The Parallax One WordPress Theme by ThemeIsle
This theme is a popular one page WordPress theme for businesses looking to keep things simple. Include all of the basics right on your homepage, and get visitors to convert with call-to-action buttons. Easily enable parallax scrolling for a little extra wow factor. Install the recommended form & map plugins to add contact forms & Google Maps all on one page.
First Impression
Upon activation of the theme, there are a few things that jumped out at me.
Welcome Page
Parallax One includes a Welcome Page for first-time users of the theme. You can find it under Appearance > About Parallax One. This can be a great resource for anyone not familiar with WordPress themes. It provides a small list of FAQ, links back to the theme documentation, some “how to get started” tips, a link to the Customizer to change options, and a changelog.
However, I do find the “Actions Required (2)” to be a bit misleading. It has the looks of a warning or error message, but these are for two plugins that are really more of a recommendation than a requirement.
Install Plugins
The Parallax One theme recommends the installation of 3 plugins. You’ll see a notice at the top of all your admin screens (it is dismissible), and you can find the recommended plugins under Appearance > Install Plugins. All three plugins were created by ThemeIsle, and I only recommend installing them if you need the functionality they provide.
- Pirate Forms
- Intergeo Google Maps
- ShortPixel Image Optimizer
I found the “required” vs “recommended” language to be confusing here.
Default Content
When you first activate Parallax One, you’ll notice a bunch of filler content, fake images to represent “The Team” section, random testimonials from fake customers, made-up logos, etc. This is helpful for laying out the page, but you’ll want to change this in the Customizer before you actually activate your theme.
General Appearance, Logo & Colors
There are limited options here. You can:
- Choose 2 colors: 1 for the general text, 1 for the headlines
- Upload your logo: to replace the “Parallax One” logo
- Add a background image
- Show/hide the top header/navigation on the homepage
With this free version of Parallax One, you cannot re-order the page sections. Upgrade to Parallax One Plus for complete control. Now, let’s walkthrough each section & discuss the available customizations.
It’s worth mentioning that each section has an intended use, but that doesn’t mean you have to use it for exactly that. Feel free to experiment and make it work for your specific needs.
Theme Fonts
Parallax One uses 3 different fonts:
- Cabin for headlines
- Montserrat for navigation
- Open Sans for everything else
…or use any one of 800+ fonts by integrating Google Fonts with WordPress.
Header Section
The first area on the page, the header section consists of a large background image, a logo, a headline, a sub-headline, a call-to-action button & a list of brands. Here are the available customization options:
- Change background image & overlay color
- Enable/Disable parallax effect
- Update logo, headline, sub-headline, call-to-action button text & link
- Update brand images & links
Services Section
Below the header lies the services. Each service appears in its own box, and you can add an icon, title, description & link to each service. There appears to be no limit on the number of services you add.
- Change the main title & subtitle of the section
- Customize each service: title, icon, image, description, link
- Icons included: choose from about 200 different icons, including many social media sites & popular brands
- Replace any icon with a custom image
- Enable/Disable a Pinterest-style layout of the boxes
About Section
There are very few options here. You can simply edit the title, description & image (only one image allowed).
Team Section
The Team section of the Parallax One theme allows you to upload images of your staff, along with their name & a brief description or job title. There appears to be no limit to the number of people you can add.
You can also customize the section title & description, therefore, it’s feasible that you could use this section for anything that fit the mold of image/title/description. Keep in mind it will always appear after the About section (unless you upgrade), and you cannot add links in this section.
Testimonials Section
Like every section in Parallax One, you change the section title & subtitle. In addition, for each testimonial you can add:
- Image
- Title (or name)
- Subtitle (to appear directly below the title)
- Text of the testimonial
Again, you can get creative here and use this for whatever you’d like, as long as it fits the requirements of image, title, subtitle & description text. If you like this layout better, you could use this to highlight team members instead of the About section.
There is no limit to the number of testimonials you can add, but again, no linking available.
Call-to-Action Section
Parallax One refers to this as the “Ribbon” section, but it’s essentially a call-to-action area. You can customize the background image, headline, button text & link.
Latest News
This is where all your blog posts will be listed. The only customization option here is the section Title. Instead of “Latest News,” you can have this say whatever you’d like. After that, you blog posts will appear in reverse chronological order, and the following information will be presented for each post:
- Featured image
- Post title
- Post excerpt
- Post date
- Post author
- Read more link
Contact Information
You can add an unlimited number of contact points in this section. By default, you’ll see one for email, physical address & phone number. For each type of contact info, you can add:
- an icon
- some text
- a link (optional)
Map
This is also where you’ll add a map of your business’ location, if you choose to add one. First, you’ll need to install the Intergeo Maps plugin that comes with the theme.
