Total WordPress Theme Review

Total Responsive Multi-Purpose WordPress Theme from WP Explorer is a super clean, crazy powerful and awesomely customizable WordPress theme that has surpassed the 13,000 mark in sales on ThemeForest and has amassed a rating of 4.82 / 5 based on 864 ratings.

First released in 2013, Total been under development ever since, with new features and bug fixes released continuously. WP Explorer’s support is also great and every single support request I have submitted has been answered quickly and effectively.

Total has become my go-to WordPress theme, it’s ease-of-use and customizability is far beyond any other theme I have ever used (and I’ve used a lot).

Major Theme Features

There’s really only two things you need to know about Total. It is so overwhelming feature-heavy there’s no way I would even attempt to list all of them in this review. But much more importantly, it is also incredibly to use and customize. Some feature-heavy WordPress themes are painfully complex and frustrating to work with – Total is completely the opposite.

Theme Panel

In Total you can easily shut-off and/or hide pretty much any feature you don’t need – speeding up the interface and simplifying every single task you do.Just head to Theme Panel > Theme Panel and you can shut off pretty much any feature you don’t need. The image on the left shows the extensive list of options you can control with this interface. Don’t want to use the built-in Custom 404 page, shut it off. Or you don’t need the built-in Favicon interface, you can shut that off too. Every item you shut-off disappears from the WordPress interface you so don’t have to see it again (until you turn it back on of course).

WordPress Customizer

In Total you can control almost every design element from the WordPress Customizer. Font size, page titles, menu design, blog layout, footer layout, etc. are all accessible right from the Customizer. See the image below for a preview of some of the Customizer features that come standard with Total. Most other WordPress themes require extensive customs CSS coding to achieve this sort of control.

Individual Page Settings

The other massive benefit of Total is the incredible granular control you have over settings on a page by page basis – you can easily override a significant number of settings using the Page Settings dialog box. You can do things like shutting off the nav bar, page titles and footer, display a custom sidebar, changing the site width (full-width or boxed), creating a custom call to action, even set-up a redirect URL on a page by page basis. This gives you an insane amount of control over how your website looks and works.

Drag & Drop Page Builder

Total uses the Visual Composer plugin to make creating complex page layouts incredibly easy. But WPExplorer has also created a custom interface that adds significantly more features and options than you ever get with the stock Visual Composer plugin. It’s the best looking Visual Composer interface I have ever seen and the number of options it allows you to insert into your website is phenomenal.

Extensive Demos & Easy Sample Data Import

Total has a huge number of theme demos – 20 at current count. There’s the standard portfolio, business and blog demos, but there’s a few specific ones that may come in really handy like a wedding, health care and even a breast cancer awareness demos. I’m not a huge fan of most of these demo sites – they look pretty good but don’t really show how powerful Total really is. But they are a great starting point when you first start working with Total.

Importing the sample data is a little more complicated than it is with other WordPress themes I’ve worked with, but the process is well documented and explained. You can view a knowledge base article that describes the process by visiting Total’s extensive documentation library here.

Great Support

Total offers an extensive library of help articles that are well written and thorough. You can get an answer to pretty much any question you have right here. There is also an extensive library of help videos that cover such topics as setting up pricing tables and adding parallax backgrounds. WPExplorer also offers great one-on-one online support if you run into trouble that the articles and videos just don’t cover. ThemeForest offers six months of free support – you can extend the support period to 12 months for $17.70.. Note that these time periods are only for one-on-one online support, you will receive all theme updates even after your support period has expired.

Feature List

• Totally responsive design
• Retina image support
• CSS3 animations
• 3 header styles & optional sticky header
• Mega menu support
• Visual Composer drag & drop page builder
• Page by page control of design options
• Custom post types – portfolio, staff & testimonials
• Parallax row backgrounds
• Boxed & full-width layouts
• Customizable footer call-to-action
• Built-in social sharing
• Unlimited design options for all major interfaces
• Masonry blog, portfolio staff & testimonial pages
• Templatera, Slider Revolution & Layer slider included
• Customizable copyright area
• Widget sidebars & footers
• Automatic updates using the Envato Toolkit plugin
• Child theme compatible
• Custom CSS field
• Google font support
• WooCommerce support
• SEO optimized
• Font Awesome, Open Iconic, Typicons, Entypo, Linecons & Pixel icon support
• Custom favicon interface

Purchase Options

The Total – Responsive Multi-Purpose WordPress Theme is available from ThemeForest for $59 with six months of free support – you can extend the support period to 12 months for $17.70.

Final Word

Total is hands down my favourite WordPress theme – I’ve never worked with anything better or more customizable. Every other theme I’ve worked with gets compared to Total when I realize that I can’t update a preference or add an option that is super simple in Total. As long as you take the time to explore the myriad of available options you can build almost anything you can imagine. Just don’t get stuck on how the demo themes look – it can do so much more than what is shown there.

If nothing else, check out Total before selecting a WordPress theme for your next project. I can pretty much guarantee you will love it.