Review updated on: 08.07.2018
Detailed Review of The WordPress Theme Bridge – Creative, Unique, Efficient
How often are you looking for a new theme? For a theme to redesign your website?
If you blogging for more than 2 years, you’re probably sick of your current site layout. I understand I feel the same way with my own site: narrowem.com.
But think about it for a moment. New theme will cost you money and time to configure. Wouldn’t be best if you can simply add new layout on the theme you’re using? Something fresh but still easy to configure. Yes, it would.
This is my updated detailed review of Bridge WordPress theme. I first reviewed the theme back in 2015. 3 years, later, Bridge theme is still one of the best themes available on ThemeForest:
This theme now has more than 376 unique demos included in the package and basically everything else to create a stunning looking website. Even though Bridge looks really nice, there are some things that aren’t quite nice.
In this detailed review of the WordPress theme Bridge, I will go through the main options and settings it has to offer. I will explain what I love and what I hate about this theme. But first, let see if this theme is right for you:
WHO IS THIS THEME FOR?
The subheading of the theme says it all – Multi-Purpose. Basically, you can create any type of website using Bridge: from portfolio sites to eCommerce ones. The only limitation can be your imagination. It can be used from agencies, designers, bloggrs, writers, shop owners. The portfolio options are magnificent and they will surely get you more clients.
Personally, I wouldn’t recommend Bridge to non-tech users who are just starting, why? Because it’s equipped with far too many options which will only confuse someone who is creating his first website and doesn’t have a clue what he is doing. Let’s take a look at the installation process:
INSTALLING WORDPRESS THEME BRIDGE
There is nothing unusual about installing WordPress theme Bridge. Once you download the zip file containing the installation file, you need to upload it inside your WordPress admin. Let me show you how:
Access your WordPress adming dashboard and go to Appearance > Themes > Upload a file > Install:
Click activate theme once the process finishes:
Once Bridge theme is active, the following welcome screen will appear:
If you scroll a bit down you will see a couple of useful links that you might use right now:
I’m going to install the required plugins.
HOW TO INSTALL Bridge REQUIRED PLUGINS?
Click on the link mentioned above to see what are the required and recommended plugins:
I will personally install the following 2:
- Envato Market: This plugin will allow you to update your theme from inside the dashboard.
- Visual Composer: This plugin will allow you to build beautiful landing pages. You can also check my full review of Visual Composer page builder.
Bridge comes with not one, but two different premium slider plugins: LayerSlider WP and Revolution Slider. They are good solutions if you want to create slides but I don’t think this is needed. Sliders are no longer cool. Nobody is using them nowadays. On top of that, there is a slider plugin included inside the theme itself – Qode Slider.
To be honest, after testing all of the plugins, I personally prefer the one made by the developers of the theme – the Qode Slider. The options are much easier to get used to, I also think it’s loading quicker. So, if you’re going to use a slider solution for your theme do check our Qode Slider. The options are visible inside your WordPress admin section > Qode Options > Qode Slider.
Check the box inside the plugins you want to install and click Install.
The next page will ask you to activate the plugins. Simply click Activate:
You’re all set with the plugins. If you need to install the other plugins from the list you can return to this menu by going to Appearance > Install Plugins.
IMPORTING DEMO CONTENT
Like I already mentioned, Bridge comes with over 360 pre-installed unique demos. If you want to take advantage of those already made layouts, you simply need to choose the one you like and add it to your site.
Go to Qode Import section inside your WordPress admin:
The whole procedure is quite simple, just choose the demo site you want to install. Once you select it you will see a short preview. Select the import type: whether you will add the content, widgets, options or everything for the selected layout, once you specify and click install it will take a few minutes to finish. The Qode imported also allows you to import media attachments, which is a great feature to have.
Make sure to also read the important notes mentioned on that page.
The process takes less than a minute and the final result is the following:
Your site is almost ready for visitors.
GETTING STARTED WITH THE WORDPRESS THEME BRIDGE
There is a lot to talk about here. Bridge comes with 22 configurations tabs.
