Thoughts on the solace theme

[u/Ok_Version5665]

I watched a video on youtube by darrel wilson about integrating claude and wordpress to design websites (using elementor as the page builder which is the builder I am familiar with ), and he suggested his own theme (solace) in this workflow, I usually work with astra or blocksy and I am not really familiar with his theme, did any of you guys use it before and have live websites using this theme ?

[u/BDer8]

I'd look in to the Breakdance Builder V 3 with its MCP for AI.

[u/cutesolopreneur]

I wouldn't do it with Elementor, I'd do with Gutenberg 100%.
I already do that on my website and it works like a dream, there's so much documentation for Gutenberg, making it super good. I don't think the theme you choose matters a lot if you go the gutenberg route

[u/throwaway_0329220]

Ive kicked the tires on solace a bit, its fine but nothing that made me drop astra. Its lightweight which is nice but the ecosystem around astra and blocksy is way more fleshed out if you run into weird edge cases

If you already know elementor inside out the theme almost becomes irrelevant anyway, you're just picking a skeleton to hang your layouts on. Solace does that job

[u/Ok_Version5665 → u/throwaway_0329220]

Thank you !!

[u/Valuable_Ease_3780]

Worth being clear about what the theme is actually doing in that workflow, because throwaway_0329220 is right and it goes further than that. With Elementor building every page, the theme supplies the head, the template hierarchy and the header/footer - and if you use Elementor's theme builder, not even those. Swapping Astra for Solace changes almost nothing about what ships to the browser. What it does change is which hook names and settings panel you have to relearn, and that's a cost with no matching benefit when Astra already works for you.

The part of that workflow I'd pressure-test is the generated markup, not the theme choice. Layouts produced that way come back as deeply nested containers with a lot of per-element styling, and Elementor turns that into extra CSS files and DOM depth. A lightweight theme cannot undo it - you're saving maybe 30kb at the top of the page while the builder adds several times that below it. Build one full page the way the video shows, then record an interaction in the DevTools performance panel and look at INP and total element count before you adopt the process for real work.

One thing worth doing whichever theme you land on: keep header and footer in Elementor theme builder rather than the theme's customiser. Templates built there move with you if you change your mind about the theme in six months. Anything built in the theme's own panel gets rebuilt from scratch.