Apress

The header is the product, and it comes in four shapes

Apress is sold as a multi-purpose theme, but its description spends its longest stretch on one component: the header. The vendor describes a drag-and-drop header builder and names four arrangements it can produce — horizontal, vertical, horizontal expanding and vertical expanding.

That is a structural decision, not a cosmetic one. A horizontal header sits above the content and scrolls away with it. A vertical header occupies a column at the side, which moves where your page content actually begins and changes how much width every row has to work with. The expanding variants add a second state to the header, so the region has to be designed as it opens, not just as it rests. If you are picturing a conventional top bar with a logo on the left, the builder is doing more than you need; if you want the navigation to carry the brand, it is the reason to look at Apress.

Hover presets and sticky behaviour set how navigation feels

According to the vendor description, the header builder ships with 17 menu hover designs covering both horizontal and vertical headers, and those styles are packaged as presets you can apply without configuring anything. Each preset can be overridden for colours, gradients and custom CSS, so the preset is a starting point rather than a locked style.

Sticky behaviour is a separate choice with three modes: fixed, shrink and slide down. You can also turn sticky off entirely, and the sticky bar is described as adjustable for colour, height and transparency. Put those two systems together and you get a menu that changes appearance twice — once on hover, once when the page scrolls past the threshold.

Smaller navigation decisions that still show on every page

Two mobile header types are listed: one with a menu bar and one without. Which you pick depends on whether the mobile menu needs a persistent trigger or lives behind an icon; the vendor does not describe breakpoint behaviour beyond that.

Search has three styles — default, expanded and full screen — and the mega menu is built into the standard WordPress menu rather than a separate module, so you turn any menu item into a mega menu and set the number of rows from the same screen where you edit the menu. Gradient support runs through the theme, including the styling of default WordPress buttons such as the comment submit and contact form buttons, set from one place in the theme options.

What the layout counts actually cover

The vendor counts 250+ "Insta" designs in the Apress Gallery, its library of predesigned layouts. That number is a claim about the range of starting points on offer, and it is worth checking the gallery against your own content type rather than reading the figure as a build-time saving.

For blogs, the description lists 15 layouts available as page builder elements — grid, masonry, zig zag, full screen, fixed height, list and cards — with an optional filter in each style, plus 6 single post layouts that can be set globally or per post, and 7 slider layouts for featuring posts on any page.

Portfolios have their own counts: unlimited portfolio items, listing layouts in slider/carousel, masonry, packery and grid form, and more than 8 single portfolio designs including featured slider, stacked, and a big featured image followed by smaller ones. Sidebars are generated on demand rather than fixed, so you can create as many as a page needs. A one-page or multipage build is also described as a one-click choice, with the slider placeable above or below the header.

Bundled plugins, compatible plugins, and the difference

The vendor description ends with a sentence saying Apress is bundled with Visual Composer, Slider Revolution and Ultimate Addons for VC. The marketplace compatibility field, recorded separately, lists Elementor, Elementor Pro, WPBakery Page Builder, WPML and bbPress 2.5.x.

These are two different kinds of statement. A bundling sentence describes what the vendor says ships with the theme; a compatibility field describes what the theme has been declared to work alongside. Neither tells you how a particular copy of the theme is edited day to day, and WPBakery appears in the second list under its current name while the description uses the older Visual Composer branding. If the page builder matters to your workflow, confirm which one you will actually be using before committing content to it.

The description also notes that all demos are included in the zip.

Declared support, and where settings live

As observed on the marketplace in November 2026, the software version field declares WordPress 5.5.x through 6.5.x, and the files list names PHP, CSS and JavaScript. Those are declarations recorded at a point in time, not results from running Apress on your PHP version, host or plugin set — worth a staging install if your stack is newer than the top of that range.

Theme options are described as built on the Redux framework, which is where global colours, gradients, the sidebar design controls and footer settings (three widget areas) are gathered. Gutenberg Optimized is recorded as Yes, meaning block-editor layouts are styled as a priority; it says nothing about whether the vendor's own elements appear inside the block editor. The files likewise come with widget-ready sidebars and retina-ready logo and icon handling, per the same declarations.

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