Avada: Beyond the original theme

When Avada was introduced 10 years ago (2012), it was pretty groundbreaking in the world of themes. Don’t get me wrong, other themes offered builder-like features, and I bought a few, but once I used Avada, its ease of use after a small learning curve made it my go-to. Many of these themes tied you to a rigid look whereas Avada gave you more freedom to be creative. As such, it has remained the number one selling theme on Theme Forest for many years. These days, many people dismiss Avada because they only know it from its earliest inception, and when compared to the likes of Divi, Elementor, and other builders, it was pretty lacking. In the classic theme mindset, Avada is a mediocre theme, but if you are still using it as a theme, you’re making a mistake.

Avada the builder

While you were able to layout containers and columns early on, it wasn’t until version 6 that the real changes in approach started to happen, and Avada started to become a builder and not just a theme. Looking back, those early versions were limited, but the development team started pushing more and more functionality. As of the latest release — 7.8 at the time of this writing — I would argue that as a core builder, Avada is on par with the best of the builders. At the same time, there are shortcomings for those that want more ooh and ah features like advanced animation or setting controls for everything. If you want to build a nice site for yourself or for a customer that uses you to maintain the content, this is a great solution.

Stop using theme features

If you are using Avada and the out-of-the-box theme features like content boxes, testimonials, and blog elements (blog and recent posts) you should consider watching the videos and reading the documentation on the flexbox features, post cards, and dynamic data. These new capabilities make those legacy tools obsolete. Why, because you have little to no control or the layouts or content. In addition to those previously mentioned features, you should look into the usability of sliders and carousels. The team does a great job making them accessible, but in the world of the modern web, they are features that can slow your website down and add almost no return, as visitors will typically ignore them.

Turn these off

In the world according to me, of the 71 core builder options, these are the ones you should disable. Not only will this give you more design freedom, but you will also optimize your site by removing unnecessary scripts and styles. A couple of these are here either because they currently don’t work correctly or there are much better options.

The Core 7

With these core elements, there is almost nothing you cannot create (surprisingly similar to GeneratePress). By default, you should enable these, and anything not in these two lists would be based on your needs. Personally, I would always add breadcrumbs and search to the list of core elements, but they are not necessary in all cases.

1. Button
2. Image
3. Menu
4. Post Cards
5. Separator
6. Text Block
7. Title

Coming in 7.9

Based on updates on the Avada website, the next release, 7.9, is going to address the last core element that has been lacking in the builder era — a menu builder. This addition will make megamenus much more manageable, add a table of contents feature, and improve the vertical menu. Since this is a new addition, it might still be lacking some core capabilities, but since they have taken their time in releasing it, I am hopeful that it won’t seem like a version 1 implementation.