Hello, ladies and gentlemen, this is a review of the Xoxo – Blog & Magazine WordPress Theme by Frenify. I found this theme to be visually appealing, and it implements Ajax support quite well. Yes, you can create a beautiful blog and an online store with it, although I didn’t like the theme in combination with WooCommerce. In this review, I’ll cover both the theme’s strengths and weaknesses.
At the end of the page, I’ll attach translation files for the Xoxo theme in Russian, as well as for the Xoxo Core plugin.
Xoxo – Blog & Magazine WordPress Theme: Detailed Analysis of Features and Capabilities
The first and main drawback of this theme is that it is a paid one. You can find it on ThemeForest: https://themeforest.net/item/xoxo-blog-magazine-wordpress-theme/42858298.
Now, let’s proceed directly to the review.
Let’s start with what the theme supports:
WooCommerce;
WPML;
SEO plugins like RankMath, AIOSP, Yoast;
Caching plugins like LiteSpeed Cache, SuperCache;
many other plugins.
But more importantly, what it doesn’t support:
Gutenberg and new widget types. Only the classic editor and classic widgets are supported.
AMP. It lacks optimization for AMP layouts.However, you can use it in Reader mode.
BuddyPress. It doesn’t inherit the theme styles, so you’ll have to customize it yourself or forgo the forum functionality.
Now, let’s talk about speed. I used own techniques for speeding up WordPress, the LiteSpeed Cache plugin, Autoptimize, A3LazyLoad for deferred loading of images and frames. Keep in mind that if you use deferred loading with LiteSpeed Cache or Autoptimize, the icons in this area will simply not be visible:
So, it’s better to use A3LazyLoad.
I also added all the counters to the site: Yandex Metrica, Google Analytics, installed BuddyPress for fun, as well as WPML. I don’t need such a set of plugins, but for testing, I needed to load the site. Simulated a working project.
I provide speed test results for PageSpeed:
It visually loads fast, even though at the time of writing this article, I’m using a slow internet connection from my smartphone in modem mode.
But in practice, the theme is not particularly fast, even when testing with a normal internet connection, the LCP (Large Contentful Paint) and DCL (DOMContentLoaded event) events occur too late.
Ideally, LCP and DCL should occur faster than 3 seconds. So the result can only be called satisfactory at best.
Now let’s move on to the theme’s functionality. Let’s start with the fact that it comes with the Xoxo Core plugin, which allows you to customize the theme’s appearance. There are quite a few settings.
On the General tab, you can configure the display type. LTR (left-to-right) and RTL (right-to-left) formats are supported. So the theme is suitable for Arabic languages or Hebrew.
You can also set a nice cursor instead of an arrow, but I don’t like such things. An unfamiliar cursor only hinders users.
On the Main Colors tab, you can customize the theme colors. Unfortunately, gradient shades are not supported.
In the Logo section, you can upload logos, and different logos can be loaded for each format, for example, for Retina screens, you can load different logos.
In the Desktop Navigation section, you can enable “Smart Search,” add social media icons, and sort them by dragging.
In Typography, you can configure fonts, and Google Fonts are supported.
The next section is Reactions/Votes. Here, you can set up a likes analog for your site, but I noticed that they don’t support Schema.
You can create something like this:
Or such a voting.
Or both. As you wish. You can change the text directly in the settings and add custom emotions.
In the Blog Single and Blog sections, you can customize the blog format, for example, slider size, with or without a sidebar, infinite post loading, and also choose the format, for example, classic blog or “grid.”
In the Footer section, you can configure the copyright, enable the “back to top” button, and add a subscription form.
In the Share Options section, you can add page sharing options.
In the Advertising section, you can add advertisements, including AdSense and Yandex, as well as custom banners.
And in the Custom CSS section, you can add custom styles, but I prefer to do this in the style.css file of the child theme, it’s more convenient.
In the SEO section, you can choose HTML tags, for example, main page header tags, as well as 404 page tags.
