What is the perfect theme to get your WordPress site started from scratch? A limited one or advanced multipurpose theme for every occasion? We have tried hundreds of different themes and came to the simple conclusion. It all comes down to how easy it is to understand it.
This concept does apply to both sides, the design of the theme it can produce and customization options that allow you to do this. If those two are in balance there is nothing holding you back. And if you are a novice WordPress user, you can not underestimate the importance of these two parts.
With this concept in our minds, we wanted to create something special that would allow lowering barrier for people to join WordPress community. Yes, during this year we have been taking an active part in WP community and feel there is something we must give back instead. As a phase one, we decided to release simple starter theme, available for free under GPL license.
What is Visual Composer Starter Theme
Visual Composer Starter is a great way to start developing your WordPress website hassle free. We are proud to offer one of the easiest WordPress Customizer options on the market.
Visual Composer Starter theme has one of the easiest #WordPress theme Customizers. Click To TweetAt this stage, Visual Composer Starter has the very basic functionality you may need to start your website. This is not the place where you will find hundreds of options, and it never will. The theme will grow over time, but our focus will always be keeping things fast and simple. For everything else, there is a plugin for this. We are not here to compete with premium WordPress themes, instead, we are offering a solid free theme as a starter.
Theme Features
We have started with a few bold statements, but the truth is that you can not evaluate theme by the skill of our copywriters. You want to know the features and options behind the theme, so here we go.
Header and Theme Options
You can customize your site header by choosing between a standard top and sandwich type menus. Define header width, colors, and position to place it on top of the content or make it transparent.
Footer Options
We all love widgets to be placed within footer, with Visual Composer Starter you can divide widgets into up to four column and manage these columns independently. Apart from that, there is a list of most popular social networks to be added easily.
Fonts and Styles
While our theme comes with the awesome predefined style it is obvious you would like to change them. No worries, with WordPress Customizer you can style all headings, paragraphs and even have separate options for button styling.
Responsiveness
We have kept your mobile devices in our minds, the theme is fully responsive and will look good on any device.
WordPress Standards
One of the main goals was to make a theme that will be in a full compliance with official WordPress Codex. Once you stick to the guidelines you are able to avoid any conflicts with popular and well-developed plugins. Visual Composer Starter is a perfect fit for Visual Composer Website Builder per se.
Features and Options to Come
This is the very first stage of our theme and we will be collecting your feedbacks to come up with a clear roadmap for further development. The roadmap of the theme will be public to everyone in order to follow and provide your valuable feedbacks and requests.
Download Visual Composer Starter
Our next goal is to upload Visual Composer Starter to WordPress theme repository, yet this is the process that takes time. We do not want to wait and keep you waiting any longer so we decided to offer it for download via our own infrastructure while keeping track on theme review process as well.
No signups or registrations, all you have to do is click download button bellow. Instead, we ask for a favor to leave a feedback and help us improve.
Nice to see you !
Fresh and clear ! I’m testing for awhile. > http://iwordpress.de
Thanks !
It would be nice to have the easy chance changing the background with a picture/wallpaper …
Have a wonderful time !
By the way: I like this form !
I just found this:
How to Add Different Backgrounds to WordPress Posts & Pages
http://www.wpexplorer.com/backgrounds-wordpress-posts-pages/
When I have time I will try …
Hey, thanks for the appreciation and sharing the info. I think we will add your request to our theme Backlog. We are collecting ideas for our theme roadmap and are happy for any contribution. Do you think the background should apply to the whole site through Customizer?
This Starter theme could be of great use to me! Is it possible to remove the page titles? Also, will you be offering the theme through the WP repository?
Customer Note: If you were to bundle this theme with the VC and offer it through ThemeForest for the right price, I’d buy no doubt (repeat sales too). I love the thought of purchasing a theme done by your group, that specializes in VC compatibility.
Thanks for the cheer-ups! We do have plans to release it on WordPress.org, the problem is that theme review now takes around 3 months so we will wait for it, but in the meantime will offer it through our channels.
As for title, right now you can use Custom CSS (WP 4.7 has Additional CSS in Customizer or you can use Custom CSS in Visual Composer) and refer to .entry-title class to set it display: none;
Forcing page titles is a deal-breaker for me. I can appreciate that adding CSS will fix it, but this is a Starter theme, to “lower the barrier” for newcomers… they don’t want to learn CSS for a basic feature such as deciding what appears as the Title on their page. Good work, but will have to wait for a toggle to enable/disable Title on page, before I can recommend this theme to new WP users.
Hi Scott, in fact you can disable title for the specific pages on the page options, just make sure to have Starter theme and ACF installed.
