Mesmerize Review: A Flexible and Multipurpose WordPress Theme

Customization

With Mesmerize, you can customize the theme from all aspects, from a single interface — the WordPress Customizer.

Everything is easy to access and customize.

If you want to change your template, you can do it right inside the Customizer.
A warning shows up saying that your current pages will be moved to Trash (they are not permanently deleted and you can recover them).

Now let’s check out some of the extra sections available only in the PRO version:

• Typography Style and Colors

You can always add new colors to your theme or background, from General settings -> Colors.You can choose from a list of theme fonts, inside General Settings -> Typography, and also adjust the paragraph types. From the “Add Webfont” button, you can search for more fonts. There are 600+ Google Fonts available in the Pro version.

What’s great about Mesmerize is that you can define your own heading sizes from H1 to H6. You can play with rem typographic scales. You can even adjust line height and letter spacing, thickness, and…mobile font size! That’s cool, but more than that, it’s extremely useful.

Also, you can use in-line editing to change the thickness of your characters, the alignment, or to add hyperlinks.The entire free Font Awesome icon library is also available in Mesmerize theme so you don’t have to waste your time looking for icons.

• Pre-designed Content Blocks

Mesmerize has 100+ blocks for functionalities such as CTA, pricing tables, counters, galleries, portfolios, clients, and team sections.

These predefined content sections allow you to easily design a website, and instead of doing these sections from scratch, you just build on existing content. 

All you have to do is choose a design and click it to be added to the live preview on the right-hand side. Next, just customize to fit your design.

Each section has its own customization options. Let’s take galleries for example. You can play with backgrounds, spacing, separators, backgrounds, adjust the number of columns per row, switch to the masonry or grid views.

• Google Maps Integration

This section can be found inside the “Contact” blocks. Remember to update your Google My Business details before taking this block live.

• Newsletter Section

In order for this feature to work, I recommend installing a plugin for Mailchimp called “MailChimp for WordPress”. You can find the plugin recommendations in the main Dashboard, Appearance->Mesmerize Info. You will have to define the form fields and form behavior inside the plugin, then copy a shortcode and paste into the newsletter/subscribe section.

If you need a contact form plugin, I recommend “Contact Form” by WPForms.

• Hero Section

Mesmerize allows you to create outstanding hero sections using extensive design options. Background options include simple color, gradient, image, video, and slideshow. There are various hero layouts and media types (image, video, multiple images, lightbox button, etc) that you can play with.

• Navigation

The Navigation menu has four major sections:

1. Top Bar
2. Frontpage Navigation
3. Mobile Navigation
4. Logo

You can adjust colors, typography, stickiness, and play with menu items styling. But let’s not forget other elements that help with navigation: calls to action, social icons, search fields. You can customize them all.

• Add custom CSS

If you feel that the pre-designed templates and blocks, and all the customization options still aren’t enough, there’s always CSS. You can add your own CSS under General Settings->Additional CSS.

• Mobile responsiveness

Every design element inside Mesmerize is built to look great on any mobile device and any screen size. It also comes with a different navigation system that is optimized for mobile devices.

Using the controls at the bottom, you can see how your website looks on both desktop and mobile devices, and make changes accordingly. Beware, a styling change you make on a certain device will show up on all devices. The moment you change content blocks (eg: delete a section on mobile), the change will be reflected on the other devices as well.

Mesmerize Pros and Cons

We’ve almost reached the end of the review.

Let’s wrap up what’s great about Mesmerize:

• Live editing from the Customizer
• Great customization
• Lots of templates
• Scalable typography feature
• Lots of fonts
• Responsive design

On the other side, there’s probably one big minus. Mesmerize includes beautifully designed ecommerce pages (product list, product detail, cart, checkout, etc)., but this is still not enough for a fully comprehensive WooCommerce experience. The features are pretty basic for an online shop.

I highly recommend taking Mesmerize for a quick spin to see all the important features in action.

Wrapping Up

Do I think if Mesmerize is a good WordPress theme option? Definitely. It’s a great bargain for the money as you don’t need to be a designer to craft a beautiful website using Mesmerize. If you need a website for a small business or a blog, there’s always the free option. If you want no limits for website design, the PRO version has great customization capabilities. So, happy customizing, folks!

Note: This article was published in collaboration with Extend Themes.