On the last Import/Export tab, you can save your settings or load others, for example, previously exported ones.
The plugin really allows you to design a site without manual work. Of course, only within certain limits, but that’s enough for most users.
And now let’s take a look at the theme itself.
Firstly, it’s beautiful. The theme is nicely designed, and the design is well thought out.
The theme has its own widgets, for example, a widget for the latest posts, subscriptions. Which, by the way, is quite flexible. But it will only work with the “Classic Widgets” plugin; Gutenberg is not supported.
There are also other widgets; I left a link to Themeforest above, you can see how they look for yourself.
Overall, it’s one of the most beautiful themes I’ve seen, but speed and AMP support are sacrificed. Yes, everything comes at a price.
The theme also has built-in AJAX search, so the results will be displayed as you type.
Using Xoxo for a blog is a great option. Of course, the theme is not the fastest, does not support AMP, but it’s beautiful. But I wouldn’t recommend it for an online store or forum.
Online Store Based on the Xoxo Theme
Unfortunately, I didn’t take screenshots, but to be honest, I didn’t like how this theme looks for an online store. Firstly, there are no even product grids, and secondly, the color scheme doesn’t look very good in some places.
However, the theme has all the necessary features, and it works seamlessly with WooCommerce. So, it can be used.
Nevertheless, I would recommend using the Xoxo theme for WordPress only for blogs; in other cases, I do not recommend it.
Compatibility with WPML
The Xoxo theme is fully compatible with WPML. So, there won’t be any issues with multilingual sites.
There is also support for Right-to-left (RTL), allowing the use of right-to-left writing languages. So, there won’t be any problems with Hebrew or Arabic languages, including in multilingual sites.
The theme is also easily translatable using WPML, allowing you to translate it from the WordPress admin panel without the need for Poedit.
Translations for the Xoxo Theme into Other Languages
At the end of this block, I am attaching translation files for this theme into the Russian language. I haven’t translated it into other languages, but I am providing instructions for translation. You can read more about translating themes and plugins for WordPress here.
The Xoxo theme can be easily translated using the Poedit program, and you can also translate it using the WPML functionality.
You will find the translation template in the language folder of the Xoxo theme, as well as in the language folder of the Xoxo Core plugin. After translation, you will get files in the format la_LA.po and la_LA.mo. For example, for German, it would be de_DE.po and .mo, for Russian – ru_RU.po and .mo.
Place the theme translation in the language folder of the parent theme. Simply copy the obtained files there. If you want to add it to the child theme, create a language folder in the theme folder, copy the translations there, and in the functions.php file, add the code:
function xoxo_child_after_setup_theme() {
load_child_theme_textdomain( 'xoxo', get_stylesheet_directory() . '/languages' );
}
add_action( 'after_setup_theme', 'xoxo_child_after_setup_theme' );
Do this between
<?phpand the closing tags.
?>For the Xoxo Core plugin translation, add it to the /your-site.com/public_html/wp-content/languages/plugins folder.
Name the translation files xoxo-core-la_LA.po, xoxo-core-la_LA.mo. For example, for German, it would be xoxo-core-de_DE.po, xoxo-core-de_DE.mo, for Russian – xoxo-core-ru_RU.po, xoxo-core-ru_RU.mo.
I am attaching the translation files for the Xoxo – Blog & Magazine WordPress Theme in Russian at the end of this block:
Concluding the Xoxo Theme Review
So, for my purposes, the theme more than met my expectations, so I give it an 7 out of 10. But this does not mean that this theme will suit you. Unfortunately, you can’t test and see how things work. I would say that this theme is more suitable for blogs or galleries. But in the scenario of a business card website, portfolio, or online store, it doesn’t look very good.
If the design of this theme does not suit you, the Frenify Team has many other themes with different designs. Some are noticeably cheaper but practically do not differ in functionality.
With that, I bid you farewell and wish you success. All the best!
