2022-2025 in Review – Check Out All the YOOtheme Highlights
Time flies! It's already been four years since our last YOOtheme review blog post. Today we revive this tradition! Let's look back at our biggest highlights and milestones from 2022 to 2025 and, of course, our plans for 2026.
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YOOtheme Pro
In the last four years, YOOtheme Pro saw some of its most powerful updates yet. 2022 brought YOOtheme Pro 3 with mega menus, the Sublayout element and sticky parallax effects. 2023 gave us YOOtheme Pro 4 with parent sources, dynamic multiplication, nested multiple items sources, and a huge accessibility update. In 2024, we introduced new image libraries and laid the groundwork for Live Search and a massive WooCommerce release that dropped in early 2025. After that, we turned our focus to YOOtheme Pro 5, featuring a brand-new consent manager and a date filter. As our biggest release ever, we had an extended beta phase, pushing the stable release into early 2026.
What you can see here is that, starting from 2022 we began bundling more features into YOOtheme Pro releases, leading to more major releases and fewer but bigger feature releases. This change laid the foundation for our annual YOOtheme event, where we now present all major product updates at once. At the same time, we invested heavily in quality and stability. By developing our own automated testing tool and extending our beta phases, we're able to catch issues much earlier. As a result, YOOtheme Pro releases are now significantly more stable, which is clearly reflected in the reduced number of patch releases.
Libraries
Beyond new features, a major part of YOOtheme Pro is its growing collection of libraries. Over the past few years, we've continuously expanded existing libraries with new layouts, styles and element presets. In 2024 we introduced a brand-new Pro Images library which includes nearly 3,000 illustrations and icons from all our demo websites, all available with just a click.
What the chart doesn't show is the ongoing effort we put into keeping layouts, element presets, and styles up to date. Layouts, for example, received major improvements with the introduction of parent sources, dynamic multiplication, accessibility enhancements, and the transparent and blending header. Styles are also continuously refined and updated whenever UIkit introduces new features. This reflects our commitment to quality over quantity, focusing on fewer, high-quality layouts instead of countless average ones.
Demo Websites
The most anticipated releases for many YOOtheme users are our demo websites, and we believe the ones we released in the last years clearly stand out from our earlier YOOtheme Pro demo websites. Each one has a strong, distinct focus, whether it's design with glassmorphism or blend modes, layouts featuring stunning sticky parallax effects, or functionality with a fully fledged WooCommerce shop.
This chart reflects our raised standards for demo websites, which naturally resulted in fewer releases. From planning and design to development and implementation, closely aligned with new YOOtheme Pro features, each demo website has become significantly more sophisticated. Our goal is to create the best possible starter kit for a specific use case. Woolberry is a perfect example, offering everything a modern eCommerce shop needs. And because we continuously maintain and refine it, it will be all you ever need for your next shop project.
UIkit
Let's take a quick look at UIkit, our open-source frontend framework and the foundation of many YOOtheme Pro features, including sticky transparent navbars with dropdown navigation, parallax effects for sliders and slideshows, a refined product lightbox, and lazy and on-click loading videos, all built with accessibility in mind.
As the chart shows, we continuously add new features to UIkit and actively maintain it, ensuring it remains future-proof and reliable.
Social Media Videos
Next, we want to highlight our efforts in showcasing product updates through engaging videos for our growing community. These videos help bring new features to life and make even complex updates easier to understand.
What started as simple screencasts has evolved into in-depth feature videos you don't want to miss if you're seriously working with YOOtheme Pro. These videos cover every aspect of our feature updates, helping you stay up to date and get the most out of each release. Alongside these, our new video teasers and trailers build excitement for upcoming releases across our social media channels. If you haven't already, subscribe to our YouTube channel to find every video we produce. And follow us on your preferred social media platform to make sure you don't miss any news.
YOOtheme Event
In 2024, we introduced our annual YOOtheme event in September, where we present all major product updates, followed by talks from high-profile speakers from the YOOtheme community. Here you get the chance to meet the entire YOOtheme team, connect with major third-party developers, and catch up with many familiar faces from the Joomla and WordPress communities. It's a true movie-theater experience, with professionally produced videos on the upcoming releases. Of course, you will get exclusive YOOtheme t-shirts, stickers, and other goodies. This year, we're planning to make the event even bigger and more international. This will be the highlight of the year and should definitely be on your list.
What's Next
So, what can you expect from YOOtheme this year? Time to dust off the good old crystal ball and take a look at what's coming next. First of all, you can look forward to 3 new theme packages showcasing all the new features of YOOtheme Pro 5. Each one is designed to be the perfect starter kit for its topic and use case. We will continue this strategy by taking a closer look at our existing demo websites, consolidating and refining them. They will be bigger, better, and more comprehensive than ever.
Over the past few years, we've added a wide range of features to expand the scope of YOOtheme Pro, enabling you to build everything you need for your client websites. This year, however, marks the start of something new: we're beginning work on the next-generation page builder and style customizer. As you'd expect, this will heavily involve our UIkit frontend framework. We are so excited about it!
Last but definitely not least, we want to thank you, our community, for your continued support over the past years. You inspire everything we do, and we look forward to continuing to deliver products you love and features that make your work easier.
But now we'd love to hear from you. What do you think of our plans? Which themes do you like most, and which ones should we revisit first? And what would you expect from a next-generation page builder and style customizer? Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments below!
P.S. If you want something to laugh, stick around till the end of the video 😉