Hello, starter theme is a great idea, thanks for it! We have some questions / suggestions:
1.) Can you make an otion to insert Google Analytics code?
2.) How to remove copyright texts from footer? (do I have to use a child theme, and edit footer.php?)
3.) There is an option to use sticky menu. It would be nice to select a sticky logo, or automatically generate a 50% smaller sticky logo.
thanks,
Tibor
Thanks, Tibor! First of all, Happy New Year and best wishes from Visual Composer team.
Now to the questions:
1) We tend to leave such things to the plugins, like Yoast SEO has an option to insert GA code (and we believe that every WP site should have Yoast installed – this is the awesome plugin).
2) right now this is the only way, but surely something to think about
3) thanks for this one, totally agree that this could come handy. You would prefer automatically generate logo or option to upload? (a bit afraid that automatic resize can lower quality of a logo)
Thanks,
Raitis
Thanks for your answer and Happy New Year!
– I think that manually upload a sticky logo is more better.
– I see that this starter theme is not compatible with WooCommerce. This should be developed as a default option: https://docs.woocommerce.com/document/third-party-custom-theme-compatibility/?utm_source=notice&utm_medium=product&utm_content=themecompatibility&utm_campaign=woocommerceplugin
thanks,
Tibor
Thanks, Tibor. WooCommerce is on the list (added to Backlog). We decided to go Lean and release as fast as we could, now with the feedbacks, like yours, it will be more efficient to update.
Thx. Would love to get rid of the “warning” of woocommerce also 🙂
We haven’t introduced compatibility for Woo Commerce yet, but this is on our list of ToDo. One of the next releases will focus on WooCommerce. Thanks for your request.
Hi Raitis!
I didn’t find any place to insert Google Analyticks Tracking Code. I found Google Search Consol only. 🙁
Hello, I forgot to write: in Yoast SEO recommended by you I didn’t find any place to insert Google Analyticks Tracking Code.
Hi Tibor, yes, it seems things changed or maybe I was misleading. Anyway, you should check out this free plugin: https://wordpress.org/plugins/insert-headers-and-footers/
We will also think about adding the option to add Google Analytics code via Theme Customizer. In general, it should be left to plugins, but it seems that such an essential option is required within theme as well.
I would like more control over the header height and menu placement. I generally like a lot more control (see Woo’s Canvas) than this theme offers. To get my menu to place at the bottom of the header (I have a vertical logo), I had to put in a margin in the CSS. So now when I bring in the browser width for testing, the menu wraps weirdly. It would be nice if the font size and the logo both just were adjusted automatically to fit the browser width and the sticky situation as mentioned by Tibor. The wrapping of the nav menu just doesn’t work for me at all. FYI: the site referenced below is under construction.
Hi Irene, thanks for your request. I will make sure to book it and see when we can come up with improvements. Does something like ‘Menu position’ in header with options ‘middle’, ‘bottom’, etc. would come handy?
Hi, I just downloaded this theme this morning and I am testing it for a landing page I am building for a customer. I know it is a new template, but I am wondering if you already have some kind of doc available.
1) I would like to be able to resize the header height if possible.
2) Is there any way to add text to the header like Phone Numbers or Social Media Icons like you did for the Footer?
3) If you check the page I am working on, I have added a Slider Revolution, removed the page title by just leaving it blank for now…I saw somewhere here I could use css to do that, I will try. But If you look at my page, there is a GAP between the Slider Revolution and the Header. Is there a way I can make it be aligned exactly below the header in the Row Settings? I tried to edit the the margins and border to 0 but it did not change anything for the gap between the header and slider nor the gab between the slider row and the bottom row. Thanks a lot
Hey Fred, thanks for using our theme! We do not have documentation yet, but we are going to work on it asap. It would be awesome if you could take your time and write down things you would like to see in the documentation.
1) I see, a lot of people are asking for this, so the priority is high for this feature. Thanks!
2) There is a widget area in the header, next to the menu so you can use some text widget, social widget, etc.
3) It seems you already removed it on your site, right? I have also added request to our Backlog for the option to remove/hide Page title by default with all the container.
Hello Raitis,
Great idea putting this theme in development!
I am having the same issue that Fred had with his 3rd item in his initial message. To reiterate, the description of his issue is below (I’m having this same issue):
3) If you check the page I am working on, I have added a Slider Revolution, removed the page title by just leaving it blank for now…I saw somewhere here I could use css to do that, I will try. But If you look at my page, there is a GAP between the Slider Revolution and the Header. Is there a way I can make it be aligned exactly below the header in the Row Settings? I tried to edit the the margins and border to 0 but it did not change anything for the gap between the header and slider nor the gab between the slider row and the bottom row.
