Sydney vs Blocksy comparison [2023] 💥
SYDNEY THEME (Blocksy vs Sydney)
In this Sydney Theme review we take a look at the most important features of this theme was launched by aThemes, a professional company that offers some very good Wordpress themes through their website. In 2013 Charlie Livingston started aThemes as a one man company but nowadays they work with 6 programmers.
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Sydney theme review: Rating
If we check Sydney's rating on Wordpress.org, we see that practically all raters gave 5 stars except for a few haters. The theme is also quite well known among designers and is highly ranked on Wordpress.org for popular themes.
Sydney theme review: Demos
The Sydney theme offers about 12 modern demos that can be installed with 1 click. The choice is not too large, but since the theme is still very new, this will probably be expanded soon. Sydney also has 2 special Woocommerce demos from which you can quickly start webshops.
The great thing about demo websites is that they make a quick start. The website is already online but still with the wrong photos and texts. So put your own logo in it, adjust the texts and photos and you are well on your way to having your own website.
Sydney theme review: Webshops
I count only 2 demos for webshops in total. The theme is 100% compatible with Woocommerce, but if you are going to build a webshop then choose a theme like Astra or another theme from my top 10 for webshop themes. One can certainly build a good webshop with the Sydney theme, but there is simply better than this.
Sydney theme review: Speed
The Sydney theme is one of the fastest themes out there for Wordpress and should actually be in my list for fastest WP themes. Only the theme itself without additional plugins with only a well-configured cache plugin produced the result presented above. Check out a demo from Sydney itself and see how fast it loads. Of course you can optimize your website yourself for loading time. Follow this tutorial here.
Sydney theme review: Pagebuilders
The Sydney theme uses its own Building Blocks by default, but is compatible with Beaverbuilder and Elementor Pro page builder, one of the best out there in the field. I also definitely recommend installing Elementor for free if you're going to work with Sydney, but it's much better to buy the pro version.
Sydney: Google Fonts
With Sydney you don't need any additional plugins to have all Google Fonts. Sydney already has this built in as standard and you have more than 600 fonts available. You can set which font to use for each section, it all works perfectly.
Sydney theme review: Widgets
Sydney even offers some top widgets in the free version such as: Contact info, Video, Call to action, Clients, Employees, Facts, Latest News, Services Types, Lists, Social profiles, Testimonials, Skills, Timeline (Pro), and Latest news carousel (Pro). The theme is not only compatible with Elementor but with all top page builders so you can use the page builder that you like best.
Sydney: More features
Sydney has over 200,000 active installs and was downloaded much more often because it is simply a very good business theme for Wordpress. Sydney also offers the following features that I won't go into further: Frontpage Blocks, a very good SEO but unfortunately without Schema MarkUp, 100% Responsive on all devices, Parallax Backgrounds, Crelly Slider Support (Pro), and beautiful Full Screen Backgrounds. If Sydney has piqued your interest, I suggest you continue reading on their own website.
Sydney theme review: Conclusion
Sydney is a very good theme that has more impressive loading times. The demo layouts are beautiful, the theme set up is quick and easy. The theme is also very suitable for building shops with it, although it only offers 2 demos. The Sydney theme is ideally suited as a business theme and is 100% Translation Ready. If you'd rather dig a little further, I'd recommend checking out my list of the top 10 WP themes this year.
BLOCKSY THEME (Blocksy vs Sydney)
Blocksy is een razendsnel ladend minimalistisch Wordpress theme...
In this Blocksy Theme review I quickly show you why this is such a fantastic theme. The theme is suitable for any kind of website, including building blogs and shops. It was created with Gutenberg in mind and works perfectly with it. The same goes for all elite pagebuilders for Wordpress.
BLOCKSY RATING
If we check on Wordpress.org Blocksy's rating, we see that all raters gave 5 stars out of 1 rater after who gave 4 stars. A better average rating than what the Blocksy Theme shows here is therefore hardly possible.
BLOCKSY THEME REVIEW: SPEED
The Blocksy theme is a fast loading theme although it is not in my list for fastest WP-themes. The theme itself without additional plugins with just a well configured cache plugin produced the result presented above. In short, the theme is astonishingly fast. Of course you can further optimize your website on loading time. Follow this tutorial here.
BLOCKSY DEMO LAY-OUTS
She calls the Blocksy theme Starter Sites herself. That is also the term used by Astra, a theme that is even better known than Blocksy and very much like it. Blocksy offers a great collection of these Starter Sites which is totally awesome.
BLOCKSY DEMOS FOR PAGEBUILDERS
The above demo layouts were created with the following page builders: Gutenberg, Elementor, Brizy and Beaverbuilder. Under each individual demo it is indicated for which page builders it is available. Again, Blocksy is similar to Astra which also offers this service on their Starter Sites.
BLOCKSY'S EDITOR
The Blocksy theme uses the Gutenberg Editor by default, which is definitely not my favorite editor. But as you have read above, the theme is just as suitable for working with elite page builders as you would like, which is certainly a good idea.
BLOCKSY BASIC FUNCTIONS
BLOCKSY: HEADER BUILDER
Even the free version comes with a real header builder (picture above). Choose one of the ready-made headers or adapt it to your wishes. Blocksy makes it very easy to quickly create the header you had in mind. The pro version offers a much better header builder and there each of your pages can have a different header.
BLOCKSY THEME REVIEW: MEGA MENU
The mega menu only comes with the pro version and offers nice options like using icons, or complete content blocks (using Hooks). This basically allows you to use any kind of content in your menu. The mega menu also offers special design styles for the menu items.
BLOCKSY: WOOCOMMERCE SHOP
Blocksy is also very suitable for building webshops with it, even the free version. The theme works perfectly with the popular Woocommerce plugin. Wonderful options such as Quick View, Ajax Cart and Gallery Styles are already included in the free version. The Pro version takes it up a notch with Wishlist, Off-Canvas filters, Floating Cart, Off-Canvas cart, Search by SKU and more. Building a pre-fashionable-looking shop thus becomes a piece of cake.
BLOCKSY: CUSTOM SIDEBARS
The same thing I just said about the headers also applies to the sidebars. In principle it is possible to present a different sidebar to your audience on every page. Important, because as can be seen in the example above, a shop page obviously needs a different sidebar than blog pages.
BLOCKSY THEME REVIEW: CONCLUSION
Blocksy is a new fresh theme, very suitable to quickly create a good shop, blog or corporate site. Strong points of Blocksy are the Starter Sites, the Header & Footer Builders and Webshop options. If you still have doubts, check WP-Astra. It is very similar to Blocksy but is a lot more advanced and offers even more options.
Blocksy vs Sydney Conclusion
Blocksy and Sydney are both good themes, and the free versions are certainly highly rated for a reason. But even though both Sydney and Blocksy are also worth their money in the pro version, I have to advise against them both because there are much better themes available for the same money and both themes are certainly not optimal for creating webshops. My tip is buy Divi, the best selling and valued theme in the world or possibly Astra if you want to work with a lightning fast theme.