Astra theme introduction：
The Astra theme is not sold on Themeforest but on its own independent site, but I believe everyone is familiar with this theme. For example, we open the backend of our WordPress, find the theme, and add a new theme. In the list of new themes, these are free themes provided by WordPress, including its official ones. We see that the most popular one now is its official template.
The second one is, of course, a faster theme provided by the official elementor plug-in. This theme has no functions. It mainly cooperates with it.
Elementor: Use this plug-in. The third one is that Astra is currently ranked third, but if the ranking behind it drops, you can just search for Astra here. Thus, it can be seen that this theme is very widely used.
Let’s first learn about this theme. The biggest feature of this theme is that it is fast!
Of course, we need to know that if all business themes involve speed, their functions are limited; that is, their functions are not like the themes we shared with you before, for example, Avada Or a theme like Betheme. Its modules are very rich and can meet some of the functional needs of most of our independent stations. However, if a theme is fast, it will abandon some uncommon functions, so if we use it, we can only use some plug-ins to expand this function. What kind of theme should you choose to build your independent station based on your needs? The other is that you have to consider purchasing some commercial plug-ins later. This is also critical, including your performance optimization.
Astra template style：
Let’s take a look at Astra first. The first one provides many templates. Although it doesn’t have many functions, it provides many templates you can import. These templates also involve all walks of life. There are professional Tobs and Tocs, as well as some portal blogs.
The second one is its PRO version. Although this theme has a free version in the WordPress backend, it has much fewer functions, such as the head module of the independent station that we often use, one of its components, and floating; these are unavailable. So after we install the free version later, we need to install a PRO plug-in.
Astra theme features：
Then, we mainly look at some of this theme’s official features. The first is its performance, which it is proud of; that is, its speed is very fast, and its total size is less than 50KB. Normally, the Betheme theme we installed earlier is 9.46M, then Avada is larger and may sometimes reach 40M, but Astra is only about 50KB. Another library that abandons JS is called jQuery.
We all know that our independent war has some special effects, such as our slides and some user interactions, which require JS. Then, JS is used to complete an interaction, and there is a library in JS where some functional modules of JS are synthesized into a special effect called a jQuery library. If your theme uses the jQuery library, you first need to call it, so our speed will be slightly slower. The effect is more brilliant for general themes, and the jQuery library will be called, but this theme directly abandons the jQuery library. In addition, its theme and the code capacity are very small, so its speed is undoubtedly faster.
Even if you use this theme with some performance optimization plug-ins, you may not need them. You can add a CDN at most. This is its first advantage.
The second is its design module, including layout, some translated headers, and some floating headers, which are all included by default. It also includes some super menus, which is its second advantage. The third is the layout of its site, for example, whether our site is full width or box model, including some core models with some settings.
The next one is for fonts. If we want to be independent and fast, we must remember this. We try to call as few external components as possible, including the jQuery and Google font libraries. Our independent website will not be very slow, so here, it provides some customized font modules. Of course, it also lets You choose fonts that Google can use.
The other one is regular. For example, we modify the color background of each module. The other one is for our blog, blog layout, and design for our overall situation. The overall design is for the left and right emissions of our logo, some position adjustments of our content, and our physical control. If you use WordPress to build a toc site, of course, physical control is essential, so most businesses know. The themes all cover tob and toc sites, which means that any theme can complete the construction of any type of our independent website. It just depends on whether you know how to use it or not.
Then, for some Woocommerce content, the other one is integration. For many of the business themes we used earlier, you will find that there will be some integration modules because no matter how powerful this theme is, it always has some functions that are not very professional. So, it must be integrated with other plug-ins, including some SEO plug-ins. The last one is that it has some modules by default, and finally, it has a custom layout and some of its official support, but you must purchase it for official support. Only its PRO version can be used.
Astra business theme price：
Then we won’t talk about the next one anymore. Let’s mainly look at its price.
Everyone needs to understand why we recommend that you usually buy business themes on Themeforest, but Themeforest does not include all the more powerful business themes. For example, the Astra we see now is not on Themeforest. For sales, he sells directly on his own independent website. Why is this?
We all know that if you are the first to sell on the platform, he will give the platform a certain commission, so its profit will be a little less.
The other is that it has to follow some rules on these platforms. For example, selling products on Amazon completely differs from selling products on our own independent website.
On Amazon, you need to follow Amazon’s rules. For example, you need to have a trademark. You may have a logo on your own independent station, and you can sell goods directly. You completely define your rules. They are not like Amazon. For example, you cannot do e-cigarettes for adults, and there are some black categories 5, but you can do anything on our independent site.
Let’s take a look at the cost of Astra. This theme’s cost is relatively the highest I have ever seen. We see that it is divided into two versions: annual membership and lifetime license. As an annual member, the PRO version of the first episode costs 44 US dollars. Buying a lifetime membership costs more than 200 US dollars, which is relatively expensive.
Of course, it also has some other functions. Of course, these functions are mainly for some of its commercial services, including, for example, we saw that the second version includes an elementor extension plug-in. For extension plug-ins like this, You can directly download some GPL versions, which are open-source versions, so even if we don’t buy such plug-ins here, we can still find other channels to install them separately.
