Development

In case you've missed our updates, there are many new features that have been added in recent releases. Some of the exciting features include the inline editor with live image resizer and the Google Fonts importer. Editing and formatting text with the Builder is so much faster with the inline editor — just click and type. The Google Fonts importer allows you to host your own Google fonts without having to download/upload the font files manually.

We are excited to anncounce a new styling feature in the Themify Builder – Transform styling. The transform styling lets you rotate, scale, skew, or translate an element. The new styling feature gives you more control and possibilities for layout design. Now you can manipulate the appearance of any row, column, or module without having to use a graphic software or write any custom CSS code. You can move elements around, stretch them, flip them upside down, or spin them however you want it. With the easy to use Builder styling interface, applying transform styling is fun and quick. Go have fun and be creative with the new Builder transform styling feature!

For any users creating a website, accessibility should always be prioritized as part of your process from the very beginning. Themify has put significant efforts to ensure that all of the themes are WCAG compliant, paying special attention to accessibility in theme design. By being compliant with WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Standards), users using Themify themes can be assured that they can build and maintain a website that is compliant with the accessibility standards.

What Is WCAG and Why It Is Important

The WCAG is part of a series of accessibility guidelines which are published by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web Consurtium (W3C) which is the leading standards making body for the Web. An overview of these guidelines can be accessed at W3C, explaining how to make web content more accessible to everyone, especially those with disabilities.

Although we know that the WCAG is the gold standard or benchmark in accessibility, it is also very important to understand that conforming with the WCAG may be required by the law and that site's owner may get fined if it fails to be compliant. The Standard on Web Accessibility in Canada requires the adoption of WCAG 2.0 across its websites and Web applications. The WCAG 2.0 states: "Following these guidelines will make content accessible to a wider range of people with disabilities, including blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, learning disabilities, cognitive limitations, limited movement, speech disabilities, photosensitivity and combination of these. Following these guidelines will also often make your Web content more usable to users in general."

Since the release of Themify v5, we have received an overwhelming amount of positive feedbacks about the pagespeed and performance improvements. We've helped many users achieve a 90+ pagespeed score on their sites, which they weren't able to with other themes. In this post, we will present a pagespeed comparison of Themify Ultra versus Divi, Elementor, Avada, Beaver, Astra, OceanWP, all of which are extremely popular themes and page builders in the WordPress market. We are presenting an unbiased comparison using the builtin features from each theme, without any third party cache or minify plugins. The pagespeed test was audited using Google Pagespeed Insights and we've recorded the whole process, which you can watch below. When it comes to pagespeed, we are thrilled to show how Themify outperforms other themes and builders.

First of all, thanks to those who have updated to the Pagespeed Framework. We've received a a lot of feedback from the release. Since the release on Monday, we've been receiving 400 to 500 tickets every day related to the update. Our team has been working very hard to help everyone resolving every ticket in a timely manner. Since a lot of the tickets are related to the common issues, we would like to send out advice on the best approach to update your Themify themes and plugins.

Finally, the long-awaited framework update is here. This version (v5) is all about page speed improvements, so we called it the Pagespeed Framework. We initiated the Pagespeed Framework because we saw a common problem, all multi-purpose themes and builders are bloated and slow. So we've decided to solve this issue. In the past 11 months, rather than adding new features on the framework, we put all our effort to make our themes fast and light. It was not an easy task as we had to recode the framework plus the 42+ themes and 25+ addons compatibility. Today we are happy to announce the official release!

Why Does Page Speed Matter?

No one wants to see a slow site. Reports show that slow page load can reduce conversions and increase bounce rates. In other words, if your site is slow, your visitors/customers are likely to exit and move on to your competitors.

Slow page load can also impact your site's SEO as Google uses page load speed and user experience as one of the key ranking factors. If your site relies on search engine traffics, using a fast loading theme is essential. That is why we're committed to make Ultra and Shoppe the fastest multi-purpose themes. Most of our demos now score 90+ on Google Pagespeed Insights without using any additional plugins.