Before you buy
Does Cartavera need WooCommerce?
For a store, yes: WooCommerce 9.6 or later is recommended. Without WooCommerce, Cartavera works as a content theme (blog, pages, search) and hides its product sections.
Does it need a page builder?
No. Cartavera is a block theme. You edit it in the WordPress Site Editor, which is part of WordPress.
What is Cartavera Blocks, and is it extra?
It’s a free companion plugin included in the theme download. It adds the store search with live suggestions, the category drawer and mega menu, badges, purchase notes, the size guide, quick view, free-shipping progress, recently viewed products and the starter sites. Cartavera installs it for you. See Install Cartavera.
Does it work with my payment gateway?
Cartavera doesn’t change WooCommerce’s cart or checkout. It styles WooCommerce’s Cart and Checkout blocks, so any gateway that supports those blocks works as it normally does. The theme has been run with WooPayments, the WooCommerce Stripe Gateway and WooCommerce PayPal Payments active, but without connected accounts, so their payment forms themselves weren’t shown in testing. See Cart and checkout → Tested with.
Does it work with page caching?
Yes. Cartavera’s features don’t make a page different for each visitor: recently viewed products are read from the shopper’s browser, cart totals and free-shipping progress come from WooCommerce’s Store API, and the sale countdown corrects itself against your server’s clock even on a cached page. Signed-in shoppers see a greeting in the account menu; most caching plugins already skip the cache for signed-in users.
Is it accessible?
Every storefront page listed in our tests passes an automated axe check (WCAG 2.0–2.2 A and AA rules), at desktop and phone widths. Keyboard use of the search, drawer, menus, carousels, filters, variation form and mini-cart is tested in Chromium, Firefox and WebKit, and every style variation is checked for WCAG 2.2 AA colour contrast. It hasn’t been reviewed with screen readers yet. If you change colours or add your own images, check them too.
Is it fast?
On our 41-product test store, measured with Lighthouse’s mobile test (simulated slow 4G and a 4× slower CPU, median of five runs), the homepage and a product page load their largest element in under 2.5 seconds (2.28 s and 2.35 s), with a layout shift score of 0.005 and no blocking time. Your results depend on your host, your images and your plugins. Each feature’s script only loads on pages where that feature is used.
Can I translate it? Does it support right-to-left languages?
Yes to both. See Translation.
Can I see it before I buy?
[TODO: link to the live demo, if there is one.]
After you buy
Do I need a licence key for the theme to work?
No. Everything works without a key. The key enables one-click updates from Dashboard → Updates. See Activate your licence.
How many sites can I use it on?
As many as your licence allows; the Sites: X of Y line on Appearance → Cartavera shows how many you’ve used. Cartavera is GPL-licensed, but updates through the licence are per site.
What happens when my licence expires?
The theme keeps working. You stop getting updates until you renew. See When a licence expires.
Will updating the theme overwrite my changes?
Not changes made in the Site Editor (styles, templates, header, footer, homepage) or in a child theme. Changes made by editing the theme’s own files will be lost, so don’t do that: use a child theme or a small plugin instead.
Can I use my own photos in the banners?
Yes. Banners are Cover blocks: click the image and replace it. Use a darker image or add an overlay if the text becomes hard to read.
Are the starter site’s products and reviews real?
No. Starter site products, prices, stock, brands, ratings and reviews are fictional and labelled as samples. Remove them before you launch. See Import a starter site.
Can I show delivery dates?
Not out of the box, because WooCommerce doesn’t know them, and Cartavera won’t show a date it can’t back up. If a shipping plugin provides real estimates, a developer can add them to the product page with the cartavera_purchase_notes filter.
Does Cartavera have a wishlist or product comparison?
There’s no wishlist storage of Cartavera’s own. The Wishlist Button block shows the button of WooCommerce’s own wishlist, YITH WooCommerce Wishlist or TI WooCommerce Wishlist. There is no product comparison.
Do the newsletter sections collect email addresses?
No. WordPress has no built-in form block, so the newsletter patterns have a Sign up button that links to your email provider’s sign-up page. See Headers and footers → Newsletter footer.
Can I use Cartavera Blocks with another theme?
Yes. The blocks work with any block theme. Where the theme doesn’t define Cartavera’s colours, the plugin uses Cartavera’s on the pages where its blocks appear.
How do I get help?
See Troubleshooting, then contact WPRuby support from your wpruby.com account.