For over 6 years, we’ve kept Essentials moving forward with new features, fresh demos, and continuous improvements to help you build better websites.
To update Essentials theme check this article
Version 4.4.1
A new lightbox experience
The pixfort lightbox has been redesigned from the ground up, bringing improved performance, advanced customization, and global styling. Give your images more room to shine with a viewing experience that feels part of your website.
Now in Image, Image Carousel & Gallery
The new lightbox is now available in the Image and Image Carousel elements, as well as in Gallery. Turn individual images and carousels into interactive viewing experiences, opening up more possibilities for portfolios, product showcases, and visual storytelling.
Your lightbox, your style
Customize the lightbox globally to match your website’s design. Advanced styling options and thumbnail navigation give you more control over how your images look and how visitors explore them.
A small icon. More interaction.
Make your images inviting to explore with a fully customizable lightbox icon on hover. Choose the icon and colors to match your design, and bring an interactive touch to Image and Image Carousel elements.
- Redesigned the image lightbox with improved performance.
- Enhance popup validation logic and caching mechanism in PopupType class.
- Language translation files.
- Tooltip translation for author name in blog card meta area.
- Minor bug fixes and stability improvements.
Version 4.4.0
WooCommerce Builder
Create fully custom Single Product and Product Archive layouts directly inside the Theme Builder. Build each template around your own design, dynamic product content, and advanced display conditions, without relying on the default WooCommerce layouts.
Create unique product pages, custom shop archives, category layouts, and tailored shopping experiences that match your brand.
10+ New Dynamic WooCommerce Elements
Build WooCommerce layouts with a new collection of dynamic Elementor elements. From Product Images, Price, and Add to Cart to Reviews, Related Products, and Upsells, display the right product content exactly where you need it.
Also added
- Title and text animation controls to FancyBox element.
- Sticky box offset option in Elementor.
- Updated the icon option style for better UI and UX.
- Page transition progress bar optimizations.
- Language translation files.
- The display of image slider in the Story popup.
- Minor bug fixes and stability improvements.
Version 4.3.2
Introducing Accordion Open & Closed Status Icons
Customize the icons displayed for open and closed accordion items to better match your design. Choose separate icons for each state and create clearer, more polished accordion interactions across your website.
With smooth interactions and a modern visual experience, Accordion Slider makes it easy to turn your content into engaging sections that invite visitors to explore.
More Accordion Control & Customization
Create more flexible accordion layouts with improved control over how each item looks and behaves. Combine custom open and closed icons with the accordion’s existing content, spacing, colors, and responsive settings to build interactions that fit your visual style.
Use separate icons for expanded and collapsed items to make accordion states immediately clear at a glance.
Also added
- Elementor elements custom CSS option.
- Add Title and Text animation and animation delay options to FancyBox element.
- JavaScript performance optimizations.
- Popup loading cache improvements.
- Templates rendering improvements.
- Contact form 7 scripts loading optimizations.
- Language translation files.
- Minor bug fixes and stability improvements.
Version 4.3.1
Introducing Accordion Slider Element
Showcase your content in a completely new way with the Accordion Slider element. Combine titles, descriptions, buttons, images, icons, backgrounds, overlays, and more to create rich interactive layouts for services, portfolios, product features, creative showcases, and almost any type of content.
With smooth interactions and a modern visual experience, Accordion Slider makes it easy to turn your content into engaging sections that invite visitors to explore.
Advanced Layouts & Customization
Create horizontal or vertical accordion layouts with extensive control over their appearance and behavior.
Customize slide content, media, colors, overlays, spacing, heights, border radius, collapsed and active states, responsive behavior, and more. You can also choose whether slides activate on click or hover, giving you the flexibility to create unique interactions for different website experiences.
From subtle content showcases to bold, full-height visual sections, Accordion Slider opens up a wide range of new creative possibilities.
Theme Options Revisions
Restore previous Theme Options settings anytime with automatic revisions and one-click recovery. Review earlier settings snapshots and quickly return to a previous configuration whenever you need to undo a change.
Also added
- Accordion title HTML tag option.
- Gutenberg editor page background styling.
- Added HTML Tag control to Badge element.
- Improved handling of nested Elementor content Templates rendering, ensuring live CSS updates are respected inside Elementor Editor.
- Paste functionality to Content box element in WPBakery backend editor.
- Improved dragging elements into Content box element in latest version of WPBakery builder.
