Neira Lite Theme Review

General design

The design is based on the content-box and decorated with straight lines. All the elements are made to be clean, straightforward, but still keep the creativity and modern style of the whole theme.

Other elements

It has the white background color of the content boxes and the black, light grey of the text. Traditionally, they are the favorite color for readable purposes and a comfortable reading strategy.

There 3 default fonts are used here. The author mostly uses Montserrat for the body content, while the title is Benchnine and the Blockquote is Georgia. They are the common and popular font for a website. This use of the font is to make it simple and eligible.

The organization of the header looks really logical and tidy. Plus, to make the header look more outstanding, the full-width horizontal header image is laid under the creative logo.

Header

The content boxes under the header are in a similar-size square. That makes them look symmetric and smooth. Additionally, the animation in these boxes is so lively that I can't get it out of my head.

There is only 1 list style for the blog. But I don’t think it needs more style as the large feature images with a zoom-in effect in the archive post page are already very attractive. I believe that the reader will be attracted to explore your post.

The sidebar is fixed on the right of the page, under the content boxes. No sticky sidebar and banner here. Especially, the dashed line and straight lines are not only used to separate the elements in the sidebar, but they also play an important role in catching the reader’s eyes.

Sidebar

Different from other themes that I have reviewed, Neira lite doesn’t have footer columns. There is only the copyright text in a white bar at the bottom of the page. However, looking at the benefit, I think that no footer column helps the bottom area cleaner.

Responsive

When you use this WordPress theme in different devices. That means the design is still beautiful without any problem in laptop, PC, tablet, or smartphone. You can see the responsive design checked by ami.responsivedesign.is.

The responsive design checked by ami.responsivedesign.is.

You can find this theme in the Wordpress.org library and install it normally. After installing, it needs no enclosed plugin. So even if you don’t have knowledge about technology, you can use it immediately.

The 1-click demo import is not there. If your website is just new without content, after you activate the theme, it will be blank. Don't worry because the manual set up is very easy. You just need to go to the Customizer and do all the necessary stuff there.

This theme supports Jetpack so you can have more features like social button, like button.

There are not many modifiable sections in this theme. I think it’s also an advantage as a beginner like me don’t need to worry about setting up so much. Plus, by using the Customizer, you can easily customize all the changeable features.

There are diverse custom colors for you to make your website extremely colorful and creative. I tried changing all the colors in the color option so that you can see the modification here

Customizing color

Unlike the color, there is nothing to deal with the font and size. Yet I think they are fine and you don’t need to require any change.

Like almost every other WordPress theme, you can use and set up a background image for the layer behind the content boxes. This image helps you have a beautiful and stunning site.

Customizing background image

Then I want to talk about the social linking icon. They provide you with 6 most popular social linking to show in the top menu. I think this may be a con for the users. Provided that you have another social site and want people to connect with it, for example, Google Plus, it’s impossible to add.

Social media setting customization

Secondly, it’s optional to on/off the content box option. They give you just 3 posts here. But I think it’s enough to show off your prominent content.

Customizing content boxes

Next, there are many modifiable sections for the archive post page and single post page. But I don’t know why the posts here are shown with the full content. I tried to reduce the length of the excerpt but it doesn’t work. That makes the archive page too long and prevents the reader from skimming the content of your blog.

The excerpt length option doesn't work

Lastly, the sidebar has only one fixed position on the right of every page. You can’t even enable or disable it. All the basic widgets are rendered properly here.

It is an easy theme for even an amateur like me. I can have everything under configure and get used to with the daily using in just a few hours. All the necessary post formats for a WordPress blog theme are supplied and here are some parts that I love the most.

The gallery is an effective way to display all pictures in one place.

Gallery

In addition, the blockquote is put on a grey box, having a different font from the normal text, looking distinctive.

Blockquote

The video is shown this way, quite comfortable to watch without zooming.

Video

I checked the SEO configuration by some special tools. The result is that this theme has not been optimized for SEO yet. So you have to install a plugin to have SEO configuration. The author doesn’t suggest any plugin so you have to find yourself.

I used Page Speed Insight to check the speed. The speed when you use this theme by computer is medium. I see that it's an acceptable result for a free WordPress theme.

Website speed checked by PageSpeed Insight

I find the documentation very detailed and helpful. They instruct users from the general setting to the specific setting with illustrations. I think that the step-by-step instruction is useful to a beginner.

The support forum is only visible for the Premium user. You have to log in and buy a premium theme to receive support here.
The author claims that this free WordPress theme is handled exclusively through WordPress.org Support Forum. But when I used it, there wasn’t any topic created yet.