As a WordPress user, it’s nice to know you have thousands of themes to choose from—both free and premium. But at times, trying to find a high-quality WordPress theme that’s distinct and meets your needs can try your sanity.
The WordPress theme you choose is critical to how visitors judge your site.
Besides having a major impact on the look of your site, your theme also affects SEO, speed, security, plugin compatibility, mobile responsiveness, and many other important details. These features, along with updates and support, are never guaranteed—especially for free WordPress themes.
Say hello to Pixova Lite.
Pixova Lite is a free and modern one-page WordPress theme from the folks at Macho Themes. It offers a premium-quality feel without a premium price tag, and is ideal for the creative agency or freelancer looking to make a big impression.
Pixova Lite’s Main Features
In July, 2015, Macho Themes released Pixova Lite, a free, mobile ready, one-page parallax theme. While Pixova Lite can be used for almost any purpose, it’s best for creative businesses and freelance sites.
Pixova Lite’s features are controlled through the native WordPress customizer, and include:
• Code-free editing for:
Header with a call-to-action
Pie charts
Recent work
Testimonials
Latest news
Team members
Contact form
Footer
• Full-width parallax header image with text and buttons for call-to-actions. The Pro version of the theme also offers multiple slider images and video for the header.
• WooCommerce compatibility for easy e-commerce
• Parallax and animation effects when scrolling
With parallax scrolling, background elements on the page move more slowly than foreground elements and create a visual effect of depth.
• Faster loading time with single-page format
• Retina images and icons
• 600+ Google fonts to choose from
• Mobile responsiveness that satisfies Google’s search algorithms.
• Translation ready
• Premium version upgrade
Setting Up Pixova Lite
Install and activate Pixova Lite as you would any other WordPress theme. You can get it from the WordPress.org theme repository.
Once the theme’s activated, you’ll be recommended to install and activate the Pirate Forms and Contact Form 7 plugins. And because Pixova Lite is WooCommerce compatible, you can install WooCommerce as well for e-commerce.
After installation, Pixova Lite will be preloaded with demo content and you’ll be able to start customizing it from the WordPress admin at Appearance… Customize.
Pixova Lite can show either a static front page or your latest posts, but in order for the theme to work as a one-page theme, make sure its set to “Your latest posts” at Appearance… Customize… Theme Options… Static Front Page… Your latest posts.
Using Pixova Lite
To set the options for Pixova Lite, go to the WordPress customizer at Appearance… Customize.
You’ll see the following areas that you can customize:
• Theme Options
• Section Visibility
• Section Order (Pro version)
• CTA Section
• Pie Chart Section
• Recent Works Section
• Testimonials Section
• Latest News Section
• Team Section
• Contact Section
• Google Maps (Pro version)
• Pricing Tables (Pro version)
• Menus
• Widgets
Let’s take a closer look at these areas.
Theme Options
Theme Options let you choose settings for your:
• Company name, logo, site icon, and copyright
• Site title and tagline
• Main header
• Front page
• Breadcrumbs
• Animations
• Loading message
• Blog and posts
Section Visibility
Pixova Lite lets you show or hide these sections:
Pie Chart
Recent Works
Testimonials
Team
Latest News
Contact
Section Order
With Pixova Pro, the premium version of Pixova Lite, users can change the order of how sections appear on the homepage.
CTA
The CTA section offers options for your header image and call-to-action.
• Choose one header image or multiple images that randomly appear on each loading of your homepage. Pixova Pro adds the option to show video or slider images in the header.
• Write your main call-to-action text and subtitle.
• Choose the button color and text, text color, and link URL.
• For the three “What We Do” sections, you can enter your title and descriptions.
Pie Charts
Pie charts are good for displaying skills, survey results, or other numbers about your company.
You can set the title, subtitle, text, and a block quote for this area.
You can have up to four pie charts, and can set the heading, percentage, bar color, and track color for each.
To remove a pie chart, delete the text in the “Heading for Chart” and “Chart Percentage” fields.
Recent Works
For the Recent Works section, you can show up to four items, great for showing portfolio items, products, or services.
For each entry, you can choose a background image, logo, and a link.
Each item includes a beautiful hover effect that reveals a “See Project” link.
Testimonials
For social proof, you can enter up to five testimonials. Each testimonial includes the name, text, and image of the person.
Latest News
Here, you can show as many of your latest blog posts as you wish. You enter a title and subtitle, along with the number of posts to show.
To set up a blog page for your site, create an empty page named “Blog” and give it the Blog Template in the right column of the page editor.
Team
You can show up to five staff members, along with a name, photo, social URLs, and email for each.
Contact
Pixova Lite lets you choose between two contact form plugins that use AJAX real-time validation: Contact Form 7 or Pirate Forms.
To the left of the contact form are your contact details: email address, phone number, and street address.
To edit the form, just go to Contact… Contact Forms.
Google Maps and Pricing Tables
You need Pixova Pro to use the Google Maps and Pricing Tables sections.
Menus
Select menus you want for the header and footer locations, or add a menu to any widget area with the Custom Menu Widget.
Widgets
Pixova Lite lets you control widgets for three columns in the footer, plus a full-width column below that.
Macho Themes includes three of its own widgets:
[MT]-About adds “About” text and social media counts.
[MT]-Social Media adds social media icons.
[MT]-Latest Posts shows popular blog posts.
Pixova Lite Support & Documentation
With free WordPress themes, you may or may not get good support. After all, theme developers usually spend the majority of their time supporting their paying customers.
That’s why it’s important to find a theme that offers good documentation and is easy to use.
Thankfully, Pixova Lite’s documentation is clear and concise. Using the theme, I found I didn’t need to rely on the documentation very much because the theme’s easy to control through an integrated options panel. In fact, it’s likely you’ll quickly grasp how to use the theme just by playing with it.
That said, there’s information the documentation provides that may be hard to come by otherwise. For instance, it gives recommended image sizes, as well as instructions on creating a child theme so you don’t lose custom changes when updating WordPress.
And from within the theme options panel, you’ll find links to “Get theme support” and “Theme Documentation”. These links lead to a contact form, theme customizer help, FAQs, and common issues.
Pixova Pricing
Pixova Lite is a WordPress theme that’s free to download and use from the WordPress.org repository.
However, Macho Themes has a pricing plan for the premium version of the theme, Pixova Pro, that includes extra features, such as:
• Unlimited sliders and carousels
• Pricing tables
• Inbuilt SEO options
• Google Maps
• Section ordering
• E-commerce templates
• Priority support
Pixova Pro has three price points:
Starter Package: $55
Access to Pixova Pro for use on one domain, with one year of updates/support.
Pro Package: $79
Access to all themes for three domains (they currently have six themes), with two years of updates/support.
Macho Membership: $129
Access to all themes for unlimited domains, with lifetime updates/support.
Conclusions & Recommendations for Pixova Lite
Pixova Lite is a nicely designed, modern one-page WordPress theme that includes a gorgeous parallax effect. Its beautiful animations introduce the site’s different sections and give a dynamic feel to the theme.
After giving it a good look, I can recommend it as an excellent option if you’re looking for a free WordPress theme that’s clean, modern, mobile ready, and eye-catching. It has the feel of a premium WordPress theme, without the extra cost, and currently has 4000+ installations and a four start rating from the WordPress repository. You can find Pixova Lite here.
My recommendation is to give it a test drive and see if it meets your needs—especially if you’re a creative agency or freelancer. And if down the road you need extra features, support and updates, you might consider upgrading to Pixova Pro.
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