Striking

Fourteen years of one theme, kept current

Striking dates its first release to 2010, and the vendor counts more than 200 updates since then, including changes made to keep pace with WordPress core. Whether or not you take the superlatives at face value, that record answers the question most likely to decide a long-lived site: has this thing been maintained? A theme from 2010 that still ships releases is a different bet from a 2010 theme whose last commit was in 2015.

What the record does not settle is the release you actually install. The vendor's update notes describe the current version working with a recent WordPress build and a recent WooCommerce release on the demo site; those are vendor statements about the vendor's own setup, not a report on how the theme behaves with your plugins and content. The theme's own update mechanism depends on an active support subscription — without it, the vendor says updates arrive by downloading the full package and installing it over FTP. Treat renewal as part of the maintenance schedule rather than something you sort out later.

Where design decisions are made

There is no builder canvas at the centre of Striking. The vendor sells an admin interface instead: "You will not find a more comprehensive admin interface," with every design element of the theme "fully controllable" from the theme options. Colours, typography, headers and page structure are set in one panel rather than assembled per page.

Two additions soften that model for people who do write code. The admin includes custom CSS and JavaScript fields, so a snippet can be pasted in and applied without editing theme files — which matters when the vendor's support forum holds thousands of posted snippets. A child theme layout also ships for changes that belong in files. The arrangement suits a site owner who is comfortable in settings screens and occasional CSS, and it asks more of editors who only want to drag blocks into place.

Shop settings inside the theme options

The vendor describes "many custom woo related settings in its core theme options" plus custom WooCommerce templates, and points to a store on the demo site as proof the theme handles commerce. That places shop configuration in the same panel as the rest of the design, rather than in a separate shop builder.

The marketplace compatibility list, observed on 3 November 2026, names WooCommerce 5.x.x through 9.x.x, while the vendor's release notes refer to a newer WooCommerce release and to updated custom Woo templates. Both are claims rather than results on your installation. If the shop carries the project, work through product, cart and checkout pages on the demo store and compare them with what you intend to sell.

Three demo sets and what importing one commits you to

A "One Touch" installer offers three different sets of demo content, including WooCommerce store content and a complete Revolution Slider demo package. A demo set is a whole starting state — content and settings together — not a page you paste into an existing site.

That makes the choice consequential. Decide before importing whether a demo is raw material to rebuild or the shape of the launch site, because swapping structures afterwards means reconciling imported options against your own intent. Knowing which of the three sets you want, and how the header and slider in it should differ for your project, keeps the cleanup small.

Multilingual and right-to-left, with WPML as a separate purchase

Striking is described as a WPML-approved theme with extra WPML-related functionality inside the theme options. The vendor also states that RTL support is complete, with the full CSS built in so that the theme's functions work in right-to-left languages.

WPML appears as a compatibility entry, not as part of the package; the file list covers PHP, CSS and JS files. A multilingual build therefore needs its own WPML licence. Once translation is running, check the templates you rely on most — a shop archive and a checkout page behave differently from a blog post.

Compatibility as listed, and the block editor question

The compatibility list, as recorded on 3 November 2026, includes Elementor and Elementor Pro, Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms, WPForms, Jetpack, Easy Digital Downloads, The Events Calendar and its Pro version, bbPress 2.6.x, BuddyPress 9.x and 10.x, plus WooCommerce and WPML. Elementor's presence is a compatibility statement; the vendor's documented authoring route remains the options panel, so the listing should not be read as an invitation to rebuild pages in Elementor. The declared WordPress range runs from 5.6.x to 6.9.x, and the browser list still names IE11.

Gutenberg Optimized is recorded as "No". That describes how the theme is tuned, not a switch that turns the block editor off. What it does tell you is that Striking's structure sits in theme options rather than in block patterns, so a team that has standardised on block-first page building will be working against the theme's grain. Widget Ready is marked Yes, which fits an options-driven theme where widget areas still carry site furniture.

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