This empty white space displays right below the header and right above the footer. Any thoughts on a solution?
Thanks!
Josh
Hi. Using the theme and I love it. Can you help me with this please? I don’t want the header (menu and title) and the footer to show. Not in the homepage, not in the blog posts. Im using Visual Composer and I love to have the whole space controlled by me. Is there a custom CSS code to use? Thanks a lot
Hi Villouta, thanks! We are eager to see where will the theme goes in the future. Now to your question – make sure to switch off Featured Image in Customizer under ‘Theme Options’. Header and Footer, you will need to refer to CSS classes ‘header’ and ‘footer’ and set display: none;
It will look like this:
header {
display: none;
}
footer {
display: none;
}
This will hide the header and footer, but there will be still the regarding empty space, isn’t it?
Ah, sry. No. It’s fine. Just had to leave the Customizer to see it work. Thx. 🙂
Hi Raitis,
1.) I see that there is a theme option: sidebar position (none / left / right). It would be nice to set this option separately for pages and posts in theme settings. Possibility to override these default settings when editing pages and posts will be a heaven itself 🙂
2.) Have you got any ETA of releasing next version of your cool starter theme?
thanks,
Tibor
1) Thanks, will consider this one. As for overwriting from specific page/post – yes, this is a must, will look into this.
2) We are looking into February. Right now we have gathered really valuable feedbacks (yours included, thanks a lot for that) and will see our roadmap.
Hi Raitis,
First of all, congratulations on deciding to build a Visual Composer starter theme, I wish you luck and success. I was recently thinking about it, as usually we use VC very often on the websites we develop for our customers, many times by using commercial themes, so I was thinking on searching for a good and clean starter theme that will be adopted specially to VC. Now, what I am interested in is not how to customize the theme header, footer and other options, what I am interested in is how is this theme adopted to VC better than the other ones? 🙂 I think the answer you will give me, should also be included somewhere in your post above as it should be one of the biggest features of your theme. Cheers!
Hi Martin,
thanks for the appreciation. We see that sometimes customers struggle to choose a theme and look for a free alternative, so Starter hopefully will become this free alternative that people can use hassle free. We, of course, ensured that Visual Composer and Starter theme fits great without conflicts (and do not disable any functionality as we see this happen in 3rd party themes sometimes). But the true power it will have with a new Visual Composer which is currently in development.
That sounds exciting. Can’t wait to see it in action. I will definitely follow Starter Theme closely!
Hi
i like it a lot. One question though… How can I just display the site title in the header on the left and not the logo of VC, which it defaults to if no logo is uploaded.
so far i have been commenting out the image in header.php, but this results in the site title coming out completely unstyled, which is too much work.
how to do it?
thx
Hi, Jens, this is a good point. Right now you have discovered the only way to it, but this is something that will go into our Backlog. Thanks for your request.
Waiting for next release of Starter theme 🙂
Don’t you thinking about to sell Visual Composer Developer Licence without Codecanyon?
Hi, we have set a roadmap for next release and already working on features. Thank you for your contribution. As for the second question, new Visual Composer will be available in a developer friendly manner.
New Starter theme and new Visual Composer? Don’t you thinking about to make all of them WCAG compliant? (Accessible, high contrast etc…). You could be the first who give an accessible theme + bilder !
One of our guys is advocating for WCAG so we do think about it a lot with a new version.
Will be great if the theme will be “ThemeForest Requierments Ready”, so we can use it like a “Theme Starter” to built themes to sell on Themeforest . I think the peopel are more interest to this potion than wordpres.org compatibility.
What do you think about this idea ?
We can think about it, but you should take into account that the end-result (your theme) will have to be GPL as well. ThemeForest does accept GPL products.
I totally agree! The theme created with Composer Starter Theme have to be also 100% GPL.
Good job. Thnaks for this plugin.
Thx a lot! I like the idea to have a simple but also high configurable theme for VC.
But I have a problem/question: How to make the menu / header transparent (as described there). I really would like to have a background picture BEHIND the header OR just to be able to not show the header (and using other 3th party plugins to show the menu else where).
Would be lovely if you can tell me how to make the header transparent, so that the first VC row of a page starts at the first pixel-line (no padding to top of page)
Okay, not showing the header at all I found your answer right above. Thx. But still would know how to use the header transparent/above the content.