The plugin states that you can use it without loading the Google Maps API, however, when I tried this, I just saw a blank white space where the map was supposed to appear. You’ll likely have to setup an API key to use with the map, but fortunately, this is not too difficult a process. Instructions are included.
Menus & Navigation
There are 2 menu locations in the Parallax One one page WordPress theme: primary menu & footer menu.
The primary menu is shown at the very top of every page. It is what’s used to navigate the user to the various sections on your homepage.
The footer menu is a list of horizontal text links that show up in the footer, below the custom footer text and above the social icons.
On smaller screens, the primary menu transforms into a collapsible menu that expands on tap. All links are still accessible, at least to 2 levels deep.
Linking to Sections
I initially had some trouble figuring out how to get my menu to link to the different sections on the homepage. My existing menu items linked to various pages throughout the site, and it wasn’t clear how to link them to the correct section on the homepage.
ThemeIsle’s documentation answers this for us, but it’s still not super-intuitive for a beginner. You need to create a new menu, use Custom Links, and use the following anchors that the Parallax One theme requires:
- #story for the “About” section
- #services for the “Services” section
- #team for the “Team/Staff” section
- #customers for the “Testimonials” section
While this is not in their documentation, the following should work for the remaining sections:
- #ribbon for the call-to-action section
- #latestnews for the blog/latest news section
- #contactinfo for the contact section
- #cd-google-map to go directly to the map
- #footer if you want to jump right to the first widget in your footer area
Since the main navigation will be available at the top of every page of your site (static pages, single blog posts, etc.), when linking to sections on the homepage, you’ll want to prefix your links with your site’s URL, like so:
http://www.mysite.com/#story
Static Page & Single Post Template
Your static pages, as well as your blog posts, will be displayed on a simple, 2-column template, with the sidebar to the right. You can choose a full width page template if you’d like to remove the sidebar.
The Main Sidebar
Parallax One’s main sidebar is displayed to the right of the content. There are no options to change it’s location within the Customizer.
Interestingly, I could not edit the widgets that were displayed here. The only widgetized areas registered in the WordPress Customizer are the 4 footer widgets. So I’m not sure how you go about changing the sidebar widgets.
Additional Page Templates
There are 3 additional page templates in the Parallax One one page WordPress theme:
- Blog
- Contact
- Full Width
You should use the Blog template if you have a custom page acting as your blog’s main archive page. The Contact template appeared to act just like the default template, but the sidebar was not present. The Full Width template eliminates the sidebar & the space it would normally occupy, and takes up the entire page’s width.
Footer Options
You can easily edit the footer/copyright text at the bottom of every page. There’s one text box to enter your footer text, along with the ability to add icons that link to your social media pages. Only an icon & link are available to customize, but there are over 200 icons to choose from.
There is some branding at the bottom of every page that links back to ThemeIsle’s site. It says, “Parallax One powered by WordPress.” There is no theme option to remove this, so you’ll have to create a child theme, or as a last resort, edit the theme files (not recommended).
Parallax One’s Content
The main thing to note here is that featured images are NOT shown on the single article pages. Most other content is pretty standard. Let’s breakdown each section:
Title
The post title is displayed in a darker font, in all caps, with the Cabin font.
Author, Date, Comments, Categories, Tags
The author, date & number of comments are shown directly below the title, at the top of the page.
The categories & tags are displayed at the end of each article.
Main Content Area
The main contents of each article or page are shown in grey in the Open Sans font, with black heading tags & blue links.
Previous/Next Navigation
The post title is used as the link to navigate to the previous and/or next article chronologically.
Comments
Post comments are displayed after the main content, in the form of: “2 thoughts on {post_title}”. As with many themes, Parallax One displays the commenter’s avatar, name (which links to website, if provided), date of comment (permalink), and the comment itself. Nested comments are supported for replies.
Sidebars & Widgets
Parallax One’s one page WordPress theme sports 4 widgetized sidebars, all located in the footer.
All four footer widget areas appear below all the main content, and just above the footer copyright info & footer menu. They are side-by-side on large screens and stacked on smaller screens & mobile devices.
Parallax One’s Responsive Layout
Parallax One includes a 100%, completely responsive layout, designed for optimal viewing on any device. All of the sections and items stack nicely on top of each other, and the responsive menu looks & works great on mobile devices.
Parallax One Plus – The Pro Version
For additional features & customization options, an upgrade is available. I hope to post a full review of Parallax One Pro soon, but in the mean time, you can check it out on ThemeIsle’s site. Here are a few of the additional features you get with Pro:
- Manage & reorder sections
- A bunch of color options
- Portfolio section for highlighting projects
- Shop section for selling products with WooCommerce
- Add shortcodes to any section