- Improved header data sanitization, and updated permissions for theme builder access.
- Updated Header text output to use wp_kses_post for improved security and proper handling of user-generated content.
- Google fonts loading optimizations.
- Enhanced validation and sanitization for Portfolio text fields in the save function.
- Language translation files.
- Minor bug fixes and stability improvements.
Version 4.3.0
Marquee Templates
You can now use custom saved templates built with Elementor or WPBakery directly as items inside the Marquee element. This new option allows you to move beyond simple text, icons or images and create fully custom marquee content using your own layouts, designs, and components — all managed directly from the page builder.
With Marquee Templates, you can create a wide range of unique layouts such as cards, feature sections, testimonials, content blocks, and more — all scrolling smoothly inside the Marquee.
Explore examples and see what you can build:
Copy & Paste Header Elements
Editing headers is now faster with new right-click Copy, Paste, and Delete actions directly inside the Header Builder. Copy elements between desktop and tablet/mobile header layouts, or reuse them across different headers on the same website — making it easier to keep your navigation consistent and avoid rebuilding the same elements from scratch. This small workflow improvement can save time when creating responsive or multi-header websites.
Also added
- Improved Gutenberg editor styling to better match the website design.
- Extra custom class option in WPBakery Advanced text, Feature and Feature list elements.
- Elements styling assets and JavaScript file loading optimizations.
- Language translation files.
- Minor bug fixes and stability improvements.
Version 4.2.1
New Table of Content Element
Create clear and organized page navigation with the new Table of Content element. Perfect for blog posts, documentation pages, long-form content, and knowledge bases, the element comes with multiple styles, customization options, and a ready-to-use setup to help visitors navigate content more easily.
It also opens new possibilities for improved layouts with floating navigation, sticky sidebars, popup navigation, and more.
New Vertical Menu Element
Introducing the Vertical Menu element — a new way to build organized sidebar navigation layouts directly inside Elementor. Create custom navigation areas for documentation pages, dashboards, sidebars, popup menus, and advanced layouts using multiple styles, icons, nested items, and expandable sections.
It also opens new possibilities for improved layouts with floating navigation, sticky sidebars, popup navigation, and more.
Also added
- Added responsive control for Items per line in the Blog element.
- Styling and icons file loading enhancements.
- Language translation files.
- Feature list empty items array initialization.
- Minor bug fixes and stability improvements.
Version 4.2.0
New Theme Builder Page Templates
Build your own custom templates for Posts, Pages, Archives, and Search Results directly inside the Theme Builder.
Now, you can easily design unique layouts for every type of content — from a beautifully crafted post page to a personalized search results layout or a custom archive for your post categories. The possibilities are endless.
We’ve prepared a comprehensive guide to help you get started with page templates:
New Display Conditions
We’ve introduced even more advanced Display Conditions, including Post Child Category and Archive Category options.
Unlock Limitless Possibilities
You can build fully custom, dynamic page layouts that perfectly adapt to your website’s needs — no coding required.
New Dynamic Page Template Elements
We’ve added powerful new elements to help you build smarter, more content-aware templates:
- Post Content
- Post Excerpt
- Post Comments
- Author Box
- Post Categories & Tags
- Post Navigation
- Archive Posts
These elements bring true dynamic design capabilities to your templates.
- Enhanced edge opacity transition for Carousel items.
- Enhanced full-link scrolling to close the mobile navigation menu after a link is clicked.
- Language translation files.
- Numbers element flow animation with primary gradient text color.
- Minor bug fixes and stability improvements.
Version 4.1.1
WooCommerce Column Switcher
Give visitors more control over how they browse your products. Available on Shop pages and in the Products element, the new Product Column Switcher lets them quickly switch between 2, 3, and 4 columns.
Also added
- Heading Upright Vertical Text: Added upright vertical heading mode with adjustable letter spacing.
- Optimizations of default CSS files.
- Tooltip radius consistency: Switched tooltip border radius to the shared radius variable.
- Updated WPBakery plugin to the latest version.
- Updated Slider Revolution to the latest version.
- Carousels JavaScript library.
- Language translation files.
- Sliding Text alignment fix: Responsive alignment now also updates text alignment, not only flex justification.
- Minor bug fixes and stability improvements.
Version 4.1.0
New WooCommerce Demo: Store
Build your online shop with Store, the new WooCommerce demo available for Elementor (Flexbox Containers) and WPBakery.
New Pages and pixfort Templates
- 9+ new pages in Elementor + WPBakery
- 40+ new pixfort templates in Elementor + WPBakery
Secondary Image on Product Hover
Show an alternate product image when visitors hover over a product, giving them another view without opening the product page.
Also added
- New header layout in Demo Import
- Improved shop, product, and checkout interface
- Countdown Layout Controls: Added responsive “values per row” layout options
- Custom Sidebar Overrides: Added per-post and per-category custom sidebar options.
- Accessibility Controls: Added ARIA label options for icon-only header buttons/links and WooCommerce product action icons.
- Semantic HTML Controls: Added custom HTML tag options for Heading and Feature titles.
- Updated the slider and adjusted loop/edge-transition handling for more reliable carousels.
- Products Carousel tweak: Added a 0px padding option.
- Updated language translation files.
- WPBakery shortcode fixes: Fixed escaped links in Card and Promo Box shortcodes.
- Image Comparison persistence: Ensured before/after label color settings are always saved in WPBakery.
- Minor bug fixes and stability improvements.
Version 4.0.3
Scroll Mask Reveal for Highlighted Text
The new Scroll Mask Reveal option lets you dim text and image items, then reveal their full color as each line moves toward the middle of the viewport. Combined with the new image scroll animation options, including scale and expand effects, you can create elegant storytelling sections that feel dynamic, smooth, and connected to the visitor’s motion.
Dynamic Tags for Header Elements
Dynamic Tags are now supported in header elements, opening new possibilities for creating smarter and more adaptive headers.
New WooCommerce Products Element
A flexible way to showcase WooCommerce products directly inside the page builder. You can choose the product item style, set the number of products and columns, filter by one or multiple categories, display specific products, control ordering, and show products based on conditions such as on sale, featured, best selling, top rated, or out of stock.
Design System: Shadows
You can now customize the default global shadow values used across the theme directly from the Design System in Theme Options.
Design System: Border Radius
You can now customize the default global border radius values used across theme elements and areas directly from the Theme Options.
Flow Numbers Animation for Countdown
The Countdown element now supports the new Flow Numbers Animation, bringing smooth animated number transitions to the countdown.
Also added
- Header Builder Enhancements: More layout and spacing controls for elements and the columns of header areas.
- Product Card Styling: Added controls for card layouts, corners, shadows, hover shadows and animations.
- AJAX Reliability: Added automatic nonce refreshing and retry handling for product previews and cart actions.
- HTML tag selection for Card, Promo Box, Image Box, Photo Box, and Marquee elements for cleaner semantic markup and better SEO.
- Custom text-size option for banner content.
- WooCommerce option to hide the product description heading.
- Refined WooCommerce product card spacing, radius, and shadow styles.
- Responsive option for position in the the Sliding Text element.
- Improved product galleries, quick view, cart controls, badges, buttons and grids styling.
- Updated language translation files.
- Minor bug fixes and stability improvements.
Version 4.0.2
New Image Comparison Element
Introducing the new Image Comparison element. Create interactive before-and-after sliders that help visitors instantly explore visual differences using smooth controls, multiple styles, and flexible customization options.
Perfect for showcasing transformations, product comparisons, renovations, photo editing, design projects, medical treatments, case studies, and much more.
WordPress 7.0 Custom Fonts Compatibility
Essentials Theme is now fully compatible with the new WordPress 7.0 Custom Fonts Library.
Manage, install, and use custom fonts more easily directly from the native WordPress fonts interface, while keeping full compatibility with the pixfort typography system and design options.
Also added
- 7 New Google Fonts.
- New Alpha custom background color option in the Header builder.
- New CSS Classes option to the Button and Link elements in the Header builder.
- Updated Slider Revolution plugin to the latest version.
- WooCommerce template files to the latest version.
- Updated translation files.
- CTA element custom title color option.
- Accordion custom icon color option.
- Minor bug fixes.
Version 4.0.1
- 22 New Google Fonts.
- Carousel elements Dots color option.
- Aria label attribute to the Back to top button for better accessibility.
- Updated WPBakery plugin to the latest version.
- Updated Slider Revolution plugin to the latest version.
- Updated Master Slider plugin to the latest version.
- Updated translation files.
- Custom Text Size for the Levels Element.
- Gallery 2 Columns items width.
- Sticky bottom sidebar display.
- Minor bug fixes.
Initiale Release
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