As I got more interested in web design since WordPress was released, I figured I must not be the only one – and I was right.
Seems like more and more people show interest in this area since developers became more competitive in releasing products to suit the needs of regular users that are keen on designing their own websites.
With WordPress, we get many theme options to choose from, but I cut down my personal choices to only two of them. They are accessible to everybody interested in making websites, blogs, presentations sites or portfolios, are highly customizable and require no skills in coding.
Divi
At the end of 2016, Elegant Themes released Divi, a theme that was well received by the community since it introduced a whole new approach to web design, being the first theme to actually be as elegant and intricate as modern award-winning web pages tend to be, and yet as available and easy to use to everybody who shows interest in the area of web design.
The interface it uses is brand new and takes on a whole new approach to laying the foundations of websites. It does so by splitting the dashboard into layers.
You shouldn’t let its simplicity fool you, because when it comes to variations and complexity of the elements it uses, Divi really takes the cake, being perfectly capable of creating a website just as modern and dynamic as any other.
Moreover, with Divi 3.0, things get easier and better for the person who wants to make a great design for his website.
Once you decide on the characteristic of the already mentioned elements, you can further the customization process using modules, that are similar to the classical widgets found in the WordPress dashboard, but way more customizable and dynamic.
All of the work involved is done by simply dragging and dropping and the layouts available are really varied, so finding one to your liking won’t be hard. To take it even further, it also supports Video Backgrounds, allowing the use of videos in the background or in any other section of your website.
It comes with 10 pre-made layouts, which you can use as presets or you can very well start your own, from scratch. Divi’s layouts are compatible with every device on the market, mobile devices being no exception.
Divi 3.0 introduces a completely new visual interface that will forever change the way you build websites. This front end editor allows you to make changes to your website…on your actual website! Click into a paragraph and start typing. Highlight some text and adjust the fonts and styles. Drag an element and watch it move. Add new items from any of Divi’s 40+ content modules, adjust module settings, save and load items from the library and see everything happen instantly. No page refreshes, little to no ajax loading bars and absolutely no need to “preview” your changes because everything is happening in real time on your page.
I found the prices to be really convenient too – they have a bundle of 87 themes for $89, and they include full updates and technical support.
Salient
Salient presents itself as a very good-looking theme, definitely what caught my attention. It’s responsive and it supports Woo Commerce as well, recommending itself for freelancing work.
It’s even making itself available for everybody that’s not fluent in English since it comes with a huge language pack. In this way, if English is not your language of choice, your native tongue is most likely available anyway.
The customer support is really prompt, and from what I can tell, above average. Another feature worth mentioning is the Parallax home slider since good Parallax slider plug-ins are hard to find.
Salient’s layouts are way fewer than Divi, and its customization requires shortcodes. They do offer extensive tutorials though, both as videos and as written user guides.
Visually it looks really good, and it’s a strong competitor to all the other web creator software available. However, $60 will only get you preset one, not a whole bunch like in Divi’s case.
Conclusion
So far these are the best themes I could find, and I’ve done a fair amount of searching. Ultimately it all comes down to matters of taste and needs since they both are competitive wed designing tools. But Divi’s builder is what makes it number one in my book, since it’s as interactive as possible, highly responsive and never slows down your processes.