Extra performance optimizations
Google fonts
Prior to our 6.0 update, when you select any Google Font in our Typography settings, all its variations and font-weight are loaded on your website. We made it work this way to ensure absolute compatibility with all CSS rules on your website. But it is a bad approach in terms of performance. So now we load only 2 font weights by default: 400 and 700 or 300 and 600 (it depends on font). By doing this, we have reduced the number of font files loaded by 50-70% in different situations.
INFO. Note that you still can load any font-weight you need on your website. If you see that some font-weight is missed, just go to Theme Settings -> Typography and select the desired font-weight for some of the font groups.
System font stack
If you don’t want to load any external font files at all, you can select our system font stack in Theme Settings -> Typography. It will load different fonts depending on the system you are browsing the website on. Using Mac OS you will see one font, using Windows - another, and so on. It is a great option for performance but obviously, the visual aspect will not look as good you might expect.
Preload key requests
When you test your website using Google Pagespeed you might see a warning telling you to preload key font requests. It often complains about our “woodmart-font.woff” file. This font file is tiny and contains all system icons used by our theme. It includes cart, wishlist, compare, quick view, search and other icons. So to solve this problem you can go to Theme Settings -> Performance and enable the “Preload key request” option
Optimize Elementor CSS and JS
Elementor in its latest updates improves plugin general performance and resource loading. But as for now, we have added a few options to reduce the number of CSS and JS files loaded by Elementor that we never use in our projects. If plugin developers improve their resources loading as promised, these options will be removed from the theme. But by that time, you can find them in Theme Settings -> Performance -> Plugins. Note that you use them at your own risk, if you notice that something is broken in Elementor functionality or styling, it would be better to turn them off.
WEBP Images support
WEBP is a modern format for images that is recommended by Google. Using WEBP should increase your overall Google Pagespeed score as well. We have added compatibility for the WEBP image format provided by the Imagify plugin. Currently, it is fully supported and we use this plugin on our demo website as well. The only limitation is the single product page image gallery from WooCommerce. It is not possible to use WEBP there because it breaks default WooCommerce scripts for variable product images. We have also consulted with Imagify developers but it is not possible to solve this while using HTML tag. You can use an alternative “rewrite” method to serve WEBP images provided by the plugin. But this method has another drawback that it is not compatible with CDN services. Resources loading control Since our theme now loads a bunch of CSS and JS files instead of a single one, you might want to load or not load some particular files globally. So now you can add/remove any file using our performance options in Theme Settings -> Performance -> CSS & JS. For example, you can enable OWL Carousel library to be loaded globally or styles for it.
New portfolio page
Our portfolio page utilizes “Masonry” JS script to organize all images in a nice-looking grid and add handy filters functionality. But it has one negative aspect: if you have multiple pages of projects, filters don’t load projects from other pages (second, third, and so on.) To solve this problem, we have introduced the “AJAX links” functionality for our portfolio filters. And now you can make it work in the same way it is done on our shop page. You can find and activate this function Theme Settings -> Portfolio -> Categories filters (links) and Theme Settings -> Portfolio -> AJAX Portfolio.
New portfolio options
White label
Another long-waited function has been added in our new update - White labeling. You can find all related settings in Theme Settings -> White label. And now you can replace all branding names “WoodMart”, “Xtemos” with your own. You can replace all related logo images either. A very useful feature for web agencies that want to hide the information about our theme from their clients.
White label options
Elementor templates library (300+ templates)
Before our update, we had this library for WPBakery page builder only. All our demo versions are available for Elementor except our section templates library. And starting from now, this library is available for Elementor as well.
Elementor templates library
WPML compatibility enhancements
We have added a few improvements for a better user experience using WPML. Here are the main changes:
- HTML Blocks translated versions now automatically loaded in different languages.
- All Elementor widgets texts now can be translated with WPML translator feature. Not needed to create a separate page.
- Header builder texts now can be translated with String translation. Not needed to create a totally new header for a new language.
Theme Settings presets
Our new custom presets functionality allows you to create different settings for some particular sections of your website. For example: set different colors for particular product categories, special layout for particular pages, custom fonts for selected posts, etc. Actually, you can configure almost everything on your website in different places. Find a new interface for presets in Theme Settings -> Options Presets. Read more here https://xtemos.com/docs/woodmart/theme-settings-presets/
Internet Explorer 11
Elementor page builder has dropped support of IE11 from 3.0 version (https://developers.elementor.com/elementor-dropping-support-ie/) and WordPress considers dropping support for IE 11 (https://www.pcmag.com/news/wordpress-wants-to-drop-support-for-internet-explorer-11) since browser usage for the first time fell below 1% and currently stand at 0.46%.
Based on these circumstances and to utilize modern web technologies such as CSS variables and modern JS, our team decided to reduce the support of Internet Explorer. Following changes allow us to hugely decrease theme style files and increase site performance in modern web browsers. Generally, IE11 is still supported, but a completely equal frontend view relative to modern browsers is not guaranteed.