OceanWP is one of the most popular and functional WordPress themes available. But is OceanWP a good theme for artists, too? As an artist, you want to have an easy-to-use and beginner-friendly theme. Of course, you want to customize it to your liking, while the theme remains fast and mobile-friendly. In the end, the theme price matters, too… How does OceanWP fare with all of that? Find out in this hands-on review by an artist!
OceanWP is a popular multipurpose WordPress theme that powers thousands of websites and eCommerce stores on the internet. It is fast, lightweight and fully responsive.
You can easily customize it, choose one of the many free demos and templates if you don’t want to build your artist website from scratch, and use all top WordPress plugins with it!
Sounds fantastic? Yes. But for all photographers, illustrators, and designers the question remains:
Is OceanWP a good theme for artists?
In this OceanWP Review, we are going to deep-dive into the nitty-gritty of that WordPress theme with all the pros and cons that come with it.
Among others, we will see whether it’s suitable to create portfolio and art galleries, launch an online store to sell your art, and of course whether it’s easy to use for a non-techy, artsy person.
I am an artist myself and I have built this art website from scratch, using OceanWP and Elementor. Hence, I’m kinda biased…
However, in this post, I’ll strive to give you 10 objectively good reasons why you should consider using OceanWP.
By the end of this review, you will be able to decide for yourself whether or not OceanWP is a good WordPress theme for your artist website.
Without further ado, let’s get into it!
10 REASONS
Why OceanWP is a good theme for artists
REASON #1: Full Responsiveness
Is the OceanWP theme mobile friendly?
Yes, OceanWP is fully responsive on all devices. That means your artist website will look as good on smartphones, tablets, and desktop computers. This is very important because more than 50% of all web traffic currently comes from mobile devices.
And what’s even better, OceanWP is also compatible with different browsers, such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and more. So regardless of which browser your visitors use to access your WordPress site, they will be able to enjoy the same user experience!
REASON #2: Lightweight & Fast
Is OceanWP a fast theme?
Speed is an essential aspect on the web. Thanks to its clean coding and small file size, the OceanWP theme is lightweight and fast loading.
Users expect web pages to load quickly on any device. If this is not the case, they might leave the website before even having read a single word.
But fast loading speed is not only a factor to ensure a good user experience – and eventually the success of your website, but it is also a ranking criterion for Google.
OceanWP delivers on both counts. Just make sure to get some good hosting and you are on the safe side!
REASON #3: Beginner-Friendly
Is OceanWP hard to use for beginners?
As an artist, you understandably want to focus on creating art and not deal with all the techy stuff that might come with setting up a website.
But don’t worry – to get OceanWP running on WordPress and build your artist website, you don’t need any coding knowledge or advanced technical skills.
That’s why OceanWP is a good theme for artists, too.
It’s easy to install and set up. All you need to do is go to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to ‘Appearance’ → ‘Themes’.
Click on ‘Add New’, search for ‘OceanWP’ or upload the ZIP file, then simply click on ‘Install’ and ‘Activate’.
REASON #4: Fully Customizable
Can I make OceanWP look the way I want?
OceanWP comes with some of the most flexible customization options out of the box.
Once you click on ‘Appearance’ → ‘Customize’ on your WordPress dashboard, you will find a whole range of customization options at your fingertips.
The sidebar on the left allows you to adapt everything to your personal preferences, from site settings, colors, typography, blog, menus, portfolio, header, footer, and much much more.
Related: → Best Hyperlink Colors For Your Artist Website – With Hyperlink Style Guide
To just name a few examples, there are seven customizable header styles, including a transparent header. If you don’t like any of them, you can also create a custom header! You also have three options for the mobile menu to choose from, and you can enable the top bar for social sharing options or an extra menu…
There is practically no limit to what you can do. On the downside, the numerous customization options take some time getting used to and it easy to forget where an option is in the menu…
Just take your time exploring and playing around with all the settings to see what you like best for your artist website!
REASON #5: Compatible with Plugins & Addons
Can I also use WordPress plugins for artists?
OceanWP is compatible with all top WordPress plugins and addons. You can choose from thousands of free and premium plugins to extend the design and functionality of your artist website.
Just be aware that most plugins require a learning curve as well – some more, some less. As a rule of thumb, the more functionality a plugin offers, the steeper the learning curve.
As a matter of fact, you can also add special plugins for artists that will allow you to build beautiful portfolio and art galleries. Your gallery pages are the heart of your artist site, so feel free to check out the following tutorials if you are interested:
REASON #6: Page Builder Ready
Can I use page builders like Elementor with OceanWP?
Another great feature of OceanWP is that it is compatible with most popular page builders, including the Gutenberg Block Editor, Elementor, Beaver Builder, Divi, and WPBakery.
