Updated WordPress plugin offers over 100 free templates

The creators of the famous Astra WordPress theme have announced an update to their Starter Templates plugin. Starter Templates 3.0 features a redesigned interface that makes it easy to build a website with over a hundred free, professional-looking templates.

The updated Starter Templates plugin is compatible with two popular WordPress site builders as well as the WordPress Gutenberg block editor.

The newly redesigned interface allows a user to design the look of a website before importing the template.

Starter Models Plugin 3.0

Starter Templates version 3.0 makes it easier than ever to create a professional looking template.

The new Starter Templates plugin has a redesigned interface that makes it easy to sample different website color schemes as well as use a selection of predefined color palettes.

This is a brand new interface designed to provide a fast user experience.

Brainstorm Force described it to me like this:

“If you’re asking me about the plugin’s experience and performance in the backend, it’s basically a full-page React app.

This improves the user experience as there is no page load between each step and we are also able to provide an immersive user experience for the user.

In this app, we have improved the search results of existing models so that every user can find a model for their search.

Recommended typography

It also has a feature that provides recommended font typography that helps users build an attractive and easy to read website faster.

I asked the Brainstorm Force team what the recommended typography was.

They said:

“Recommended fonts are classic and contemporary font combinations that we have tried and tested to help maintain the readability of a website. These fonts are widely used and are suitable for any industry or niche.

We often see that people choose a font family for their website with their intuition or guesswork. This allows them to choose whatever they like, something that others have used on their website, or just use a trendy font.

But not all fonts are suitable for a project, and not everyone would understand what typography looks like on different devices.

We believe that every font adds vibe and sentiment to a website. That is why we have listed some effective font sets suitable for any kind of website one could create.

Although this option is available in the initial phase, website owners still have the freedom to use the theme options to change the fonts later if they wish.

Over 100 Free Professional WordPress Templates

The newly updated Starter Templates plugin offers over a hundred free templates. They are designed to look professional and attractive and are compatible with Elementor, Beaver Builder, and WordPress Gutenberg block editor.

This means that users accustomed to editing sites with three of these site builders can easily use any of these templates.

There are also 180 premium models to choose from.

View the website before importing the template

An important new feature of the plugin is the ability to customize a template before importing it to see what it will look like with your logo, font, and chosen color scheme.

The interface makes it easy to upload a logo and preview its appearance in the template.

Brainstorm Force’s announcement, posted on the WP Astra website, stated:

“With Starter Templates 3.0, we’ve made designing easy with powerful search, improved website builder, logo selection, website colors, and typography selection.”

The plugin will not slow down your website

The Starter Template plugin is a fully backend plugin that works on the admin side of a WordPress site. This has no impact on the loading of the pages or the performance of the website itself.

I asked them about the impact on site performance and here’s how they responded:

“It doesn’t load anything on the frontend of the user’s website. Thus, the Starter Templates plugin does not affect the loading / performance of these websites.

We have taken great care to meet performance expectations and only import necessary plugins that are lightweight. Media and images used in models are also optimized for performance.

Starter Templates is a 100% backend plugin. Also, it doesn’t load any JS / CSS or any markup in the frontend.

Starter Models Front End Performance

It’s great that the backend plugin doesn’t impact a website’s front end, the part that site visitors interact with.

What’s great about the templates themselves is that they also inherit the page speed optimizations from the Astra theme.

The developers explained:

“Our main goal has always been to improve the speed and performance of the website. That’s why we created the fastest WordPress theme, Astra.

It goes a step further with features specifically to achieve the highest Core Web Vitals score. So Astra comes by default with settings to use self-hosted Google Fonts, improvements to SVG logos, mobile headers and more.

While starter templates can be used with any WordPress theme, the templates are created individually using Astra and inherit these basic functionality.

In addition, each model is built using fully compatible and lightweight plugins. We optimize the images and test each model to give the best possible performance with what it has.

Starter template library plugin

The updated starter template plugin offers pre-built sites and starter pages, all 100% free, with all the functionality of the main interface. The only difference between the free and paid version is that the premium version contains 180 additional models. Otherwise, the free and premium versions of the plugin are the same.

WordPress Gutenberg Site Editor is a powerful way to build fast and efficient websites. Something like the Starter Template plugin can potentially speed up the process of building a website.

Because it is compatible with Elementor and Beaver Builder can also take advantage of free templates.

Quotes

Read the official announcement of Brainstorm Force

Introducing Starter Templates 3.0: Hundreds of Templates, Millions of Possibilities!

Starter Templates plugin download page

Official WordPress Starter Templates page