Education Hub Theme Review

General Design

Well, Education Hub design is like a real magazine, especially when it comes to the box layout.

Review the box layout

So I think that if you want to use this free education theme for a news website, you should use this layout. Besides, this theme was made mainly from straight lines and simple elements and there are also not many decorations or content boxes.

This theme was made mainly from straight lines and simple elements

Education Hub is most suitable for reading and "serious"-looking education or a hub, library websites. And when you need a website to introduce your school, I think the fluid layout in the demo is more suitable as it looks professional and spacious.

Other Elements of Education Hub

Because Education Hub has a simple design, you can easily scan and skim it. The fonts and colors are also simple, yes, again, thus making this free theme readable and help people focus on reading only. But it may be a bit boring because you can't change any color in the theme except for the background color of the box layout.

Next, I am going to review some elements that you can't find in the demo.

The first one is the header image. You can place an image in the header for the whole site. As you see here, it looks quite nice and doesn't break the whole design at all. However, when I used the fluid layout, my image seemed not to stretch out widely enough. The result is the two ugly blank spaces there. That's why I recommend using an image with a proper site.

When I used the fluid layout, my image seemed not to stretch out widely enough

As for the slider - the most prominent element and the emphasis of Education Hub - you should select big-size images because they will be automatically shown with their original size. Otherwise, it will look ugly like this:

You should select big-size images for the slider

Then, the featured images on archive pages are resizable to some extent. The wide featured images look outstanding and symmetrical with the layout while the small thumbnails don't. I prefer the wide images, but it's up to you, just choose the type you want.

Review the wide featured images

Review the thumbnail featured images

Responsive Design of Education Hub Theme

Education hub has no problem when you use it on different devices. Especially, the slider still keeps the original ratio aspect even on mobile so your images won't be crop at all.

Responsive Design of Education Hub Theme

After you install and active Education Hub, your site will have a header, footer, menu, ... like the demo. But you still have to add some special sections on the homepage. That's not difficult at all with the help of the easy-to-use Customizer.

But I experienced a mistake when trying to import the demo file. Although I followed exactly the instruction, I failed to import the demo because of the error with the file. Hope that the author will fix it soon.

I failed to import the demo because of the error with the file

There are not many advanced features in free Education Hub. But you still have a featured slider to showcase the most important content and the social linking to connect to other social sites. The author aimed at giving a simple and easy theme so if you need more features, you have to use plugins or add some functions like a gallery, portfolio, ... yourself.

Actually, using Customizer is enough to deal with almost every element. It has an "old style" interface so I have no thing much to review. Generally, all the actions can be done easily and properly.

However, there are still some limitations to each option.

For example, there is only one custom color, no font option.

There is only one custom color

Or you just can choose pages for the slider, not posts or other post types.

You just can choose pages for the slider

All the blocks from Gutenberg are well-supported and display nicely. You can also manipulate them easily.

Gallery blocks from Gutenberg are well-supported

Review the video blocks display

I tested Education Hub speed and saw that it had normal speed if users access your website via computers. But on mobile phones, the speed is much lower. This theme may not be the reason that makes your site slow, but I suggest that you should use some methods to make your site load faster with this theme.

Review the theme's speed checked by Google PageSpeed Insights

About the SEO optimization, I figured out that this free WordPress theme hasn't been totally SEO-ready yet. Maybe the author will update this feature later or you can use some SEO plugins to improve it.

The documentation is well-written and supplies all the needed instruction to use this free education theme. But I think the author should add a  search tool to enter keywords to make it easier to search for the desired documentation.

Like other themes from WEN Themes, you can receive free support from the author in the Themes Palace support forum. But remember to choose the free Education Hub forum above the Pro one to have the most accurate support.