Essential Grid Review: Here’s Everything You Need To Know About It!

Looking for a gallery plugin for your WordPress blog? In the WordPress plugins repository and third-party marketplaces, you will find so many gallery plugins. Well, we will always recommend the best plugin for our users. And in this post, we are about to introduce you one called Essential Grid.

From here, you can check out the complete Essential Grid review. So if you are planning to purchase the plugin, hold a second. Check out these features and learn why Essential Grid would be a great choice.

Essential Grid Review

Why do we recommend the Essential Grid as one of the best gallery plugins? Probably it got more features than the current plugins. While choosing a gallery plugin for your WordPress blog, make sure that the plugin is

• Compatible.
• Lightweight.
• Features.
• Offers Regular Updates.
• Support.
• No Conflict.
• Affordable.

etc… Essential Grid suits the description. In this Essential Grid review, you will know it. Here’s a short introduction of the plugin.

Created By ThemePunch

ThemePunch is one of the best WordPress developers in the industry. The same team behind the WordPress slider plugin – Slider Revolution. Essential Grid is also crafted by these fine folks. ThemePunch is a power elite author at CodeCanyon. So, you are purchasing something from a reputed author.

And right now, the plugin got sold for more than 39,329 times and got 4.7-star ratings out of 5.

This tells that the Essential Grid is something you need to try.

Can Be Used For…

Essential Grid can be easily used on your

• Blog Section.
• Archive Pages.
• Portfolio.
• Image Gallery.
• Events.
• eCommerce Shop.
• Video Playlist.
• Download Area.
• Instagram Gallery.
• Facebook Viewer.

etc…

Installation and Activation

Installing the Essential Grid is pretty awesome. You can install the plugin via the WordPress backend or by using an FTP client such as FileZilla. In our case, we are going to install the plugin using the WordPress admin area. Go to the Plugins section and click on add new plugins. Simply click on the upload plugin then.

Choose a plugin from your local storage and install it.

Once you got installed, activate it.

And in the WordPress admin dashboard, you could see the plugin settings.

From here, we can configure the plugin like license verification, creating new grids, updating, etc…

License Verification

Once you got activated the plugin in your blog, you must need to activate the copy with a valid license key. This will help you to get premium support from ThemePunch and auto-updates for the product.

Finding the purchase code is pretty easy.

Just head over to CodeCanyon and log in to your account. Once you have done that, go to the downloads section. There, you could see all your purchased products. Find the Essential Grid WordPress plugin. Click on the drop-down and you can see the option for checking purchase code.

And then, you can see the purchase code of Essential Grid WordPress plugin.

Simply copy it. Head back to the Essential Grid plugin settings and the activation section.

Paste the purchase code there and click on activate.

If your key is valid, the product will get registered.

When the author releases a new version of the plugin, you will get a notification here. SO, you could easily update it to the latest version available with a single click of the mouse.

Essential Grid Features

Now, let’s see the features of the Essential Grid WordPress plugin.

Optimized For Speed

WordPress speed is something that we need to consider. Normally, a WordPress caching plugin like WP Rocket and the perfmatters plugin will make your blog much better in speed. Also, the activated theme and plugins got a big role in the WordPress speed. Here, Essential Grid comes with lightweight code and will not slow your website down.

By using the GTmetrix tool, we have tested a demo WordPress blog which is configured with the Essential Grid WordPress plugin. And here is the test results.

As you can see, the page got loaded in 3.3 seconds. The only thing that increased the page speed is the images. Optimizing the images using an image compression WordPress plugin like ShortPixel will help you to score better.

Rest is perfect.

Easy To Use

The plugin is pretty easy to use. If you are a complete beginner, you will love it. In some simple mouse clicks, you will be able to publish unlimited grids on your website. No coding knowledge needed.

Creating Grids

There are two methods are available.

• Creating Grids From Scratch.
• Creating Grids From a Template.

When you need to create a custom one, the first option is better. There in the template library, you can see so many pre-made templates. All you need to do is, just import it to your blog.

However, we will show you both methods.

First, let’s try creating a new grid from scratch,

You will be redirected to the editor.

You need to enter a

• Title.
• Alias.
• CSS ID.

for the grid. Title, Alias are required.

Adding a unique CSS ID will help you to the layout will help you to customize it through the additional CSS. In the Essential Grid customization bar, you could see some buttons. They are

• Naming.
• Source.
• Grid Settings.
• Nav-Filter-Sort.
• Skins.
• Animations.
• Lightbox.
• Ajax.
• Spinner.
• API/ JS.
• Cookies.

etc… Each section will show you additional settings.

From the source section, you can create the grid.

You just need to choose between post, page, custom post or gallery. Next, choose the priority and order. At last, select a suitable image size. You could see every single update in the live preview mode.

Simple, isn’t it?

Now, let’s create a new one using the templates.

You will see the template library on the next page load.

The templates are categorized like

• Even.
• Masonry.
• Full Screen.
• Full Width.
• Load More.
• Clients.
• Price Tables.
• Variable Columns.
• WooCommerce.
• Filter Drop-Down.
• Streams.
• New/ Updated.

etc… In each section, you can see the best templates. In our case, we are about to go with the full-width template.

Choose a template from the list and install the grid.

If the installation was perfect, you will see the grid in your Essential Grid settings.

You can always edit the contents from the editor.

This is the easiest method for creating grids – through pre-made templates.

Embedding The Grid

You don’t need coding here also. Just like embedding WordPress forms, we could simply embed the grid using shortcodes. In the plugin’s settings, along with the grid, you could see the specific shortcode.

Copy the shortcode.

Go to a page/ post or custom post type where you need to embed this form. Paste the shortcode, publish/ update the page.

And if you check the page from the frontend, you could see the live effect. Each page/ post/ CPT can be customized separately. In the WordPress editor, you will see the settings.

Support

Once you got purchased the premium version copy, you will get 6 months of priority support from the author.

But you can always extend the support up to 12 months by paying around $11. It’s a great choice.

We highly recommend it.

Documentation

ThemePunch got an awesome documentation section for the Essential Grid plugin.

They have categorized the section like:

• First Steps.
• Second Steps.
• Grid Setup.
• Filters & Links.

etc…

In each section, you can see specific, well-written tutorials which will help you to explore the plugin’s features. On the other hand, the team will also offer you personal support if you have a valid license key. If you can’t find a solution in the documentation section, you can easily raise a ticket and the author team will get back to you.

However, in most cases, you can find all issues and the fixe from the FAQ section.

Also, they do have a YouTube playlist.

There you could see almost all configurations of the plugin.

Pricing

2 pricing options are available in the plugin.

• Regular License – $34.
• Extended License – $170.

If you are purchasing this plugin for your blog, the regular license is good enough for you. But when you represent a theme development agency and needs to bundle this plugin with your theme, the extended license might be the best option.

If you got the plugin bundled in the theme, you might want to consider purchasing a license for activation. Without activating the plugin, you can make it work. But, won’t get updates and priority support from the author team.

On the other hand, when the theme author updates the plugin, you can use it. Purchasing a license key is highly recommended.

Get Started With Essential Grid

You can get the Essential Grid WordPress plugin from below.

Get Started With Essential Grid

If you are not happy with the purchase, you will get a refund. So what are you waiting for? Have a try!

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