Elbrus is a multipurpose WordPress theme designed for the business and marketing niches. It was developed by Templines and released on TemplateMonster as the developer's debut template for the marketplace. Let's pick this beautiful multipurpose theme apart and see where it shines as a business theme and flexible WordPress theme in general.
Elbrus Features Overview
Elbrus is, by definition, a multipurpose business theme, which means it can be used for a variety of different business and marketing purposes. Most of its demos are designed to showcase the skills and talents of companies and individuals, but it does have at least one demo geared toward ecommerce. Here's an overview of the Elbrus theme’s best features:
- Visual Composer - This multipurpose theme comes bundled with the premium page builder plugin Visual Composer. It also uses this plugin for its demos.
- Slider Revolution - This theme also comes bundled with the premium slider plugin Slider Revolution to put your valuable content and company message in spotlight.
- Six Demos - Elbrus comes with six homepage demos, one of which, as explained earlier, is a dedicated shop demo for creatives to sell products and merchandise.
- Social Media - Social-sharing buttons and buttons for your social media profiles are built in.
- Comment System - A comment system is built in and integrates with the Elbrus theme’s design seamlessly. This is ideal to interact with your target audience.
- Google Fonts - This theme comes with Google Font's library of over 600 web-friendly fonts.
- Optimized - This theme was designed with speed, user friendliness and SEO in mind.
Let's get into how it feels to actually install and use the Elbrus theme.
Installation & Setup of Elbrus
Installing the Elbrus theme from TemplateMonster is straightforward. You'll need to start off by extracting the folder you downloaded from TemplateMonster before opening the folder simply labeled "theme". All you need to do is upload and install the elbrus.zip file inside your WordPress dashboard as you would do with any other WordPress theme, and activate it.
An unzipped version of the theme is also available to install via FTP if the ZIP folder version fails to install correctly. You'll even find a file labeled elbrus-child.zip, which gives you a ready-to-use child theme to install if you want to make code modifications safely. This is a nice addition as many theme developers leave this up to the user. It's just a matter of installing the required plugins after that.
However, I would definitely call the number of third-party plugins this theme relies on a drawback. I recommend going back through the list of plugins to see which ones you truly need after building your website. For example, there's no reason to keep the MailChimp plugin installed and activated if you or your client doesn't use this company as your email marketing service.
Importing a Demo
There are three different ways to import a demo of the Elbrus theme. The developers favor the methods in the following order: All-in-One Method, One-Click Method and Default Method.
The All-in-One method requires the All-in-One WP Migration plugin, and you need to download the Elbrus demo content from Dropbox. The migration process overwrites your database files, so it should only be used on a new server with a clean WordPress installation.
The One-Click method is, as you can probably tell from its name, the simplest method. All you need to do is hover over Appearance, click Import Demo Data, and import the demo content.
Unfortunately, you'll import every demo that comes with Elbrus, which can create a bit of work when you need to delete the content you don't need. Last but not least, the Default method requires you to use the Import tool built into WordPress, which is known for being a bit buggy nowadays.
There are also a few additional steps you need to take after you import the Elbrus demo. First, if the demo you choose relies on the Slider Revolution plugin, you'll need to import the slider content separately. You'll also need to select a menu, select a blog page and configure your footer settings.
Live Theme Customizer
Elbrus has no theme options page. You'll control everything from the live theme customizer instead. The first few sections are fairly straightforward. They allow you to upload a logo, upload and configure a header, select basic color (style) settings, and set up your footer's appearance.
The Blog section allows you to choose whether or not your blog has a sidebar and where it should be (right, left or fullwidth). It also allows you to turn social sharing and your posts' metadata off and on.
The Portfolio and Shop sections allow you to configure various style settings for these areas of your site. The remaining sections are pretty straightforward. They're mostly sections you're already familiar with, except for the Additional CSS section, which allows you to add your own custom code.
Page Settings
While using the Elbrus business theme, there also are a lot of page settings to choose from. You can choose whether or not individual pages have sidebars and which side they appear on when you choose to enable them. You can also use different logos on individual pages.
Visual Composer
Elbrus uses Visual Composer and Slider Revolution to complete its design, as stated before, but that doesn't mean the developers haven't added their own spin on the plugin. For starters, there are some exclusive Templines-only elements you'll enjoy in Visual Composer if you install this theme.
Widgets
Source: StartupStockPhotos / Pixabay.com
Elbrus also comes with a few theme-specific custom widgets. They include the Flickr Images widget, the Portfolio Categories widget, and a popular/latest posts combo widget.
Final Thoughts: Elbrus Theme Review
Elbrus is a fine multipurpose business theme capable of creating many different websites despite its small package and simplistic nature. The use of demos and the Visual Composer page builder plugin helps to streamline the process it takes to come up with a design and actually build it. It makes it possible for just about anyone to pick up this theme and use it. Learn more and take a look at the demos yourself. If you have any feedback or questions, please let us know in the comments.
image sources
- Working with notebook: StartupStockPhotos / Pixabay.com