Astra, the only WordPress theme that has exceeded one million downloads without being one of the default themes, has incorporated a number of improvements in its version 3.0 that will continue to position it as the fastest WordPress theme.
The new features brought by version 3.0 of the Astra theme are amazing, and I’ll summarize them for you:
- Improvements in the loading time of the customizer (more than 70% faster).
- Improvements in the loading speed of the web (more than 50% faster).
- New visual layout of headers and footers.
Shall we see them in detail?
Faster customizer
With the previous updates of Astra the customizer was already optimized, but the developers of the theme have gone even further beyond.
With the arrival of Astra 2.6 they revised the customizer code and started using React JS. The change was to make it faster and more scalable. But with version 3.0 they have introduced deferred loading in the customizer, thereby reducing the customizer load times from 3.5 seconds to 1 second.
This is a 70% improvement in customizer load times.
Faster Websites
Although the Astra theme has always been fast, it is now even faster.
Astra 3.0 has reduced the load time of all pages by reducing the amount of HTML delivered to the browser, removing unnecessary lines of code, as well as optimizing the CSS code.
Reducing HTML and CSS improves page load times by up to 50%.
The test is simple, just do a speed test before upgrading from Astra 2.6.2 to Astra 3.0…
Upgrade Astra to version 3.0 and retest…
Not only do they improve page load times, they also improve Core Web Vitals readings.
New visual layout of headers and footers
Astra’s header/footer layout is a powerful new way to visually design headers and footers for your website.
With it you can give a creative look to your headers/footers with less effort and without having to know how to program.
Enabling this new feature in the Astra theme settings will add advanced options to the Astra customizer, where you can create stunning new designs and it works very easily.
You can modify any element of the header or footer, add new ones, move them, change their design, appearance, and much more.
And that’s in the free version of Astra, because with Astra Pro you have many more design settings and elements to add to your headers and footers.
Want to see how it works and how easy it is to visually customize, with zero programming knowledge, your headers and footers?
With WordPress still a long way off from full site editing functionality, Astra’s visual header and footer layout offers incredible fluidity and simplicity.
Astra is right now a theme that meets all the requirements to succeed:
- Fast loading
- Full customization of your website without having to write code
- Customization on every post or page without the need to know how to program
Read this post in Spanish: El tema Astra mejora la velocidad de carga un 50%
