Launched in 2018, Extra by Elegant Themes has established itself as one of the most powerful magazine-style themes available for WordPress. With each update, Extra continues to improve and refine its tools for creating visually stunning online publications.
As we enter 2023, how does Extra stack up against the ever-growing competition? Does the theme still warrant its premium price tag? This hands-on review will perform a deep dive examining if Extra remains a compelling choice for WordPress users wanting to launch magazines, newspapers and content-rich sites.
An Overview of Extra‘s Core Strengths
Before dissecting individual features, I want to highlight some of Extra‘s main advantages that enable it to produce first-rate online publications:
Intuitive page builder integration – Extra is powered by Elegant Themes‘ acclaimed Divi Builder, seamlessly integrating one of WordPress‘ most robust visual editors. This empowers users to construct complex layouts with ease.
Innovative Category Builder – Extra allows you to design fully customized templates for each site category. This facilitates distinct layouts tailored to your content without repetition.
Sleek magazine-centric design – The underlying theme design presents content in an elegant magazine or newspaper format without looking dated. Focused on spotlighting written content and media.
Industry-leading support network – As an Elegant Themes product, Extra provides exceptional documentation and community support which cannot be understated.
These core advantages demonstrate why Extra tends to be a popular option for publishers seeking a polished way to highlight a variety of content in a magazine-style format.
In fact, Extra has carved out a comfortable share of the magazine-style WordPress theme market. As per data compiled by BuildWith, Extra now powers over 5,500 live sites – up from just over 3,000 sites tracked in October 2020.
This adoption rate illustrates a growing preference for Extra‘s unique toolkit catering to online publications. Let‘s explore some of these strengths in greater detail…
Harness The Power of Divi Through Seamless Integration
Arguably Extra‘s biggest asset is its integration with the Divi Builder plugin. This provides users with an intuitive page builder full of customization tools to create striking pages and posts.
The Divi Builder empowers you to construct layouts using a familiar WordPress interface through:
- A backend editor allowing granular control over each element
- A front-end visual editor for rapid in-line editing
Having leveraged both Divi editors extensively over 3 years as a WordPress consultant serving small business clients, they each offer distinct pros and cons depending on the task at hand.
The Precision & Control of Divi‘s Backend Editor
Divi‘s traditional backend editor offers an exceptionally efficient way to build pages with surgical precision. Within a structured drag and drop interface, you can fine-tune every margin, filter and animation on a granular level.
While you do need to save and refresh to preview changes, this editor provides unparalleled control especially for complex pages.
Throughout my client projects, I almost always find myself using the backend builder for:
- Intricate homepages with multiple design elements
- Key site templates like service pages that rarely change
- Blog & podcast pages showcasing written + multimedia content
- Custom category views across site sections
- Layouts requiring pixel-perfect alignment of design elements
For publishers desiring absolute command over site architecture absent visual distractions, the Extra backend builder delivers in spades. You can nerd out on layout configurations while enjoying a relatively distraction-free editing environment.
The Speed & Agility of The Frontend Visual Editor
The optional front-end visual editing experience introduced in Divi 3.0 provides a distinctly more direct way to manipulate page elements on-the-fly.
With the visual editor toggled on, hovering over any module triggers its editing settings instantly. Advantages of this real-time editing include:
- Immediately previewing font, padding, animation changes
- Grabbing page elements to reposition them intuitively via drag and drop
- Rapidly adding, deleting or duplicating modules
- Never needing to leave the page to see adjustments
These tricks solve one of the biggest downsides of old-school builders – the constant need to preview back and forth between page and backend editor views.
Once familiar with the hover-to-edit behaviors, front-end editing can greatly accelerate adjusting layouts on the go until they look precisely right. It promotes experimentation over perfecting things straight away.
As your site grows, this agile editing can optimize workflows when publishing new content or handling client feedback. While the backend editor still excels for structural work, front-end visual editing speeds up revisions and upkeep tremendously.
Over time, I‘ve witnessed site owners gravitate to the frontend editor for:
- Quick homepage banner and promo edits
- Testing ideas before finalizing layouts
- Resizing columns/rows for mobile optimization
- Responding to editor/client review change requests
- Performing general site housekeeping and updates
For rapidly building and refining fully custom pages, Divi‘s multi-angle editing capabilities make Extra incredibly versatile. The theme puts two invaluable site construction approaches right at your fingertips.
Revolutionize Category Pages Through Custom Templates
One of my favorite Extra features is the innovative Category Builder granting publishers unmatched control over site taxonomy and architecture.
Most WordPress themes apply a unified page template to all categories. But Extra completely transforms this paradigm.
The Category Builder interface equips you to assign totally unique page layout blueprints to different site categories.
For example, you may want a grid or mosaic look for your Blog category archive pages. But a fullscreen carousel slider format for Testimonials. And a video-focused layout to showcase Case Studies.
