Christmas Bell Screenshot

Christmas is coming, can you hear the bell ring from Christmas Bell, a free WordPress theme from Catch Themes? This beautiful multipurpose theme can be used for any blog, business or photography theme. With the vibrant color palette and beautiful typography, the design brings about a warm and welcoming appearance.
Furthermore, the Essential Content Types plugin will support the Featured content, Testimonial, Services, and Portfolio, which are the important features for a business website.

Design

General design

The full-width layout and prominent picture area make Christmas Bell ideally used for an image-heavy blog or portfolio. Moreover, it provides you with one more container layout.

Container layout

It also comes along with the beautiful typography and clean, tidy and bright appearance. The demo is an example of how you can use it for a Christmas event, but this multipurpose theme can be used effectively for any subject.

Other elements

The typography is my favorite part. Amatic SC for the heading and Josefin Sans for the body is a great combination. They grab the users’ attention immediately thanks to its special and unpredictable appearance. That's such a right use for entertainment, music, art, or sports websites.

The color in the demo is warm and so suitable for the Xmas atmosphere. The red header and some special parts take me to Christmas day where I'm warmingly welcomed. Meanwhile, the light blue background makes me feel calm and peaceful. And remember that these colors are unchangeable.

The list of posts on the archive page with the large featured image conveys the image-based content very effectively. Plus, do you notice the thin lines here? Because the typography itself can be seen as a decoration tool, the author uses very few decorations like icons or lines. He's very delicate when just drawing a short line in this part to make it catchier and slimline.

The thin line

There is another layout for the header: the hero image above the primary menu. But I still prefer the layout in the demo as it's familiar and common.

Another header style

The static hero image can be replaced by a video but it's not full to the frame as the image so I still love the image more.

Video background

Besides the Services and Blog on the front page like in the demo, if you use Essential Content Types plugin, there are many more parts. They're all full-width, vivid and attractive. But I find the Slider section looks quite "rough-hewn" with this design.

Slider

The Featured content sections, if you don't choose the image with a similar size, will look quite unsymmetrical as I did here. Moreover, there is a blank margin on the left of this area, making it quite unbalanced.

Service section

Responsive

You can still see this multipurpose theme display beautifully and reasonably in all devices or screens. I checked it by using ami.responsivedesign.is.

The responsive design checked by ami.responsivedesign.is

Installation & Setup

This WordPress theme immediately can be in used right after being activated without any enclosed plugin.

It doesn't have one-click demo import so you have to set up your website by hand to make it similar to the demo. The Essential Content Types plugin is already recommended to lets you have the Services section on the front page. And the hero image is taken from the demo so your page is now as beautiful as the demo without much effort.

Features

Available Features

This is a featured-rich theme with all the necessary features for business and blog. Notably, Service, Portfolio, Testimonial, and Featured content are compatible with The Essential Content Types plugin. This plugin is very easy to install and set up.

Furthermore, the author suggests many useful plugins so you can have Instagram Feeds, more layout for Gallery, and so on...

Customization

You have to use both Customizer and Dashboard to edit this theme, but mostly Customizer. All the works are simple so you can get used to everything in about one day.

The basic things like color and background image can be modified quickly like the other themes. But there is no choice for the typography. I think the default font and size are great and suitable with the main spirit of the theme so it needn't change.

I change the color and see that the background color can be seen only when loading a new page.

Like the other theme from Catch Themes, when you install Essential Content Types plugin and enable the modules included, there are Testimonial, Featured Content, Services, and Portfolio. Before customizing them, you have to create posts in the Dashboard. Then, go to Customizer and you can easily customize them. The number of posts often limit to 20, adequate for you to use, right? Moreover, you are able to enable them on different pages. For example, I customize the Featured content

Customizing feature contents

Nonetheless, I meet a problem with the Service section. It's when I choose the items, they are the different posts from what I created.

Customizing Services in the Customizer

Different posts of Services - Review WordPress theme Christmas Bell

The different posts of Services in the Dashboard

There are only 4 items for Post Slider and I expected more than that.

Customizing Slider

The Hero content section allows you to choose one page. Your page should have featured images and a few texts because it will display the whole content of your page.

About me

It's unlimited to choose which media links to show and the number of them.

Customizing social media

The most incredible thing in the Customizer is the Reset all section. With only one click, everything can turn back to the beginning quickly. That can save time and effort.

Reset all settings

Lastly, there is only one matter when I choose the header layout. I find no difference between "Before primary menu" and "After primary menu".

Customizing header layout

Everyday Use

Speed & SEO

Documentation

Support

The Verdict

The amazing feature of Christmas Bell is its multiple purposes. This versatile free WordPress theme can absolutely help you resolve all the issues about your blog, business, or portfolio by its extraordinary features and ease-of-use.

Perhaps, the design is most suitable for a website for entertainment, sport, or art. It's one of the most adorable, creative and pretty themes these subjects. Moreover, this theme is responsive to all devices and ready for SEO.

Customization is not the difficult work, but you may spend some time to get used to with the Dashboard, Customizer, and the other supported plugins. The speed still needs more work to be optimized.

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