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What Was Inside The Original Monstroid?
Today, Monstroid is called the most progressive theme for WordPress-based websites. It’s widely liked thanks to the creator-friendly interface, code-free work, and trendy WYSIWYG experience.
The first release of this product was in 2015. Since then, there were many features, plugins, and components created for Monstroid-built sites. Officially, there are 3 versions of the theme. The fresh one – Monstroid 2 – was released this week, August 27. How did Monstroid change? What differs its versions from each other and which of them you should choose to work with? In this post, we are going to guide you through the evolution of the most popular WordPress flagship – Monstroid theme.
Pre-history of Monstroid
Do you remember how hard it was to manage a site? Many users and especially website owners still think of those days with fear. Besides, website building was expensive when the result was kinda primitive. We haven’t such options as multipurpose products and should have taken as many templates as needed. One product for one purpose.
Everything changed with the appearance of Monstroid. It was the first real multifunctional theme. Created by TemplateMonster’s team, Monstroid was firstly released on July 22, 2015. In a couple of weeks, the theme became an undeniable leader. Monstroid provided lots of options and design solutions, so the web audience liked it. Soon the product became best-selling.
What Was Inside The Original Monstroid?
First off, let’s see which components users got with the original Monstroid. The package included the next components.
Templates
The main Monstroid theme plus 4 child themes with different designs. They were made for corporate and business online projects, personal portfolios, and furniture eCommerce websites. Back in our days, Monstroid 2 contains over 20 ready-made templates.
Plugins
Even the original Monstroid contains tones of plugins! It’s a real zest of the theme. The first version of the product has 23 plugins for different purposes. Among them, there are:
- 2 slider plugins,
- Backup & Restore,
- Monstroid Skin Switcher,
- Monstroid Wizard,
- and Cherry plugins.
The theme is WooCommerce-ready as well.
Shortcodes
As you may know, shortcodes were popular these years. Original Monstroid comes with Magic Button. It was made to add shortcodes in a few seconds. There are 100+ shortcodes inside the pack.
Another comfy tool is Shortcodes Templater. It allows creating custom shortcodes and saving them to the library to use for the next designs.
Visual Editing
In 2015 visual template editing wasn’t available but Monstroid contained all the needed tools. They were:
- MotoCMS visual builder,
- Moto Slider
- and Static Area Builder.
We won’t lie and say that everything worked ideally. There were some disadvantages found. Thus, creators decided to reborn the theme and released Monstroid 2.
Monstroid 2
Although TM team wanted to work on Monstroid 2 as soon as they found the main disadvantages of the 1st version, it took them more than a year to build the next one. The result was worth it. Released January 2017, the product became classic. It provided users with earth-shaking UI elements set and amazing visual editing experience.
What did classic Monstroid 2 look like?
WordPress Live Customizer
The pack contains an easy-to-use and fully friendly WordPress Live Customizer. The tool allows adjusting site appearance and has preview function. Also, there are:
- 10 full-blown templates,
- 7 additional homepages,
- 7 header styles and 3 footer styles,
- WooCommerce integration,
- and WooCommerce on board.
Plugins
Back to unique plugins, the classic monstroid 2 contains the next things:
- MotoPress Hotel Booking,
- MotoPress Restaurant Menu,
- MotoPress Schedule,
- The Events Calendar, etc.
There was an additional plugin for eCommerce and all the basic ones.
Power Builder
Layouts customization becomes easier and faster with Power Builder. It ditches shortcodes and static areas and provides a marvelous WYSIWYG experience everyone was waiting for. The interface is comprehensive and easy-to-manage. You can add columns and content modules in a few clicks.
Talking about minuses, you still can’t preview new or updated content within the builder in real time.
WYSIWYG
What You See Is What You Get – here’s what any website owner really dreamt of! Finally, Monstroid2 provided it. The experience was great as for 2017. Still, web design always had high demands that are rising every season. For these simple reasons, the creators of Monstroid started working on the next update.
