OceanWP Theme Review – Best Multipurpose Theme

One of the first things you will do on your WordPress website is pick a theme. The problem is, there are thousands of themes to choose from and many of them hinders the performance and also some of them are not even updated anymore! So, you want to pick up a theme which serves your purpose, is fast (due to SEO reasons) and is well supported.

One such type of theme is OceanWP. It’s fast, beautiful and easy to set up. It is also compatible with page builders like Elementor, Beaver Builder etc. It is also fully compatible with WooCommerce. Within months of its release, it became one of the most downloaded themes.

You will find hundreds of features to configure in terms of speed, SEO and more. As a result, it has racked up more than 700,000+ active installs within a few months of its release. The best part? The theme is FREE to use! The free version of this theme has more features than some popular premium themes.

OceanWP Performance Test

I tested OceanWP on a dedicated server of the following configurations:

Server Configuration

• Ram – 4GB
• Processor – Dual Core
• SSD – 64GB
• OS – Ubuntu 18.04
• Reverse Proxy – Nginx 1.19.9
• Proxy Cache – Varnish 6.0.2
• Server – Apache 2.4.46
• Database – MariaDB 10.5
• PHP-FPM – 7.4

Application Configuration

• WordPress – 5.7
• CDN – Cloudfront
• SSL – Lets Encrypt

Installed Plugins

• WP Forms Lite
• Yoast SEO Premium
• WP Rocket
• Elementor Page Builder

Finally, I created 20 posts (some with images) and started load testing with loader.io with:

• Tested Pages: 3
• Test type: Maintain Client Load
• Clients: 0 to 1000
• Duration: 5 Mins

GTMetrix Test

Importable Demos

OceanWP has hundreds of importable demos. This saves you a lot of time building your website from scratch.

You can import any demo of OceanWP in your website and give it a makeover in a few clicks. All you need to do is select a demo, import it and customize it.

When you import a demo, OceanWP will automatically install and activate required plugins.

Once you have imported the demo and installed and activated the plugins, your website will look exactly like the demo.

ALSO READ: Astra Theme Review

Page Builder Friendly

The first question one might ask is “Why do I need a page builder?” or “Why do I need a page builder friendly theme?”

Well, the default post editor of WordPress is good enough for writing posts or making pages quickly and easily but it can be restrictive at times. That’s why these days people are increasingly turning to page builders.

Although most page builders work reasonably well with any WordPress theme, a page builder friendly theme like OceanWP makes sure you don’t run into conflicts while using a page builder.

Highly Customizable

OceanWP has no limits as to how you can customize your site via the WordPress customizer panel. You can almost change every aspect of your site in this theme via the customizer.

Most page builders only allow you to do limited customization to a post/page headers or footers But, OceanWP has a lot of customizations for footers, headers etc. the way you want.

Apart from the default WordPress theme customizer, you can also customize your theme via OceanWP’s own theme customization panel.

Fast, SEO Friendly and Mobile Responsive

Having a fast loading site is extremely important for SEO and to retain visitors. Here is where OceanWP shines. It’s one of the fastest themes available for WordPress.

Its code is clean, lightweight and doesn’t bloat your website. As a result, the site loads extremely fast. Here is a test result with a test website with the theme installed running on the server configuration as mentioned above:

You also have the option to disable individual scripts/CSS that you know your website doesn’t need or use to make it load even faster. There is clear information with each script to help you decide whether you need it or safely discard it.

Also, the theme looks stunning on mobile devices and tablets no matter what layout you choose.

WooCommerce Campatible

OceanWP is totally compatible with WooCommerce. Its cart and product pages are beautifully designed to attract customers. They are also highly customizable.

In fact, you won’t need many WooCommerce extensions because of OceanWP features which already cover the functions of a lot of WooCommerce plugins.

For example, quick view feature for for allowing visitors to get a closer look at your product is available in OceanWP.

Another great feature is the enhanced checkout process which helps you sell more products. The theme also supports multi checkout feature.

Shoppers can view their products that they add to the cart in real time.

Free and Premium Extensions

The core OceanWP theme is free. But, to add more features, you need to download or purchase free or paid extensions which add more features to the theme.

There are 7 free extensions and 11 premium extensions. One of these extensions will give you share buttons to share your post. Another will enable sticky header and so on.

Final Thoughts

OceanWP is hands down one of the best optimized and light weight, SEO friendly theme. It has impressive performance and it will never slow your website down.

It can be customized to your hearts content and importable demos make designing your website faster and easier.

I highly recommend OceanWP theme and please let me know in the comments down below if you use OceanWP theme.

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