Business Elite – A Cool Free One Page WordPress Theme

Business Elite is a new WordPress theme from the guys at Web Dorado.

It’s a responsive one page WordPress theme that is SEO friendly and has been designed to work perfectly with popular WordPress plugins such as Contact Form 7, Woo Commerce, bbPress, BuddyPress, and Jetpack. It is also compatible with WordPress Multilingual Plugin (WPML).

Let’s take a closer look at what this free WordPress theme can do.

Setting Up Business Elite

Business Elite can be downloaded free of charge from WordPress.org from your WordPress admin area.

As the name would suggest, the theme is well suited for a corporate style of website, but it could be adapted for a wide range of uses.

It features a homepage slider and a portfolio section. Your latest blog posts can also be displayed on your home page.

Everything about the theme is controlled via the WordPress theme customizer. You will see options for a layout editor, general settings, homepage settings, typography, the homepage slider, lightbox, colour control, menus, and widgets.

Customizer Main Menu
The customizer menu for Business Elite.

Some options, such as the layout editor, are not available in the free version of Business Elite. Thankfully, the free version is still packed with many great options that allow you to modify and style your website.

Customizer Lightbox Menu
Customizer Lightbox Menu

The support for the WordPress theme customizer means that any changes you make can be seen in real-time. This saves you from having to save any changes you made and then switch back and fourth between the settings area and your live website.

Business Elite Design

The demo of Business Elite illustrates what the theme can do.

The home page in particular showcases what Business Elite can do. It displays a huge home page slider, category tabs, featured posts, content posts, portfolio items, a contact form, and social media links. All of which can be controlled via the WordPress theme customizer.

Business Elite Home Page Slider
The home page slider looks great.

Not everyone loves one page WordPress themes. One thing lacking in the free version of Business Elite is a blog index template. Instead, all blog posts are listed on the home page.

This is unlikely to be a problem for companies who are simply looking for a basic website to promote their business online as the blog is normally an afterthought.

Business Elite Blog List
Blog posts are displayed in a grid.

Portfolio items can be displayed from the home page too and when the user clicks on the image thumbnail a lightbox is displayed that gives them additional options such as a full page preview.

Business Elite Portfolio Items
An example of how portfolio items are displayed.

The integrated contact form can be modified via the WordPress theme customizer. You can change the background image and define the form title, description, name, address, and email. You can also select one of dozens of different form effects.

WordPress users are spoiled for choice when it comes to contact forms and in comparison to most contact form plugins the integrated form included with Business Elite is a little basic. It’s still a nice addition to the theme and I am sure many will appreciate the fact they can display a contact form on their home page.

Business Elite Contact Form
The integrated contact form is basic, but functional.

I think the homepage of Business Elite looks good, but the blog post template (single.php) is quite disappointing. It is clear that they have not made any aspect of blogging a priority for Business Elite; which is a shame as it’s something that should be a part of any WordPress business design.

From a technical point of view, the blog post template has everything you need for a blog. Unfortunately, the design is quite poor. It looks extremely dated. Hopefully they is an area they improve in the future.

Blog Post
Blog posts are not presented as professionally as they could be.

One thing I did like was the fact you can change the structure of blog posts. You can remove the sidebar or choose whether one or two sidebars are displayed on the left or right. You can also define the width of the content area.

Blog Post Layout
You can change where columns are displayed.

I encourage you to check out the demo of Business Elite to see the design for yourself.

Business Elite Pro

Business Elite is 100% free to download and use, however a pro version exists that offers additional features. The pro version also grants support.

Web Dorado actively responds to users in the theme’s support forum on WordPress.org, however support is limited to bug fixes.

Web Dorado have a fair pricing scheme for those who do need support. They offer three different licenses for Business Elite Pro: Personal, business, and developer.

Business Elite Support
Business Elite Pro is competitively priced.

The personal license costs $20 and gives support and updates for one domain for six months. Upgrading to the business license at $30 adds support and updates for another two domains for up to one year.

If you are going to be using Business Elite on multiple websites, the developer license at $40 makes sense as it provides support and updates for an unlimited number of domains for one year.

Of course, there are many more reasons to upgrade to the pro version of Business Elite.

It adds new features such as the ability to add custom codes to your website, ten unique page templates, SEO management, and colour styling. A front page contact form and shortcodes editor is available too.

Business Elite Pro
Business Elite Pro unlocks many great features.

Business Elite is simple to use, but I like the fact that Web Dorado have priced the pro version at an affordable price. This allows everyone to use the theme and those who do need support and some additional features do not need to break the bank.

Final Thoughts

Business Elite is a feature rich WordPress theme that can be downloaded free of charge. It has support for a homepage slider and for adding portfolio items and it also comes with its own built-in contact form.

If you are looking for a free corporate WordPress theme, I recommend checking it out. You will be pleased to know that additional features and support are there if you need them and it won’t cost you a lot to upgrade.

You can download Business Elite through your WordPress admin area or from WordPress.org. The pro version can be purchased from Web Dorado, however as with all freemium designs, my recommendation is to test the free version first to see if Business Elite fits your requirements.

Thanks for reading.

Kevin

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