The Total Wordpress Theme by WPExplorer

Today I want to talk about the Total WordPress theme by WPExplorer.

We’ll look at the theme features and talk with AJ Clarke, the developer of Total.

I have been using Total since 2014. Before I found the theme, I was using a different WordPress theme for every site. WordPress themes tend to have limited customization abilities. If you use the same theme for all of your sites they end up looking the same, even with custom CSS. This means learning a new theme every time you build a site. This also means finding glitches in the code, things don’t work right, etc. I have used a ton of themes since I started using WordPress over 10 years ago; Avada and many more. Every time I’m left feeling like “I wish it did this.” I don’t have that problem anymore with Total. It just DOES. It could be the poster child for Nike.

Total is completely customizable. You really can create an unlimited amount of designs. It’s truly insane. The day I installed this theme and saw what it could really do, I nearly cried. Yeah, I know… You’re thinking “Get a life, nerd.” and I DID – After I started using Total, my life literally changed. No more tears of frustration, but tears of joy.

Now, all that said I’m not the type of person that gets stuck in a comfort zone. I assess every website and do what the site needs, not what I want. Sometimes we use a different CMS if that is required. For the most part, most of the sites I do fit perfectly into WordPress. I have yet to build a site that couldn’t go into Total if we’re using WordPress. Let’s talk about why…

Child Theme

Of course Total comes with a child theme. This is SO important. Everyone is customizing their sites now and it’s a problem once you go hacking up the theme code. Using a child theme allows you do heavy customization without affecting the main theme files. Your customizations override the theme settings. By using the child theme you can still run updates on the theme and maintain your customizations. Keeping your software up to date helps keep hackers away. Child themes are a win-win. And the Total WordPress theme comes with tons of useful hooks and filters making it easier to make customizations without having to override actual template files.

Plugins

Total is built to be compatible with the most popular plugins out there: WooCommerce, Contact Form 7, bbPress, Envato Toolkit, Post Type Reorder, Yoast SEO, The Event Calendar, WE Total Cache, WPML Translations, Polylang Translation.

I avoid plugins like the plague. They can cause conflicts and that equals wasted time and money, plus it’s stressful. On every install, I always use Yoast SEO, Contact Form 7, and Duplicate Post. Because Total is so robust, I don’t usually need any more plugins than that. By having a theme that does so much, I don’t need to add plugins to fill the gaps. On the occasions that a client needs something beyond the usual suspects, I have never had a major issue with any plugin I have used with Total (aside from CSS conflicts). Here are some of the plugins I have used that worked great with Total: Theme My Login, Subscribe2, Wistia, Gravity Forms, Gig Press, WP Find Your Nearest, Pardot, Geo Directories.

AND Total includes premium plugins Visual Composer, LayerSlider, Revolution Slider, and Templatera:

Visual Composer is a drag and drop plugin that allows you to use a WYSIWYG editor vs. coding. I prefer the code view, although I have gotten used to Visual Composer and we’ve become friends. I still like to use the code view when possible on things like blog posts. I like to see what WordPress is doing with the code. Me likey clean code.

Templatera is great. Save page layouts as a template to use on other pages and posts. Using the Duplicate Post plugin kind of achieves the same effect, but Templatura goes deeper than just duplicating a whole layout. Let’s say the client wanted to add a carousel of logos or images to several pages of their site. I can create that carousel on a page and then save that page template. Then I can go into the actual saved template and delete everything on the page except for that carousel. Then I can go into the pages I need to insert it on and voila! It will place just that carousel template on the page, which I can drag and drop into place.

I also use Templatera for tricky things like creating a Total button for a widget. You never want to toggle between Visual Composer and the code view. This can mess up the code. However, it is possible to do it for small things like buttons, dividers, etc. Sometimes I want to put a styled button in a widget. I’ll create a template and build just that button in Visual Composer. Then I’ll toggle to the code view and grab the code. I paste that code into a text widget and BOOM. Button is served.

LayerSlider and Revolution Slider allow you to create animated sliders using type, images, and video. Very handy plugins.

Custom CSS

Not only does Total have a site-wide custom CSS section, but you can also input custom CSS on ANY page or post. Yep, that’s what I said. If you only want to change a style on a single page, but not site-wide, you can do it here. You can also create custom classes. It’s truly awesome.

Modules

So. Many. Options. The first time I used Total and I looked at the modules my head almost exploded. Display options for portfolio, staff, testimonials, custom post types, graphs, charts, accordions, video embeds (that actually work), and a ton of other stuff that will make you swoon.

Stable Code

The theme code is ran through code validation and is tested and retested. No one is perfect and there will always be a bug here and there, but I’m talking about a CSS style not being applied to a page title. If that’s the biggest problem I have with Total, then so be it.

Auto-Updates

Total now uses the Envato Market plugin for updating the theme. Works great. You can also update the required plugins from the admin within seconds. It’s pretty sweet. As always, be sure to pull a full back up of your site files and database before running any updates. Just sayin’. :)

Clean, Validated Code & SEO Optimized

Yepper, the code does well here. It does things like pulling in the image ALT tags and all critical data needed for good SEO rank, is Yoast SEO compatible, and WPExplorer is constantly doing everything to keep the code as light as possible. Of course, there are other factors that determine SEO rank like your domain name, page load times (server speed and content heaviness), and the relevant content you put on the pages. Total creates an environment with semantic valid HTML where you don’t have to worry about the code. It is W3C valid.

Support & Documentation

Total has full documentation. There is also a comments section on Themeforest where you can look up issues (this is where the support for Total used to be done – now there is a ticket system). I find a lot of solutions to problems in the comments section. Then I don’t need to submit a ticket and wait for support, or bug AJ and his team for something I can find myself in a few minutes.

If you do find yourself with an issue that can’t be resolved via the comments or by yourself, rest assured WPExplorer will get you fixed up. They answer within a reasonable amount of time and always get me fixed up. Even when I have my own developer working on a custom project, we still consult with support to ensure we’re working with the theme and not against it.