Wavo

A slider whose slides are saved Elementor templates

Most theme sliders give you a slide with a heading, an image and a button. Ninetheme's changelog for Wavo's version 2.0 describes something looser: a Vegas slider with a template builder, where you can "add any Elementor template as template." Taken at face value, a slide can be a layout you already built in Elementor — a grid of project thumbnails, a split image-and-text arrangement, a captioned showcase — rather than a fixed set of fields.

That changes the unit of work. You design one reusable module, save it as an Elementor template, and decide where it appears, including inside the slider. The same habit shows up elsewhere in the release notes: an Elementor template option was added for the single page hero, so the top of an inner page can also be a saved template.

The description stops at what the slider accepts. It does not say how many template-based slides a slider can hold or how transitions behave between them.

Locomotive Scroll across the widget set, plus a second smooth-scroll switch

The version 2.0 notes say Locomotive Scroll (locomotive.js) was added with "all widgets supported." That is a broader statement than "the demo scrolls smoothly" — the vendor places the scrolling engine under every widget rather than a few showcase sections.

An earlier release listed a general smoothscrollbar option in Theme Options, which is a different library and a sitewide setting. Two scroll mechanisms in one theme is worth knowing before you turn both on.

Nothing supplied here measures what either does to page weight or to a long portfolio grid on a phone. The vendor's framing elsewhere is a mobile-first approach, and the case for a smooth-scroll layer on a portfolio is atmosphere: work arriving gradually instead of all at once. Whether that reads as considered or as sluggish depends on your own pages, so treat these as descriptions of mechanism rather than performance figures.

Three ways to build navigation, from overlay to mega menu

The changelog separates three menu jobs. There is an overlay menu with six animated overlay types, a reveal menu with options, and a mega menu builder widget that takes either a custom template or a WordPress menu.

The mega menu is the one that matters for an agency with a deep catalogue of projects. Because it accepts a saved template as well as a standard menu, a services dropdown can hold a small layout instead of a list of links. The trade-off is the obvious one: a template gives you more control and adds a second place to update when the site structure changes.

All of this sits above the Redux options panel, where the vendor says logo, menu and sidebar components can be hidden or removed without code. Six overlay variants means a choice to make rather than a default to accept.

The project widgets that earn their place

The release notes read like a wish list for a portfolio that wants movement: a reveal effects widget in four types, a flip card widget in four or more types, a caption hover box, an SVG pattern text effects widget, an animated SVG icon widget with gradient colour options, and an excerpt option added to the projects gallery.

Two of those do real work. A flip card shows two faces of one item, which suits a project whose front is a photograph and whose back carries the client name and role. The excerpt option on the projects gallery turns a wall of thumbnails into something a visitor can read.

Counts are less reliable. One passage describes 60+ pre-made Elementor widgets; another refers to 40+ shortcodes and, later, more than 80+ shortcodes. Those may count different things, but the supplied text never reconciles them, so treat any total as indicative and check the widget list itself before planning a page around a specific one.

Where edits actually land: Elementor, Redux and ACF

Layout work happens in Elementor. The vendor states compatibility with both the free and Pro versions, which matters if you would rather not pay for a builder licence on day one, and says sections, forms, videos and single products can be assembled by drag and drop.

Sitewide decisions sit in the Redux options panel: preloader, go-to-top control, logo, menu, colours, general layout, footer, and sidebars on inner pages, plus controls for the 404, search and archive templates. Elementor handles the per-page arrangement; Redux handles what applies everywhere.

ACF is listed as integrated for page-level overrides — the vendor names per-page menus, background images, and CSS applied to header and footer areas. In practice that means an inner page can differ from the sitewide settings without a separate template. The marketplace records Gutenberg Optimized as No for Wavo, which describes block-editor tuning rather than whether the block editor exists; the layouts described here are Elementor-based.

Declared compatibility, recorded 4 November 2026

The marketplace attributes list WordPress 4.9.x through 7.0.x, Elementor and Elementor Pro, WPML, Bootstrap 4.x and 5.x, WooCommerce 5.x through 9.x, Contact Form 7, WPForms, Gravity Forms, bbPress 2.6.x, BuddyPress 10.x.x, Jetpack and Easy Digital Downloads. These are declarations carried by the listing, not records of the theme being installed against each combination. If your site pairs a particular forms plugin with a translation setup, a staging install is the only real test.

The vendor says RTL support arrived in version 2.0 and that translations ship as a .POT file for tools such as Poedit. Earlier 1.0 notes mention a Revolution Slider integration and an Envato update toolkit that notifies you in the dashboard. The live demo at wavo1.ninetheme.com/intro/ is where you can watch the slider, overlay menus and reveal effects run together on real content, since the feature list describes modules rather than finished pages.

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