You will be able to see all of them when you click on the Qode options, on the left side of your WordPress dashboard:
It’s a bit stressing to see all these available options, but once you understand how they work, changing different things on the site won’t be an issue.
GENERAL SETTINGS
Starting from the top, the first tab inside the Qode options section is named general. Here we will see the settings affecting the whole site.
There are actually subsection inside this section. To be honest. The theme is stuffed with options. That’s why I mentioned that it’s not that good for people just starting.
When you’re inside General Tab you will first see the Design Style Options:
Here you can select your Font Family, disable Google fonts if you like and change the default colors of the theme:
Once you set your preferred colors, you can some effects. Like Loading Effect, Loading Animation, Smooth Scroll, and similar.
The theme allows you to add animations only on Mobile/Touch Devices:
This is also the sections where you can upload your site favicon:
The section after Settings is the Custom Code section. Nothing interesting here. If you want you can add custom code here. Keep in mind that it’s better to first install Bridge Child theme if you’re thinking of adding custom code to your site. Otherwise, you will need to add the changes every time there is an update of the theme:
Finally, we have SEO and Google Maps sections:
Here you can add your Google Analytics Account ID and Google Maps Api Key. I personally suggest using Yoast SEO plugin, which means that you can disable Qode SEO.
Don’t forget to save every time you make a change to the settings.
Adding Logo On Bridge Theme
There is a whole section dedicated for the different logo types on Bridge WordPress theme.
This is basically the section after the General one. Obviously, it’s called Logo:
You can upload 7 types of logos depending on the header skin. Keep in mind that it’s not necessary to create and upload a logo on all of the listed options. This depends on what header you’re using. For example, if you’re going with the “Light” header skin, you will need to upload a dark logo, in order to have some sort of contrast.
At the bottom of the section, you will also see an option to set the Height for a mobile header by typing the desired pixels.
Header and Footer Options
Let’s start with the header options:
This section is full of options and gives you a lot of flexibility. I would say that a lot of them aren’t needed, simply because it will take your mind off the important part of building a site: adding content.
Some of the options are:
- You can stick your menu to the left:
- You can make your header transparent.
- You can set a sticky menu for mobile devices.
- You can enable the side area inside the menu that’s like additional widget section. Inside you can do a bunch of stuff:
The footer options:
You can define how many columns you want inside the footer, upload background image if that’s what you desire. You can also set the footer columns to be one by one on tablet portrait.
To be honest, you probably won’t touch most of the options inside these two sections.
Bridge Font Options
The fonts options panel is full of features, as you can imagine. You can change the font of every word inside your WordPress site.
Here’s a list of the available configurations:
- Headings;
- Headings responsive – for tablet portrait view;
- Headings responsive – for mobile;
- Text;
- Header and menu;
- Page title;
- Page title responsive;
- Page subtitle;
- Page text above title;
- Footer;
- Portfolio;
- Breadcrumbs;
Each section allows you to set a font, size, line height, weight, style, and choose what to be the letter spacing. Of course, you can also change the color of the text.
EASILY CREATE 404, CONTACT AND MAINTENANCE PAGE WITH BRIDGE THEME
The developers from Qode really wanted to ease our task when it comes down to creating custom 404 page, contact us page and maintenance page.
Setting a custom 404 page is never been easier with the WordPress theme Bridge. Just fill out the fields, save the form and you are good to go:
This is how a 404 page looks live on the website:
Pretty cool, right? And it took us only a couple of seconds to configure that. WIthout the need to look for a plugin.
It’s also supper easy to set a contact us page.
Go to Qode options > Contact page fill the fields:
Then, go to Pages > Add new page and choose from the template section the Contact Page template:
Save the changes and see what will happen when you visit the page:
A fully working page within a minute.
ADDITIONAL FEATURES INCLUDED IN BRIDGE THEME
Yes, there is more.
There are a couple of more menus that I won’t cover in details mostly because they’re pretty straightforward. You top of what we covered, Bridge also gives you:
- Ability to configure separators and buttons from the Elements section.
