Uncode Lite Theme Review

General design

The default full-width layout of this theme gives out a sense of being so free and open, combined with the straight lines used in the design to make this theme simple, clean and spacious. Besides, this theme has grid-based structure to help the reader quickly scan all the content on the page. Especially, it has a landing page to show all the integral features of a business website in different styles, and all the styles look extremely professional, clean and creative.

Other elements

The main color of the theme's demo is the common light grey, white and black, and some blue parts, which are the trendy color scheme giving a professional and modern look. As for the typography, the author uses up to 4 different fonts for the heading, title, body, and menu. The fonts in the demo are san-serif with solid style, making the text readable and pure. But if you want more difference and creativity, you can choose another color scheme and font in the Customizer.

If I review every element of the design, this WordPress theme review will be very lengthy. So, I will just focus on the factors that I think most special and beautiful.

One of the prettiest elements is the full-width header image with the lively parallax effect. It contains the custom title and button to effectively express the spirit of the whole site. Moreover, the image lies in a very reasonable position: under the header, which is very straightforward and tidy to shed light on the header image. There is only 1 style for both of them as in the demo and this style is good enough so I don't think any change is necessary.

On the other pages, the header image is still full-width despite being not as big as it is on the homepage. But this feature belongs to the pro version only.

The homepage displays all the features very well. They have the grid-based structure organized very logically. Particularly, my favorite part is the portfolio, which is embellished by the animation when hovering. This animation helps to give the spotlight to the images as well as making this area more creative and eye-catching. One more special thing about this area lies in the same-size featured image. It will automatically resize the image to make the portfolio area so balanced.

Moving to the blog page, you can see that the posts are shown in a list. Here lies the sidebar on the right. And it would have nothing to say if the sidebar and posts didn't look that beautiful. Thanks to the icons and short straight lines, the design is decorated to be more attractive and distinctive.

The decoration on the archived post page

How about the single post page? I'm quite sure that you will be willing to read even a long post as this page is well-organize, tidy and readable. Lastly, the bottom is even very catchy with the colorful social sharing icons.

Single post page

Responsive

If you often use different devices, you will be satisfied that this theme is displayed nicely and reasonably in every device without mistake. Especially, the header image is still beautiful even in the tablet and smartphone. You can see the responsive design using ami.responsivedesign.is

The responsive design checked by ami.responsivedesign.is.

This free WordPress theme is user-friendly so you don't need any enclosed plugin or do anything to make it run. However, after you install Uncode Lite, you have to do something to make your page look like the demo as there is no 1-click demo import. The work of setting up may take time, for example, customizing the Portfolio, About section, Service, Google Map section. However, don't be so worried. The Customizer will help you handle it so you just need nearly 1 hour to get everything configured.

The author recommended many plugins for you to have more features such as Instagram Feed ( compatible with AccessPress Feeds For Instagram plugin), Testimonial (compatible with Testimonial WordPress Plugin), or social sharing (compatible with Social Share WordPress Plugin). Furthermore, this free WordPress theme supports the WooCommerce plugin but the author doesn't include it in the recommended plugin so you have to find yourself. It's a popular and easy-to-install plugin that you can quickly find in the WordPress plugin repository.

Besides the basic things like color, background image, header image or sidebar, footer widgets, this theme has many other important custom features. All of them can be editable in the Customizer, except for adding the testimonial (if you already install the recommended plugin to have this feature) in the Dashboard. Almost all the changes can be easily applied in the right way, but I still find some parts needing more time to know how to custom.

The basic features like color, the background image can be easily changed to make the website more creative and distinctive.

Customizing color

Meanwhile, the header banner image on the homepage has more sophisticate sections like adding title and text to the button. You can simply still add any text you want on the image.

Customizing header image on the homepage

Then, there are only 5 designated social media for you to add on the footer here. I think that there should be more than 5 sections or at least, the author should provide 5 custom RSS so that users can add whatever link they want.

Customizing social media

Next, the typography can be modified by choosing another font. But the list of the font is quite short, having a few basic fonts. I don't mind with the small number of font types, I just wonder why the Section Title Fonts can't be rendered properly. Because after I choose another font for this position, I see no change anywhere at all.

Customizing typography

Now, I will focus on the homepage sections where you can enable/disable each section.

HomePage settings

It's very easy to select a page or a category in the given list to show for each part. The only thing you should know is how to add the title for these sections. The code is: <span>Titile</span>. Overall, you just need to read these sections carefully to know whether post, page or category are allowed to add as well as the maximum number of post/category/page to show. These number is limited depending on different section but I think it's enough to use for a free WordPress theme.

Again, I have some notes for some of these sections. First, the Feature gives you 4 sections and I advise you to add enough 4 sections. Otherwise, this area will have a blank space on the right and look quite empty.

Features sections

Secondly, the Google Map section doesn't have the track to add a shortcode. It can be both advantage and disadvantage. The advantage is that you don't need to know about coding, just add the Google Map address to one page and select this page to display. On the other hand, it will take your time to learn how to display the map here.

Google Map section

In this WordPress Blog theme, you have all the necessary post format to write diverse kinds of post. Here are some formats that I tested.

The blockquote is bigger so that you can distinguish it from the normal texts.

Blockquote

Gallery display the images very well although the images is dissimilar in size.

Gallery

Here is the video with the screen large enough to comfortably watch without zooming.

Video

After checking the SEO by some tools, I find that the SEO configuration hasn't been optimized yet.

I use the PageSpeed Insights speed-checking tool and see that the speed of this free WordPress theme is medium. I think it's not excellent but still adequate.

Website speed checked by PageSpeed Insight

You have the step-by-step and understandable instruction for this theme so you can easily understand it. Moreover, the author adds the images with annotation to make it clearer for even a beginner. However, the instruction for some important sections like Service, Portfolio...don't exits here.

In the WordPress support forum, I don't see any official response so I guess they don't support here.