The PRO version of Astra is enough for us to build an independent website.
Astra theme installation：
Let’s install it below. The installation is divided into several steps:
- Install Astra free version theme;
- Use the plug-in provided by Xuejianzhan.com to activate the Pro version;
- Install the necessary plugins for the theme;
Astra free version installation：
First, let’s install the free version. If you don’t see it in the rankings, just search for this theme directly in the search results and bar. We will click on the first one found.
After installation, we will activate it directly. Here, we need to explain to you, especially for some foreign business themes, that sometimes, when you install it, download its necessary plug-ins, or even import its data, we must conduct scientific Internet access. If you cannot upload or import, you need to open an external network environment now. Otherwise, in the local environment, for example, Google Fonts cannot be opened in China, so at this time, you may have failed to download it, so please check it out.
After the installation is successful, we can see the Astra function button on the side. We click to enter the dashboard, where we can see that you are welcome to use it.
It also has some installation videos. The English version has some free functions that it comes with by default. For example, we can set our site icon, our header page and bottom construction, and some color and font changes. But for the following, we see some PRO logos, and we cannot open these modules.
Astra theme Pro version activated：
Next, we must install the PRO version, perform PRO activation, enter our plug-ins, and click Add New. We have prepared some necessary plug-ins for such a theme on our computer desktop, including the Chinese package.
We see that there are three plug-ins here. The first is its PRO version, the second is for its atlas, and the third is for one-click data import from its site. You can install it according to your needs. We first install its PRO version, then install the first installation, open it, and install it directly.
After the installation is successful, we activate this plug-in and go to a function panel like Astra. In the dashboard, we can see that all the following functions are open. We can activate them with one click, and you can also activate them according to your needs. Here, we will activate them with one click. After successful activation, you can call these settings.
So, the gray ones below are their test versions. The PRO version is not open, so we can not use it. After the Astra theme is activated, the next step is to import its style according to our normal business theme use.
Astra theme template style import：
We see that the third button is to start importing styles, but it prompts that we cannot import currently because we are missing a plug-in for data import, so we enter our plugins again – Add new, then upload the plug-in and select ours. Astra-pro-sites plug-in in the plug-in package, and then click to open the installation. After the installation is successful, we then activate the plug-in. Now, it will take us directly to such a data import interface.
Another plug-in, Astra-portfolio, is our atlas, so if you need it, you can add it. If you don’t need it, you don’t need to install it. We won’t install it here for now because the atlas refers to our cases or some projects; if we don’t have such content, we don’t need to add it.
Let’s take a look at its data import process. Here, we see that each template style supports three-page builders. The first one is WordPress’s default Gutenberg editor. Of course, WordPress’s default Gutenberg is also developing, and it also has many extension plug-ins. It is currently the fastest way because it directly uses the original page-building module of WordPress, but this is relatively not visual. Therefore, for many people, it is not particularly convenient to use. We will also explain its use for this module later.
The second one is the Elementor, which we are very familiar with.
We rarely use the third-page builder because the usage rate of this module on the market is relatively low, so it is more troublesome when we encounter problems or want to make some functional extensions, so we use the middle elementor, which is also a page builder that currently matches the Astra theme.
We choose the element in the middle, so we directly enter one of its data interfaces, which contains various functional templates, including the style design of the entire site. We also base it on our own needs, for example If you are building a TOB site, you choose business and then find the style you want. If you are building a store, you choose online store. We choose online shop. There are many TOC sites. We can choose a style. Of course, we can also preview and find one that matches your needs. A theme style with a relatively high degree of popularity, and then import it.
We see here that it also has a PRO, but this PRO can also be imported because our plug-in is the GPL version of the open-source version. For example, we now want to import a cosmetic style interface, but you can also use women’s clothing style, which is available. For example, there is women’s clothing here. Let’s import one of the cosmetics and then click OK. After clicking, we can simply preview whether this theme meets our style.
If you feel this preview is not comprehensive enough, just go to its official website, find its Templates module, select the style you want here, find a style, and then preview it.
Here, we will look directly at this place. If you think it is okay, then you can upload a logo. Of course, you can also upload the logo later. Here, we will just skip it in one step, skip, and continue. Then, you can also make some color settings according to the style of your site. We will skip the same and continue.
Okay, then we enter the last step. In the last step, it will collect your information. You can fill it in or not.
The following is what it needs to import. For example, the first one is to import the settings of our theme, modules, some necessary plug-ins, data content, and some other data. We check them all. Check the box. After selecting, you can fill in the above content or not, then click Submit and start building our websites, which is our independent station. Here, we have to wait a moment for him to successfully import all the data plug-ins.
When he prompts that the import is successful, we can go directly to this location and then return to our homepage to refresh.
Now, we see that our independent site has been imported into its demo style. This is a toc site that sells cosmetics. The menu above includes some products below. When we click on a product, we can see the product. Style, of course, the data it imports may be a little irregular, but that’s okay. We can modify this page later, but its speed is relatively fast.
In addition, some other pages of our independent site, such as the About page, contact page, etc., have been imported for us. This way, we can modify them to our own content later, which will be more efficient. This is Regarding the installation, activation, and data import process of the Astra theme.
