Novu is a premium creative theme developed in August 2016 by the UXcode, an Envato author. This theme is highly customizable, with lots of features and pre-built layouts. If you want to develop a portfolio, blog, business or a one-page website, Novu can be a good choice as it performs like a multi-purpose WordPress theme.
Design
The UXcode author created an elegant WordPress template, with a creative, minimal design, and beautiful lines. Novu is a responsive and retina ready theme built to perform on every type of device. If you want to set up a ‘Coming Soon’ page with a countdown system, a website with split screens or full width pages without a frame, you can quickly get started. Just import the media files and pages with one of the six demos available in the theme’s package.
Novu comes with attractive predefined templates designed to make the building process as easy as possible. You can display the website’s main layout as framed or in full width mode, then add a beautiful theme color. To show a chic menu on your site, choose the ‘Hamburger’ button, or maybe you’ll prefer to keep it simple and use the classic menu.
On WordPress, if content is the king, the design of it is the queen. Novu’s author understood this and built various post formats. You can feature a post as video, audio, image, quote or gallery template. Besides, when you create a new post you can upload a picture as header background, and up to eight images to include in the photo gallery.
With two blog styles, masonry layout and the premium slider options, you can showcase your things in beautiful portfolios and image galleries. You can also use a video lightbox and share YouTube video clips, to create an interactive and dynamic website.
The typography is part of your site character. Novu lets you customize the fonts, make the necessary adjustments and preview the changes in real-time.
Novu is a social-friendly theme which allows you to add your favorite social networks URL’s like Facebook, Twitter, Behance, Blogger and 22 more.
The UXCode author developed a custom widget called the ‘Novu – Author Info.’ You can insert this widget in the sidebar section along with other WordPress widgets.
Functionality
‘A clean structure delivers a great user experience,’ says a golden web design rule. The UXCode author applied this by building a configuration panel to allow you to create a great user experience.
Novu comes with the General Settings, Favicon, Typography, Header & Footer, Blog & Portfolio and Social Network, all the settings gathered in the Theme Options panel. You can manage some of these settings using the Live Customizer, with the possibility to see a preview of his choices.
The core of this theme is Visual Composer – a premium drag and drop page builder customized with both frontend and backend functionality. You can customize pages with elements using the ‘Multiscroll slider,’ ‘Lighbox Video,’ ‘Down Count,’ ‘Portfolio’ and 17 more custom blocks.
The Novu theme comes with premium Slider Pro and the custom Novu Core plugins designed to enhance the visual look of your content and the website’s functionality. Adding a forum or an author profile to your site is easy, as Novu is compatible with bbPress and BuddyPress plugins.
Novu has a child theme included in the package, useful for advanced users that want to make code adjustments, without altering the main files.
| GENERAL | |
|---|---|
| Item name | Novu |
| Category | Multi-purpose |
| Type | Premium |
| Author | UXCODE |
| Envato elite author | - |
| Tested version | 1.2.1. |
| COMPATIBILITY | |
| Content width | Full width |
| Browser compatibility | IE11+ / Chrome / FF / Opera / Safari / Edge |
| WooCommerce | - |
| bbPress | Yes |
| BuddyPress | Yes |
| WPML | Yes |
| FONTS AND TRANSLATION | |
| Integrated translation | - |
| Google fonts | Yes |
| Custom fonts | - |
| Typekit fonts | - |
| RTL support | - |
| POST FEATURES | |
| Video posts | Yes |
| Audio posts | Yes |
| Post templates | 1 |
| Post view counter | - |
| Smart lists | - |
| Social share | Yes |
| Custom image lightbox | - |
| Custom image galery | - |
| Link post | - |
| PAGE FEATURES | |
| Blocks | 21 |
| Widgets | 1 |
| Header styles | 1 |
| Footer styles | 1 |
| Masonry layout | Yes |
| Mega menus | - |
| Sticky menu | Yes |
| Social networks | Yes |
| Social counter | - |
| Video playlists | - |
| Instagram widget | - |
| Custom Page Builder | Visual Composer |
| Responsive layout | Breakpoints |
| Blog layouts | 2 |
| Menu styles | 2 |
| Dual Sidebars | - |
| Shortcodes | - |
| Video slider | Yes |
| OTHER FEATURES | |
| Demos included | 6 |
| SEO optimized | Yes |
| Custom Theme Updater | - |
| ADS | |
| Ad system | - |
| Adsense support | - |
| Custom ads | Yes |
| PERFORMANCE | |
| CSS file size | 459 kb |
| Overall speed | Medium |
| Performance documentation | - |
| USER EXPERIENCE | |
| Total ratings | 5 |
| User rating | |
| Learnability | Easy |
| DESIGN | |
| Responsive design | Yes |
| Retina ready | Yes |
| DOCUMENTATION | |
| Difficulty | Medium |
| Explanations | Less Detailed |
| Explicit screen shots | Yes |
| Video tutorials | - |
| Search option | - |
| Extra documentation | - |
| PREMIUM PLUGINS | |
| Plugins | Visual Composer, Novu Core, Slider Pro |
| VALUE | |
| Price | $49 |
| Value for the money | Good |
Performance
We have tested the Novu’s default demo on different page speed tests, and the content loads with a medium speed.
Downsides
It’s great the Novu theme is provided with demos, but to choose the best that suits your needs, you have to import them, one by one, manually as they don’t have a description. If you like to have many pre-made layout options for the ‘above the fold’ and bottom areas of your website, note that Novu comes with a single header & footer predefined style.
The theme is WPML compatible, but Novu doesn’t have a built-in translation panel.
Documentation is less detailed than expected, with no video tutorials and very few screen shots.
