Optimizer is a popular free WordPress theme with a unique customization menu. It’s a nice multipurpose theme with a widget area to customize your homepage content, plus a few custom widgets included. Check out our Optimizer review for more details.
About Optimizer
Optimizer is among the more popular free themes in the WordPress.org directory with over 20,000 active installs. It’s designed as a multi-purpose theme that can be used for blogs, businesses, eCommerce, or any kind of website.
Optimizer is the creation of India-based developers Amplebyte Studio.
Read more: Best Free WordPress Blog Themes.
Features of Optimizer
Optimizer has a lot of customization options available in their unique menu. Here are the key features of this free theme:
Customization Panel
Under the Appearance » Customize menu, you can find all the options to customize the look of your site.
The Optimizer theme changes the standard WordPress customizer menu to look totally different. Confusingly, the menu is duplicated – it’s displayed in light grey on the left, but when you hover over the dark grey icons, the same menu slides out.
If you click on Basic, you can set the style options such as site colors and fonts.
By default, the header displays white text on a very light grey background, so you’ll need to change that to make it legible. You can do that by clicking on Header » Site Title & Logo.
Homepage Image
Navigate to Appearance » Customize » Front Page » Slider and you can change the image for your homepage.
It’s not actually a slider — that feature is only available in the Pro version.
With the free Optimizer theme, you can only have one static image. The image, text, and buttons can be customized.
Footer Options
Under Appearance » Customize » Footer » Footer Style and Copyright Area, you can change the colors and footer credit text.
Post and Page Options
In the Appearance » Customize » Post & Page menu, you can choose all your options for displaying your posts and pages.
Click on Post & Page Style, and you can set the colors for the titles, links, and sidebar widgets.
For posts, you can choose to enable or disable the post meta information, next and previous post links, and comments.
Pages can have a page header background image, and you can choose between two different layout for your category and archive pages.
Some settings listed here, such as the Contact Page Settings and Social Share Buttons, aren’t actually available — you must purchase the pro version to access them.
Social Media Icons
If you navigate to Appearance » Customize » Miscellaneous » Social Links, you can add up to five social media links to appear in the footer or header.
A nice feature is the automatic detection of the social media platform — the theme detects the site from the URL and automatically uses the right icon.
3 Widget Areas and 4 Custom Widgets
Optimizer comes with three widget areas:
- Right Sidebar: displays on the right side of all posts and pages
- Frontpage Widgets: add up to 4 widgets to the frontpage
- Footer Widgets: displays at the bottom of every page, with 5 columns
If no widgets are placed in the Frontpage Widgets area, it will display a list of your recent blog posts instead.
The Optimizer theme also comes with four custom widgets, meant for use in the Frontpage widget area.
The About widget displays stylized text with pre-header, header, and content area. You can choose from several divider styles and customize the colors.
The Advanced Text widget is a text editor with extra options.
The Blocks widget allows you to display up to 6 blocks of text (in 3 columns). It’s ideal for highlighting features or services.
The Posts widget displays tiled thumbnails of your latest posts.
Get More Features With Optimizer Pro
Optimizer Pro has many more features than the free version, including:
- use unlimited widgets in the Frontpage area
- 4 more custom widgets to use on the Frontpage
- slider and video options for homepage
- create custom headers for every page
- add custom fonts
- use shortcodes for sliders and carousels, video, and more
- add a portfolio
- add social sharing buttons to posts
- …and more
Documentation and Support
Optimizer is well-documented, with tutorials ranging from basics to advanced.
All the articles are clearly marked if they pertain only to Pro features.
For the free version, you can post in the support forums at WordPress.org. The developers provide support for the free theme on Fridays and Saturdays. Most threads are resolved quickly.
If you buy the Pro version, you get access to 24/7 support via private forums on their website.
Our Score
Optimizer is a nice looking theme with a good amount of options for a free theme.
The way the theme completely redesigns the Customize WordPress menu makes it more difficult to use. Because it overwrites the default WordPress design most users are used to, it can take time to learn how to use the new interface, which isn’t as user-friendly.
We give Optimizer 3 out of 5 stars. Here is the breakdown of our review scores:
3.0 / 5.0 3.0 / 5.0 5.0 / 5.0 4.0 / 5.0 3.0 / 5.0 4.0 / 5.0
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