Hi Jan, there is no opacity option so you will need to add a bit of CSS – use Additional CSS in your Theme Customizer and add this CSS code:
.navbar-wrapper {
opacity: 0.5;
}
Sorry, I’m not an expert…
I’m really interested on put in header.php the ‘opacity’, I opened the editor and header.php …then? Could you explain to me how and where? (if it’s possible)
The same for
header {
display: none;
}
Thanks a lot
Sorry again,
I tried it on Custom CSS and it works for ….display:none, but I also tried opacity:0,5 (some your comment above) but It doesn’t work for the background….maybe I’m doing some other errors…
Thanks for your help
Hi Paul, here you go, try this one. Make sure to specify color in RGBA.
#header .navbar .navbar-wrapper {
background: rgba(168, 6, 165, 0.5);
}
Can it be that the Starter Theme is not responsive? In mobile view navigation menu is completely gone…
Hi Jan,
Starter theme is fully responsive, on a mobile view regular menu is transformed into a sandwich menu. You should make sure that in Theme Customizer you have set a color for the sandwich menu which is different from header background.
Hi, my Visual Composer came with the theme “Opportunity” I’ve purchased. I can not find where the Visual Composer template section in admin . It is not showing under the “Visual Composer ” left hand column in admin. My theme developer is hopeless making any contacts or answering my questions, I can not add or show footer items. I need help please
Hi, theme authors often make some modifications that affect plugins so this is something to address to theme author of yours. From our side we recommend checking if themes interact with plugin, for example Starter theme does not remove any functionality or affect it in some strange way.
Hey, was looking for a good starter theme to use with VC! I read above under Header and Theme Options: “You can customize your site header by choosing between a standard top and sandwich type menus. Define header width, colors, and position to place it on top of the content or make it transparent.”
I am trying to have an initial transparent header with a video background, but I don’t see any settings to make the header transparent and able to place on top of a video. What am I missing?
Hey, for transparent you will need to apply Additional CSS and refer to the navbar class as there is no opacity controls right now, but we receive such request on and on, so it seems we will need to add it.
Hi! Visual composer is a great plugin, but 1 big thing was missing… the ability to start from scratch with a beautiful blank page! And nothing on it! Your theme covered this. Thank you a lot!! I’m new in WordPress theme’s world and I have a question about your theme though: how can I remove the VC icon on top-left?? And the space header?? I checked in the customizations options and in WordPress options, but I can’t see a way. I turned off in customization “Reserve Space For Header”, but the white space on top is still there, then I don’t have any logo but the page still show the default logo (VC logo). Can you help me please?
VC icon is a placeholder which you can replace via Theme Customizer by uploading your own logo. As for ‘Reserve space for header’ – it defines if a header is located above on top of the content. I believe you are talking about disabling header as such – this is indeed something to think of. Will add it to our Backlog of ideas.
Hi Raitis, thanks for your reply. Yes, I get that (VC icon is a placeholder), the problem is: this placeholder is always on. I mean, if I don’t want put my logo there because for example in my layout I want to show it in the middle of my hero fullscreen image then the website will show anyway this placeholder on top of everything…. As other themes are doing I think you should eliminate this logo and leave only the possibility to add there the logo when a real logo is uploaded in the site identity section of theme customizer (domain.ext/wp-admin/customize.php). In this way only the actual logo will be shown and only “if” a logo is uploaded.
Ok, I will make sure we address this question as this all sounds legit.
how long before you release support for woocommerce?
We want to introduce WooCommerce support in theme version 1.2. It is planned within 1-2 months and if there are anyone that would like to contribute we accept any help as Starter is our GPL product open for public.
Hi there. I recently installed your visual composer starter theme to my WordPress site and attempted to create my child theme. Is the name of the template visual-composer-theme-master (name of .zip file and folder once installed), or visual-composer-starter? I opened a support ticket, but not sure how long that will take.
I get the following error when I view my child theme:
Fatal error: Cannot redeclare visualcomposerstarter_enqueue_comments_reply() (previously declared in /home/content/a2pewpnas01_data02/28/3890028/html/wp-content/themes/delego/functions.php:194) in /home/content/a2pewpnas01_data02/28/3890028/html/wp-content/themes/visual-composer-theme-master/functions.php on line 194
Hi Cristine, make sure to specify Template: visual-composer-theme-master in your style.css it should work just fine (works at my end).
Thanks for this theme .-) I´d like to have a menu row that becomes a little less high when scrolling up the content and the logo becomes a little bit smaller. Most of the modern themes act like this. Is there a chance to have this with your Theme Master? A plugin or a CSS snippet? Thank you for your help. John (sorry for my bad English)
Ok, right now you can set in Customizer header as ‘sticky’ and it will stay. I think we will need to add the option to control height for it. Just added this to our Backlog. Thanks!
