Best Free WP Theme, Kadence (better than Astra)

The best, most customizable, and fast theme to date is Kadence WP.

Kadence WP is a free theme with a massive array of premium features. The customization capabilities are numerous, and although they do have a pro version, a vast majority of website owners will not need it. Features like sticky headers, a universal colour pallet, and customisable blocks for WordPress make it unique from other more commonly known themes. With Kadence, the sky may not be a limit, because some of the features in this theme are not available in premium themes.

Why is Kadence the best theme

It has a fully customisable functionality for the entire theme. Here is what you can do with Kadence WP. You can adjust the layout of your page or from the WordPress editor for mobile, tablet, and desktop. This includes the header, footer, page layout, post title, content styles, feature image visibility, and feature image position.

You can open the customiser simultaneously while in the WordPress editor.

Until Kadence rolled out this awesome theme, I was using Astra, but now Kadence has everything I need for building an amazing website. It is fully integrated with WordPress, and they even have Kadence blocks that are fully customisable too. The theme feels like a premium theme, which is free.

Fully Customisable Headers

In the wp customiser, there are three header rows, and all of them can be customised separately. The header can be made sticky, shrinkable and transparent. You can view what it will look like in mobile and adjust the size of your logo as well as enabling the sticky header or disabling it in mobile.

It is easy to organise your header with the drag and drop feature, and you can add social icons, HTML, primary navigation, secondary navigation, a button, and a search tab.

The colour of the header can be adjusted individually.

Fully Customisable Footer

The footer options were never so generous in any theme I have ever used! You have six widgets, social icons, footer navigation, and social.

You can choose the number of columns and drag your widgets wherever you want them. Change the colour of your footer background and the lower footer for your copyright text.

The footer like the header has three rows and each row has its own column options. Like everything with Kadence, you can adjust your footer individually for desktop, mobile and tablet.

Fully Customisable Page Layout Settings

You can put your heading above your feature image or below. The text of your post can be adjusted to appear over your image and under. You can have one staple feature image behind all your blog posts.

You have five different layout options for your pages and posts. The theme has a unique layout setting for your homepage.

Universal Colour Palette

This is such an awesome feature because now changing the colour of my theme is so simple. No more skipping colour adjustments because you have to check the entire website for manual adjustments.

Every theme template comes with three colour palettes to choose from. You can change and adjust the colour palette to your preferences. There is an article to help you understand colour palettes and how to set them within the palette location.

Fully Customisable Fonts

The fonts are easy to change whether you are in the wp customiser or the WordPress editor. For headers, it is super easy to choose the font of your preferences. You can access the font setting directly from the heading block.

Fully Customisable Logo For All Devices

With the Google update that makes mobile-first for websites mandatory, it is important to have your website logo look good in mobile. In the customizer, you will be able to increase and decrease the size of your logo. All while you can see what it will look like on mobile phones.

Is Kadence Better Than Astra

I do love Astra, and I thought I might never change my theme after using it for my website. Then I came across Kadence and yes Kadence is better than Astra. The company has made many plugins and themes. They are the creator of the Virtue theme as well, which has over 40,000 active installations.

The Kadence theme is lightning fast, mobile-first, Woocomerce ready, fully accessible, integrated header builder and Gutenberg ready.

Kadence has regular updates for their plugins and themes, so do not be afraid of bugs. After trying both themes, I think Kadence is more accessible and easy to use than Astra. The custom features of Kadence far surpass the customisation of Astra.

Kadence Plugins For Added Functionality

There are quite a number of Kadence blocks that are free. Essential ones to note are Kadence Blocks – Gutenberg Blocks for Page Builder Features, Starter Templates by Kadence WP, Kadence WooCommerce Email Designer, and Kadence WooCommerce Elementor. With these plugins, you will be able to build an awesome website to meet the needs of your site.

Note: you should download the Kadence Importer for demo websites. Again this plugin is not available in the WordPress repository yet. However, the plugins mentioned above are all available in the back-end of WordPress.

There are only two issues that I found with the Kadence theme. The starter templates are built for empty sites (but I imported the template anyway and customised it from the ground up, with this theme it’s easy!).

The second issue is that the Kadence theme is not available in the WordPress theme repository, and you have to make a quick download from the official Kadence WP website. Then upload the file in your theme repository.

To do this go to the back-end of your site’s WordPress dashboard>appearance>theme>add new>upload theme>choose the file from wherever you saved it on your computer and upload it instantly.

Some of the Kadence blocks are available in the WordPress plugin repository. The theme will surely follow suit, but it takes time for WordPress to upload it officially.

What Are The Features In The Kadence Blocks Plugin

The following is a list of free and fully customisable blocks that come in the Kadence block plugin. Here is a list of pictures so that you can get a feel of all your options with Kadence blocks.

1. Row layout (columns)

If you want custom columns which most of use do especially since WordPress itself has so many awesome blocks that need a column organiser to put them together.

2. Advanced button block

The advanced button will allow you to easily make changes to your button and customise it according to your preferences. You can customise the background colour, border colour and text colour.

Button customizer options

3. Advanced heading block

With the advanced headers, you will be able to create a unique header. You can choose your font style, height, and colour. The line-height of your header and what it will look like on mobile. You can set it in a different setting for mobile, tablet, and desktop.

4. Icon block

With this block, you can have multiple icons at the same time, and you will have 81 icon designs to choose from. You can change the size of the icon and colour. This block is completely customizable.

5. Tabs block

Choose your tab layout, the number of tabs you want and add whatever type of block you want to the tabs. This is a great block for your homepage, and it looks clean.

6. Spacer/divider block

The colour, height, width and a few more options make this easily customisable. You will have four of the following designs to choose from.

Solid

Dashed

Dotted

Striped

7. Infobox

The info box is one of my favourites. It has six layouts to choose from and it is fully customise-able.

Example

Here is an example. You can adjust the info to your preferences..

8. Accordion

The accordion is awesome for organising information on your site. Add any other block to it and you have four initial styles to choose from.

9. Advanced Gallery

There are a total of seven layouts for the advanced image gallery, but only five of them are available in the free theme. The available layouts are masonry, grid, carousel, fluid carousel, and slider.

10. Icon List

Icon lists are great for encouraging your readers to read on. You can use it to remind your readers of some awesome services or freebies you offer on your site.

first example
second example
third example

11. Testimonial Block

Who knew there was a block for this. It has many features and is easy to customise.

12. Form

The form builder is great because non-techies will not need an extra plugin for this feature. You can add any feature you want and customise it according to what you want.

13. Table Of Contents

The table of contents can be separated into two or three columns and there are a number of customisations you can do with this block. No more setting up links for a “table of contents” because this block will do it for you. The following is an example.

The best part of this block is that it will edit and delete heading as you add or remove them. So awesome!

Final Thoughts

If you want to build your site from the ground up then Kadence is the way to go. It is super fast and because it is mobile first this is the right theme at the right time.

Also beginner friendly easy to customise, and navigate.