What else was wrong?
The second reason the theme required update was Monstroid’s weight. Users claimed the theme was too heavy because of the numerous components it contained. It required server resources and premium shared hosting plans. To save the budget of the users, TM made their best to release the update ASAP.
Monstroid 2 Update
In 2018, there was a huge Monstroid 2 update promised. It was released August, 27. What does it bring? Basically, everything including upgraded Elementor, recreated WYSIWYG technology, new templates and elements sets, and much more.
Now, let’s view out all the updates one by one.
New Design Possibilities
As expected, the updated Monstroid 2 comes with improving design solutions. In 2018, a user shouldn’t be limited to a couple of primitive styles. That’s why now Monstroid 2 has over 500 Elementor-based UI elements. Needless to say, they are for different purposes. With it, within the admin panel of Monstroid 2, you will find:
- new templates,
- new skins,
- and updated blocks.
On the whole, there are 500 UI elements added to Monstroid 2. What is more, the theme will be updated on weekly basis and there will be 500 more components soon.
One more thing to know: now you can switch between the sections to create the design of your dream. Use any pages and templates you want, combine them and don’t be afraid to experiment. To do it, just:
- open the built-in library of presets
- find the needed ones
- pick any component you like (you can mix pages from different templates too!)
- drag-and-drop the item or use Magic Button for templates
- place it where you want it to be
- and… that’s all!
Without a doubt, the presents (as well as the templates) can be modified whenever you need. They will be added to the library as new designs/ UI elements.
Improving Editing
The updated Monstroid 2 provides you a totally stress-free content editing. These days, this is literally the most WYSIWYG-friendly multifunctional theme!
Before the update, editing was mostly based on PowerBuilder. It’s a nice, powerful, and comfortable tool but, in 2018, Monstroid got a brand-new Elementor. It’s code-free and extremely fast. It’s so popular among the modern website creators, so there’s even a large
Elementor Marketplace with tones of related products.
In summary, Elementor contains:
- quick live preview
- invigorating and creator-friendly interface
- comfortable element categories, etc.
- recently added premade templates (100% customizable skins)
- awesome speed
- lotta fresh Elementor-oriented plugins
Speed
We already mentioned that the main disadvantage of previous Monstroid 2 version was its weight. For good, now the team work hard to make the theme lightweight. Becoming sleeker, now it’s only 250kb!
The theme used to require a medium or more advanced hosting because of its rich pack. Now you don’t have to pay extra money to manage a content-driven website. To say more, it takes only 1.2 seconds. View out the updated Monstroid 2
Live Demo to try theme’s work!
New Plugins Added
Without a doubt, any worthy theme update should bring more handy plugins. Among the recently added to Monstroid 2 plugins, you will see JetPlugins package. This invigorating thing adds custom content types to the look of your website.
What else will you see inside new Monstroid 2? Here are 9 top plugins you’ll get:
- JetMenu
- JetBlocks
- JetElements
- JetTabs
- JetReviews
- JetTricks
- JetBlog
- JetWooBuilder
- JetParallax
- and JetMenu
eCommerce
And now let’s move to the most popular business niche in 2018 – eCommerce. That’s why this option was also upgraded for Monstroid 2. Today any classy theme for WordPress based websites comes with WooCommerce compatibility.
Talking about Monstroid 2, it already contains WooCommerce. Also, there are many related features like:
- eCommerce pages,
- eCommerce templates or skins,
- and marvelous shop functionality.
Should we remind you that all of them are ready-to-use and have regular updates? The system is based on JetWooBuilder plugin. It has everything and anything to get a top-notch e-store-related functionality.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, Monstroid made a long way to become the theme it is today. Being absolutely user-friendly, Monstroid is an up-to-date WordPress theme, which refines all the time. The progress never stands still as well as the world of web design. The demands are rising, so now we can finally say it: Monstroid 2 meets any of them!