One of the most powerful page builders among them is Elementor. Elementor is a visual drag-and-drop editor that allows you to place elements on your website wherever you wish. It gives you the most flexible design possibilities without you needing any coding skills.
Elementor is available in a free and a premium version. The basic Elementor version offers more than 30 widgets to design a decent website. The Pro version comes with an additional 50+ widgets that provide more advanced web design features, including a gallery widget to create different types of galleries.
If you want website functionality beyond Elementor, you can use free and premium Elementor add-ons, such as Essential Addons for Elementor and Ultimate Addons for Elementor (which I also used to design this website).
Elementor – The Leading WP Website Builder
The world’s leading WordPress website builder.
Essential Addons for
Elementor
The most popular elements library for Elementor.
Ultimate Addons for
Elementor
The Elementor toolkit for new design possibilities.
REASON #7: Free Demos & Templates
Does OceanWP have templates to build my artist website?
With OceanWP, you can build your artist website from scratch or you can choose one of the many demo templates.
OceanWP comes complete with a setup wizard that allows you to install a premade design with one click. If some things are not fully to your liking, you can give them a quick makeover and customize everything in a few clicks.
In fact, if you are using the Elementor page builder, then you have even more ready-made templates and blocks to choose from.
Elementor offers 40+ free page templates, including some specials for photographers and artists, and another 100+ free block templates for contact, about, FAQs, testimonials, image carousels, sliders, and more. With Elementor Pro, you will get even more modern and fully ready website templates!
That means you don’t even need much time and a big budget to make a fully functional and professional-looking artist website.
REASON #8: WooCommerce Ready
Can I make an online store to sell art with OceanWP?
Do you want to sell art on WordPress? Then you’ll be delighted to hear that OceanWP offers seamless WooCommerce integration.
Therefore, OceanWP is a good theme for artists who want to create an online store.
Once you have installed the WooCommerce plugin on your OceanWP site, all the settings are already there. Because OceanWP is optimized to work with WooCommerce, you can head straight over to the WordPress customization panel and start customizing the e-commerce features.
You have full control over the design of your shop and checkout pages. There are upsells, cross-sells, discounts, coupons, and a lot more other selling options to promote your art and attract customers.
Buyers can view the products they add to their cart in real-time and use the off-canvas filtering side panel to search for their favorite art.
→ Ultimate Guide To Selling Art On WordPress – WooCommerce For Artists
REASON #9: Optimized For SEO & Developer-Friendly
Can I make OceanWP rank high in Google?
The OceanWP WordPress theme comes with clean code, proper HTML tags, site navigation, and schema markup to help your website rank high in Google and other search engines.
It works with any of the common SEO optimization plugins, such as Yoast SEO and RankMath, to actively help you improve your blog posts to show in the search results.
While OceanWP is definitely beginner-friendly, it is also suitable for users with coding knowledge. Because you will get access to all PHP and CSS files that you can overwrite with custom code to expand the design and functionality of your WordPress site.
REASON #10: Free and Premium Themes
How much does OceanWP cost?
OceanWP comes with a free theme and several premium themes that are well priced.
The free theme gives you access to a selection of free demos to build your website. Despite being completely free, these demos feature great functionality and modern designs that you can fully customize to your needs.
Some free extensions are included in the package, too. Some demos require the use of the Ocean Extra plugin, other options are Ocean Custom Sidebar, Social Sharing, and Sticky Header.
The premium themes obviously offer more functionality. They come with more pre-designed templates for all types of websites. You will also get a series of premium extensions, such as Ocean Cookie Notice, Portfolio, Sticky Footer, Woo Popup, and others.
The premium OceanWP theme prices come in three different bundles. The Personal Plan for $29 per year is ideal if you want to build your own artist websites. It comes with 7 free and 14 premium extensions, 15 free and 210 pro demos to choose from!
Conclusion: Is OceanWP a good theme for artists?
OceanWP is a flexible and beginner-friendly WordPress theme. It works with a lot of plugins available in the market and offers powerful features. Thanks to its versatility, OceanWP is a great theme for multiple purposes, including websites for artists.
It allows you to create beautiful portfolio and art galleries and to add a professional online store to sell your work.
It is highly customizable, so you can make it look exactly the way you want. This may be especially important for artists because you want a theme that matches your art style in terms of color, design, typography, etc.
The multitude of customization options might be a bit overwhelming when you are just getting started, but it’s nothing you wouldn’t get to grips with.
Ultimately, you are the one to decide. Hopefully, this OceanWP review helped you make a decision. But you cannot know until you try… so why not try OceanWP for free today?
Some genuinely nice stuff on this website , I love it.
Thank you for your kind words, Ernesto (: