Applied - Essential Blog theme for Modern Content Creators

Key capabilities and core benefits

• Uncomplicated & easy to use with extensive theme options and dedicated advertising areas.
• Google PageSpeed and Core Web Vitals optimized for fast loading and better rankings.
• Support for multiple layouts, post styles, and responsive design across devices.

New for 2025: Advanced Reviews & Ratings

Review & rate anything with the new Applied Ratings plugin, Stars, Bar, Circle and sash, scale configuration and light and dark scheme color editing.

See the new reviews demo here

Live customization, global toggles & previews

• Toggle Everything: global or per-post toggles for post elements, theme elements, sidebars and plugin elements with live preview in the WordPress customizer.
• Dedicated mobile settings: optimize the mobile viewing experience by toggling post elements and configuring the layout for mobile devices, enabling a bold desktop layout and a space-saving mobile layout.

Colour schemes, dark mode & dynamic theming

• Fully Customizable Colour Scheme with Dark Mode: separate light and dark colour schemes, dynamic mode detection, toggle light/dark mode, or fix a permanent colour mode.
• Pre-configured light and dark schemes to help you start quickly.

SEO, Core Web Vitals & Google Pagespeed

• Performance, SEO, accessibility and best practices integrated to help you achieve strong rankings.
• Core Web Vitals passed and up to 99 Google Pagespeed scores.
• Full optimization guide included to assist in maximizing performance.

Advertising & monetization

• Earn money from your content: dedicated advertising areas, 7 theme sidebars, between-post advertising, and Google Autoads support. Upload banners or add ad code.
• Advertising demos: check out live demonstrations to preview placements.
• Ad positions include: After Header, Before Footer, After Single Content, Between Posts, Sidebar, plus 4 footer sidebars and toggle/mobile sidebars for advertising.

Media and thumbnails

• Thumbnail Aspect Ratio: choose from landscape, wide, portrait, square and uncropped, with an additional hero aspect ratio for single posts.
• Applied works with existing images—no need to upload new assets or regenerate thumbnails—and smart thumbnail selection ensures correct sizes across layouts.

Content layout, widgets & demo tooling

• Add widgets between posts: place between-home, blog and archive displays for adverts or widgets.
• One Click Demo Import: quickly import your favorite demo with optional demo content included to help you get started.
• Mix & match elements & demos: install a demo, then customize header, footer, sidebars, layouts, widgets and post styles in the customizer for exactly what you want.

Applied Theme Plugin

Applied requires no plugins but a dedicated theme plugin is included to give your theme a boost (should you want to). It’s less than 1mb in size and packs in a lot for such a small package.

• Built-in plugin features: Featured Posts, Related Posts, Social media and sharing icons, Social media widget, Posts display widget, About widget, Dedicated Advertising Areas.

Related posts & content connections

• Related Posts: keep readers engaged with posts related by category, author or tag, with configurable styles and layouts and selectable location (after post content or before the footer).

Plugins & integrations supported

• MailChimp
• Yoast SEO
• Autoptimize
• NavXT
• Contact Form 7
• Post Views Counter

Demos, layouts & design spectrum

• 30+ Blog Layouts
• Masonry: 2, 3 & 4 column
• Grid: 2, 3 & 4 column
• List
• JetPack
• Infinite Scroll

• Layout options: 3 header Layouts, 9 Footer Layouts, 7 Sidebars
• Post styles: 3 Blog Post Styles, 20 Single Post Layouts
• Post Formats: Standard, Video, Audio, Gallery & Image

Typography, icons & accessibility

• Google Fonts
• Fontello Icons
• Support for all standard WordPress blocks & widgets
• Fully Responsive
• Translation ready

Documentation, support & licensing notes

• Support: post a comment in the theme comments section or send a message through the profile page.
• Online Documentation
• FAQ
• Note: due to licensing restrictions, featured images used in the demos are not included. Placeholder images are included in all demo data.
• Changelog: View Changelog here