Love the theme. How do we make the header shrink to say 50% when the viewer starts to scroll. I am using the sticky header but would love the extra screen space once the viewer starts to scroll.
Hi Robert, this is already booked in our Backlog so in one of the next releases we will have this option for sure. And thanks for the nice words about the theme.
Hello Raitis,
Are there any good plugins or ways to remove/change the top navigation bar and put another design menu-bar in this theme?
Hi Bralain, for theme menu you can look into Uber Menu plugin – it is really powerful when it comes to menu management.
Also, we will add more options to theme as well in future.
Thank you Raitis for the recommendation. I will have a look at it.
Looking forward to the new version with more options! When will it be released?
Next release is planned at the end of the month, we are now testing issues and finalizing stories.
Hello, and I’m sure you’re tired of people asking about WooCommerce, so forgive me in advance for being one more person asking about WooCommerce. Is WooCommerce compatibility included with the next release you said is planned for the end of the month? Thanks for your time.
Next release will not have Woo Commerce compatibility yet, but we already have it on our ToDo list so we will implement it in one of next releases.
Thanks great job I also use this to several of my sites.
Very simple and efficient.
Thanks! Would love to hear your thoughts on how to make it better for you. Also, would you mind sharing some sites where you have it?
Hi,
The makings of a great theme. I have a question.
How do I remove the extra space below the header and above the footer?
I only want to remove the space.
It’s ok …sorted.
Space below header:
.content-wrapper{
padding-top:0;
}
Space above footer:
.main-content{
padding-bottom:0;
}
Awesome! But we will also look into the theme to sort it out by default. Thanks for pointing that out!
Just started using visual composer. Creating pages according to client specifications has become easy.
Hey, i was just curious if there was any way to change the menu font?
Hi, you should look into general theme fonts and it will also change menu fonts. If you are about having a specific font for a menu, you should apply custom CSS.
When will the next update be out and when is the estimated time to incorporate Woo Commerce?
The next update should be live in about 2 weeks. As for Woo Commerce, we are planning it for ver. 1.3.
Hi, just out of curiosity, can I use this starter theme and build a premium theme on top of it and sell? just to clarify due to licensing terms. thanks
Starter theme is fully GPL which means that any derivative work must also be licensed under GPL.
Hyee Ratis Thank you for this,
This will be definitely helps to create my website..
🙂
Hi Franks, glad that you liked our theme and we appreciate any feedback and feature requests as well.
Update from 1.1.0 to 1.2
There is a bug in the 1.2 update. It still contains version numbers fra 1.1, that does the themes not update properly and still want to update again and again.
I removed the path in vct-update.class to get rid of the bug temporarily.
Thanks, just forwarded to our guys and they promise to fix it right away!
It still not working.
I just downloaded the new 1.2.1 and install it (without the old 1.1.1) Clean install.
I still got the message to update from 1.1.1 to 1.2.1 and it keep on and on and on.
The Update/Version 1.2.1 is not working!
(And the first one smash my hole custom theme too!)
Bug fix release by Angelll is available at github: https://github.com/wpbakery/visual-composer-starter/pull/145
It is not the only bug in version.
There are lots of things that not work. Google Font is of them.
Compare to ver 1.1.1 this version is very buggy.
Our team performed additional testing and did not locate Google Fonts bug. Version 1.2.1 is stable and should work just fine – please try to install it from scratch.
OK maybe I am a total noob, but how can I make pages full width?
Hi Justin, in Customizer you can specify things like header, menu, footer and featured image to be full width, but content area is boxed as most content is still boxed. To make it full width, it will be necessary to enhance content area via content management plugin, for example, Visual Composer Page Builder where you can set row and in row properties then specify this row as full width. By doing so you will be able to control parts of your content and divide them into boxed or full width any time.
Well I just watched a youtube video where all he did was set the stretch row attribute and it set the background to full width. What am I missing.
You can check out our Video Academy where there are tutorials (including full width). Ex. https://vc.wpbakery.com/video-academy/how-to-create-product-landing-page/
Got it. I think it was a theme issue.
By the way I am using VC.
Now how can I edit header with VC?
Visual Composer works with content part of your theme so for header you should look into Theme Customizer options.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N9WRbWkVJs at about 17 mins in
Hi Starter Team,
please, can you offer the Date (~) for version 1.3 which should be Woocommerce compatibel ?
Many thanks in advance and best regards
WebFomFeinsten
We will have our release grooming meeting tomorrow so we will provide this information later on. Thanks.
Sounds Great!
Wish you a perfect meeting and hopefully a fresh beer after :- )
Best regards from Germany
WebFomfeinsten