers it.
TWENTY TWENTY-TWO TYPOGRAPHY
Twenty Twenty-Two uses Source Serif Pro font to create its headings. It is paired with a simple and easy-to-read sans-serif font. Sans Serif Fonts are amongst the Graphic Design Trends for 2023. The following font sizes are available in the editor for the Twenty Twenty-Two theme: 16px, 18px, 20px, 24px, 40px, 96px, 144px.
2022 REVIEW: BLOCK STYLING
The Site Editor allows you to customize the styling of specific blocks on your website. This is a great improvement that website owners will appreciate. Styling is all very basic though, don't expect to much of it.
2022 REVIEW: COLORS
You can set the default colors for your theme as well as global elements like text, links and background. You can also configure solid colors and gradients. There is no advanced color editor like the ones we find in Photoshop or great themes as Divi or Astra. To be honest it is very basic just like the Block Styling.
TWENTY TWENTY-TWO TEMPLATES
WordPress now has its own template system, and it's integrated directly into the Site Editor. All layouts can be accessed from the pages that contain templates and parts of them.
- Templates This displays page templates like your home page, blog index, search results pages, and archives page.
- Template parts - This shows you template parts like your header or footer
What Wordpress actually does here is imitate all the top page builders and themes that offer hundreds of templates The 11 templates such as searchpage, archive, single post, etc. all represent very little in terms of design. Templates can now also be saved and reused on multiple pages. If these are adjusted by you, that will immediately change on all these pages. This is also something that page builders like Divi and Elementor have been offering for years, and they have a much clearer and better system for it.
TWENTY TWENTY-TWO: THEME BLOCKS
The Block Inserter is the large plus (+) symbol in the top right of the Site Editor or Block Editor. It breaks down blocks into categories like text, media, design, and widgets. WordPress 5.9 introduces a new category, theme. It lists 23 blocks that can be used to create your website design. Only 20 of them can be used in the Block Editor.
These are the theme blocks
- Navigation, Site Logo Site Title Site Tagline Query Loop Posts List
- Template Part, Header and Footer, Post Title, Excerpt, or Featured Image
- Post Content, Author, Post Date. Post Categories. Post Tags.
- Next Post, Previous Article, Post Comments Log In/Out, Term Description and Archive Title
2022 REVIEW: PATTERNS
Pre-made blocks can be added to your WordPress website by clicking a button. These patterns are also called Block Patterns. These patterns were introduced to the WordPress 5.8 Block Editor, but WordPress themes still used the WordPress theme customizer at the time so there wasn't any need for WordPress themes that supported patterns.
Because of its integration with the Site Editor, patterns will be an integral part of block themes like Twenty Twenty-Two. Twenty Twenty-Two has a wide range of patterns to help you design your website. You can choose from unique patterns for your header and footer as well as blog posts. Sounds all very nice but these are things that were invented 15 years ago of course.
TWENTY TWENTY-TWO REVIEW CONCLUSION
It is not entirely clear to me why Wordpress is doing its best with its new versions and new themes to reinvent the wheel. Both the disgustingly bad Gutenberg editor and the new templates are useless because all the top page builders do a much better job on this one. Well, Gutenberg costs nothing, but Elementor also has a free version that is 20x better than Gutenberg so why not just install that instead of tinkering with all the outdated stuff Wordpress itself is trying to offer?
TWENTY TWENTY-TWO VS ASTRA CONCLUSION
First of all, thank you for reading this Twenty Twenty-One vs Astra comparison to the end. These 2 themes cannot be compared. Astra is one of the best themes out there and Twenty Twenty-One is only used because it comes with Wordpress but is best ignored and immediately replaced with a decent free theme as I indicated above or by a good premium theme.