- You can additionally configure the widgets styles: What will be the title, text and link style.
- Powerful portfolio section where you can additionally customize your portfolio items. There are more than 20 things to configure in this section.
- Social section allows you to add social sharing buttons inside your pages and posts. To be honest, I’m not impressed about these buttons. As you will see below, they aren’t really noticeable:
I don’t believe a lot of people will notice the little “Share” option on top of the post. I, myself, was looking for that for around 5 minutes. I thought that the social share buttons are not working inside this theme. Really poor feature considering the amount of options available on this theme.
CREATING A LANDING PAGE USING WORDPRESS THEME BRIDGE
Ok, we’ve gone through the available features and the included plugins inside this detailed review of the WordPress theme Bridge, but let see is it easy to create a landing page with all these available functionalities.
Building custom pages or posts inside Bridge can be achieved in two ways, either using the Visual composer or the Qode shortcodes. They both have application and can serve you differently when creating the website:
I personally prefer using the Visual Composer.
When using the Visual composer to create a page, simply click on the Backend editor button (when you click it it will say Classic editor) and you are ready to add different elements. Here I will add a couple of things:
First I will add a row:
Then I will add a text field with a button below:
Also, a button below:
I will also add empty space above and below the settings I’ve just added:
The reason I’m doing this is to put the focus on the content. Otherwise, the page is getting too stuffed. I will add 80px empty space.
Next, I will add a large image on the right. I will center that image and I will also add a bit of empty space between my text and my button on the right:
After this first section, I will add extra two and I will put the following options:
- Blockquote
- Blog masonry – a blog section where your blog posts are with different sizes
- Really big call to action button.
- All these elements will be with empty space above and below.
The final result will be the following:
One thing that really bugs me is the space on both sides. It’s like I have boxed layout enabled but I don’t. I went through all the configurations inside the theme and I can’t find from where I can make my pages full width.
CUSTOMIZING BLOG SECTION ON WORDPRESS THEME BRIDGE
We know how important it is to create articles, and with Bridge on page settings, you can easily make some cosmetic changes to the stuff you write. If you take a look at the screenshots below, you will notice how many things you can modify:
The options are separated in the following sections:
Qode General:
Qode Post Layout:
Qode Header:
- Qode Footer
- Qode scroll title animations
- Qode Sidebar
The best of all options is the Qode Content Bottom where you can add a call to action button and text:
This will appear below your post so that you can direct visitors to subscribe or to your landing page:
That’s the coolest part.
You can additionally customize your blog section on Bridge WordPress theme by going to Qode Options > Blog:
From here you can choose how your blog posts should appear on your website:
You can choose from several options.
WHAT IS THE PRICE OF THIS WORDPRESS THEME?
Bridge regular license comes for the price of 59 dollars, which is pretty good cost considering the available functions and the free plugins included. You can purchase it from ThemeForst.
PROS AND CONS OF WORDPRESS THEME BRIDGE
Pros:
- 376+ unique demos.
- 24 layout concepts.
- Visual composer included.
- Layerslider plugin included.
- Flexible with a lot of options.
- SEO optimization build in.
Cons:
- Too many options, but still basic settings are missing.
- If you are a beginner it will take you quite some time to find out exactly how to modify the theme.
FINAL THOUGHTS
For a best selling theme on ThemeForest, there are a lot of things that could be made better.
When I first review the theme in 2015, I didn’t quite like it. Now, 3 years later, I like it even less.
The available options are slowing down the theme. You need a really good host to run Bridge. Even though you have social buttons included, you still need to add 3rd party plugin because the buttons coming with the theme are not good. I hate the fact that there are soo many options. It’s hard to find what you’re looking for and you’re constantly scrolling through the menus inside looking for the switch for something.
Yes, it’s a theme that can be used for pretty much all kinds of websites. Still, you need an experienced person to create the site for you.
I personally don’t quite like the theme. Still, Bridge sold close to 100,000 copies. Probably I’m wrong.
What do you think about Bridge WordPress theme? Have you ever used it on one of your sites?
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