Hamilton Screenshot

Do you still hesitate to choose a free WordPress portfolio theme for yourself? Today, we will suggest Hamilton, an image-based portfolio theme from Anders Norén, a designer and developer living in Stockholm.

Even if you want a showcase of graphic design or just blog posts with plenty of imagery, it still can serve excellently. The strength of Hamilton lies in the simple, minimal design and creative performance that helps to display your images in the best way.

Additionally, it's friendly with all kinds of devices and browser so you can use it anywhere.

Design

General design

The design is minimal and simple because it's made for image-heavy cases in your portfolio. The photographs are very large and outstanding, displayed in the masonry structure super neatly and amazingly.

Other elements

The color scheme is black and white, very simple because the design needs to draw people to the images. Similarly, the font is very straightforward and readable.

Recently, a dark mode has become a trend for websites. Hamilton is in the same line. The dark mode makes it suitable to be used in the light-lacking condition.

Dark mode

As I said before, this free WordPress theme is specialized for an image-based portfolio so there are no header image, sidebar, and footer. This design will help people focus on the beautiful images.

On the archive page, besides the default masonry layout, you have a three-column layout. I think that both layouts are reasonable and beautiful. In addition, you are allowed to always show the titles in the post previews. But I prefer the default style showing the title on hover as it makes the images less glitzy.

Another style for the archive post page.

On the single post page, the full-screen featured post is extremely magnificent. The related posts also perform very impressively in three pictures here. I am really impressed by the way the designer displays the imagery so ostentatiously.

Related posts- review WordPress theme Hamilton

The related posts

Responsive

This theme is displayed finely in all the viewport without any mistake. You can see the responsive design checked by ami.responsivedesign.is.

The responsive design checked by ami.responsivedesign.is.

Installation & Setup

Features

Available Features

Comment
Gutenberg editor
Post format
Multi-language
Infinite scroll

This theme is specialized to show all the post in kind of a portfolio so I think you don't need Portfolio feature like other themes. But if you want to have more interesting ones like social sharing, social linking, Instagram feed, the author doesn't recommend any plugin at all. Although the infinite scroll is compulsorily compatible with Jetpack the author doesn't include it in the recommended tag or anywhere.

Customization

There are very few features to customize. But I consider it as a benefit if the users are a layman since they don't need to spend much time on customization. Moreover, it's very easy to set up your website by using the powerful Customizer with live preview.

First, the color section has only one custom area. Here it has the dark mode that can be activated by one click, which helps you to save your time choosing the dark color.

A background image can prettify your page. You can set it up to make the best fit with the site.

Customizing background image

The Theme Options section allows you to make some changes. I tested all the options and see that they can be applied rightly.

Theme options section

Notably, if you enable the primary menu in the header replacing the navigation toggle, the secondary menu doesn't appear.

Secondary menu doesn't appear- review WordPress theme Hamilton

The secondary menu doesn't appear

It only exists when you use the toggle menu.

Secondary menu appears on the toogle menu- review WordPress theme Hamilton

The secondary menu appears on the a toggle menu

Unfortunately, there is no widget area in this theme like footer or sidebar. I know that the author wants to hide all the unnecessary elements to concentrate on the image, but I think he should give his users a right to show some important widgets here.

Everyday Use

With all the common post formats, I'm sure that you can master the daily use quickly and create diverse kinds of posts easily.

Here is the way blockquote displays, quite different from the normal text, isn't it?

Blockquote

The gallery and single image can be shown in full-width or in the normal style. But I prefer the full-width one as your portfolio relies heavily on the performance of images.

Single image

Gallery

The video is likewise the display of gallery and image if you choose the full-width layout. Now you don't need to zoom in to watch it.

Video

Speed & SEO

I checked the SEO compatibility by some tools and see that this theme hasn't been optimized for SEO well. The author even gives no recommended plugin for this feature so you have to find yourself. I'm afraid that a beginner like me may not know what is the most suitable one for the website.

I tested the speed by PageSpeed Insights. It reports that the speed is not fast, just medium.

Website speed checked by PageSpeed Insights

Documentation

Support

The Verdict

In conclusion, if you simply want to focus on displaying your images, this theme is a good choice. It's also ready to use without any step, even nearly no attempt to customize. That's such a perfect free WordPress theme for a non-professional user or a lazy user like me.

However, it's not a feature-rich theme and the speed still needs work. So I think that you should consider carefully about the pros and cons before using.

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