Extra‘s custom modules empower all sorts of distinct category views:
- Blog Feed Masonry – mosaic grids displaying posts in varying heights/widths
- Featured Posts Slider – hero banner rotators pinlighting important articles
- Post Carousels – elegantly transitioning between imagery and excerpts
- Tabbed Posts – toggling between separate content blocks
- Ads Manager – designate ad spaces per category if monetizing
- And various other content display options…
Using these modules, publishers can cater the presentation of categories directly to the underlying content type. Custom category templates are assembled through Extra‘s intuitive page builder, then assigned to site taxonomies via the Category Builder.
The entire process takes just minutes to preview the transformative effects against site content.
Example of assigning unique Divi layouts to different site categories in Extra‘s Category Builder
Sites like multi-author blogs, magazines and newspapers derive tremendous value from tailoring category experiences while preserving some uniformity through global theme settings.
But even personal blog sites often benefit from diversifying common archived content like blog posts, projects, testimonials and similar repeated content with the Category Builder.
Visitors appreciate the variety and focus put towards showcasing each content format optimally. Plus crafting targeted templates can really motivate you to spruce up mundane categories often neglected.
5 Impactful Ways Category Builder Reshapes Taxonomies
Having utilized Extra‘s category superpowers across many client sites, the broad use cases become quickly apparent:
1. Transform monotonous blog post archives – Give blog roundups a visual rebirth using the Blog Feed Masonry or Tabbed Posts modules. Or amplify important articles as hero features with Featured Content sliders.
2. Beautify project portfolios – Showcase completed projects in a gallery-esque fashion using Post Carousels or multi-column grids fitted to imagery. Replace dull project listings pages.
3. Humanize testimonials – Instead of cascading testimonial quotes, give them a face and voice through responsive video carousels combined with excerpt excerpts.
4. Discuss topics differently – Does your site use topic tags to explore specific subjects? Give each topic its own layout suited to presenting associated content beautifully.
5. Get creative with custom post types – Extra also adapts beautifully if using custom post types beyond posts and pages. The Category Builder gives these parity in control and customization.
The primary limitation tending to be your own imagination and willingness to experiment! Building custom views no longer demands tedious coding changes or restrictive widgets.
Extra‘s Sleek, Adaptable Magazine Design
Amidst the extensive functionality provided by the Divi Builder and Category Builder, it‘s easy to overlook Extra‘s fundamental theme design and presentation. But a theme‘s base look and feel significantly impacts overall visitor experience.
Out the box, Extra skillfully adopts an elegant magazine format focused on showcasing written narratives and media content. Elements like:
- Spacious line heights
- Prominent headlines
- Generous imagery
- Refined fonts and icons
- Strategic use of negative space
…all draw attention towards published stories without superfluous distractions.
The polished defaults reflect decades of print magazine design principles adapted for the web. But Extra manages to feel clean rather than dated. Content takes center stage while theme presentation recedes into the background.
However, thanks to the integrated Divi Customizer and Global Theme Settings, site owners can still fine-tune color schemes, fonts, sidebar layouts and more to align with specific brand requirements if desired.
So while Extra defaults to a great-looking magazine style, its visual foundation proves adaptable. No need for harsh tradeoffs between function and aesthetics – crucial for commercial sites.
For publishers wanting a starting template specifically honed to showcase narratives and articles akin to print magazines, you‘ll struggle to locate more fitting WordPress options than Extra.
The base Extra theme may appear simplistic on its own. But once you bind it with the Divi Builder and filter content through the Category Builder, near endless presentation flexibility unlocks to create stunning online publications.
Evaluating Extra‘s Pricing, Value & After-Purchase Support
Thus far we‘ve covered some of Extra‘s considerable creative powers for constructing one-of-a-kind magazine sites. But assuming the theme delivers on features, how reasonable is the pricing? And how supportive is Elegant Themes should any issues arise?
Let‘s unpack the cost factor and included support model…
Breaking Down Extra‘s Pricing & Value Proposition
Elegant Themes offers access to Extra under two simple licensing options:
- 1) $89 per year – renews annually
- 2) $249 lifetime purchase – one-time fee unlocks unlimited use
At first glance, judged purely as a standalone theme purchase, the rates seem on par with the WordPress premium theme market.
However, that superficial lens obscures where Extra‘s real value lies for buyers – alongside full-blown access to Elegant Themes‘ entire collection of commercial assets.
An Elegant Themes subscription provides unlimited use of all their themes and plugin tools starting at $89 per year. So in reality, the low annual fee unlocks an constantly evolving arsenal of commercial resources – not merely Extra in isolation.
Access includes popular assets like:
- Divi – their signature visual page builder
- Bloom Email Optins – conversion-focused email list builder
- Monarch Social Media Plugin – optimize follow/sharing engagement
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- Various other site customization plugins & utilities
When appropriately weighed against the volume of commercial-grade innovations included, Extra‘s value proposition appears sky-high. Even if you only actively utilize a subset of Elegant Themes‘ stack, the low subscription cost likely pays for itself tremendously.
Suffice to say, publishers invested heavily in their online experience tend to extract tremendous value from everything an Elegant Themes membership ungates, including Extra.
In my experience consulting WordPress sites for small business owners, the expanding toolset saves tremendous amounts of client budget across development projects when I can take full advantage of ET assets. This cost efficiency trickles down to end users.
For context, valued WordPress products similar to Extra often retail for prices in the range of:
- ThemeForest – $40-$60 for magazine themes
- Elegant Marketplace – $100+ for premium Divi layout packs
- Array Themes – $49-$79 per theme subscription
When stacked against alternatives, Extra via Elegant Themes subscriptions provide unmatched ROI for publishers managing multiple websites under a single account.
If maximizing budget efficiency is imperative, the math strongly favors Extra. But growing resource access is just one membership perk…
Let‘s also evaluate post-purchase support.
Assessing Elegant Themes After-Purchase Support Offering
Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of quality theme developers, frustrating technical issues inevitably seem to crop up after purchase.
When problems surface, how responsive, empowering and helpful is a vendor‘s customer support team? Do they take ownership over resolving defects? What about enhancements to improve products over time?
In Elegant Themes‘ case, their support infrastructure remains well-regarded based on my direct involvement across 4+ years of working with WordPress sites built on their offerings like Divi & Extra.
Standout Service Aspects:
Detailed Documentation Resources
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Nearly every product feature has written tutorials explaining usage plus accompanying video walkthroughs to bootstrap user knowledge as much as possible.
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This expansive help center aims to answer common questions and guide beginners through getting started effectively. Reduces repetitive basic customer queries to focus energy on complex issues.
Encouraging Community Support Networks
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Alongside formal documentation, Elegant Themes actively cultivates community channels like forums for members to share knowledge.
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Many product questions posted on forums get solved quickly by other users with relevant experience. This alleviates reliance exclusively on official support for every troubleshooting scenario.
Consistent & Transparent Roadmap
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Existing customers gain visibility into the specific product fixes and features actively prioritized for future releases.
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Tracking public roadmap progress helps set realistic expectations around upcoming improvements rather than mystery promises.
Reasonable Response Times
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Considering the substantial customer base and volume of queries, average support response times appear acceptable based on reports.
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Priority seems placed on minimizing multi-day delays unless issues require deep troubleshooting cooperation or complicated bug diagnosis.
Proactive Issue Resolution
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Design and technical defects reported by users frequently manifest in scheduled theme and plugin patches.
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Evidence shows Extra customer feedback alerts development team to bugs needing attention across categories like builder errors, visual glitches, compatibility problems etc.
In combination, these support infrastructure pillars inspire confidence in Elegant Themes safeguarding customer experiences post purchase.
I won‘t pretend that Extra or Divi offer perfect, defect-free software. However, the helpful materials, engaged community and responsive developers provide peace of mind that unexpected frustrations won‘t be ignored – a welcome assurance building online properties on the platforms for years to come.
For publishers investing heavily into content aspects, reassurance on technical upkeep matters greatly, allowing focus on creating rather than troubleshooting tools.
Final Verdict – Who Should Consider Extra In 2023?
If you skipped ahead looking for bottom line recommendations on Extra‘s capabilities entering 2023 and beyond, here‘s my quick perspective as an industry analyst:
Extra remains an elite-tier offering for publishers dead set on launching visually first-class online magazines, newspapers, or occupied multi-author blogs to engage readers.
The theme continues maturing into a Swiss army knife distinctly equipped to construct sites where showcasing beautiful crafted narratives and media content takes center stage – especially benefiting brands publishing with some regular cadence.
Casual bloggers may still find Extra relatively overwhelming. Effectively wielding so many layout possibilities demands investing into Divi‘s learning curve. If currently maintaing a simple blog, cheaper or free alternatives may satisfy needs unless chasing ambitions of growth. But entry-level users can overtime ease into leveraging Extra‘s tools.
For almost anyone remotely invested into content creation and presentation, the expanding value provided by an Elegant Themes subscription remains unmatched to unlock Extra plus many other commercial assets as online identity takes priority.
In closing my hands-on audit, I wouldn‘t hesitate recommending Extra entering 2023 for digital architects and site owners viewing immersive content experience as the vehicle for magnetizing audiences by blending education with entertainment.
The Divi/Extra duo offer near unrivaled creative control to feature written narratives, videos, imagery and more in a diversity of captivating formats proven to spark engagement.
If differentiating through dialed-in content depiction sounds enticing, Extra certainly delivers the necessary tools for your vision!
