Users’ feedback is shaped by biases, emotions, and familiarity with the status quo. Great UX design requires balancing empathy with vision, using user insights as a guide—not the rulebook.
Adobe has introduced live co-editing in Photoshop, now available in private beta, allowing multiple users to collaborate on the same document in real time. This innovative feature streamlines workflows, eliminates versioning issues, and fosters seamless creative teamwork across the globe.
What you can incorporate in a website design can have a definite impact on its performance and by extension on your business. What you are actually able to incorporate into that same website design depends heavily on the WordPress theme you choose.
When you are in the process of selecting a WordPress theme you quite naturally become familiar with all the design aids, tools, and other features a given theme has to offer. The more features a theme has, the more it should be able to do for you. But will that be enough?
At some point, you need to address two key questions. First, does the theme allow you to create a website that makes a strong first impression? Second, will it ensure your website is future-ready? For the latter, it’s essential to choose a theme that is continuously improved and updated.
Our experts have selected these 9 incredible WordPress themes for 2025 for your consideration. Each one is fully capable of helping you build a website that not only attracts visitors but is also future-ready.
Short Description: A true powerhouse for WordPress.
Click the video to explore UiCore Pro’s most downloaded template.
UiCore Pro invites you to discover its expanding collection of ready-made websites, perfect for launching your next design project. Any ready-made website can be accessed in one-click, plus you can mix-and-match sections, and adapt the results to your branding in no time.
Slate is an outstanding example of a UiCore Pro ready-made website. Slate provides the ideal foundation for setting up a starter company’s one-page informative website. Slate ranks among UiCore Pro’s top 10 most downloaded demos in 2024.
Other UiCore Pro features you’ll fall in love with include:
Key UiCore Pro clients include Startups, Online Shop owners, SaaS providers, Agencies, and Architects.
Updates & New Content Releases: New demos and pre-built websites are added every month to the 60+ pre-built website library.
Product Rating: 4.6/5
Readily Accessible support materials: YouTube videos, Support manual. Our response time for user assistance requests is only a few hours.
Short Description: With its hundreds of WordPress pre-built sites and handful of builders Betheme gives you everything you need to design lightning-fast, feature-rich websites, and shops with ease.
Click the video to explore Betheme’s most downloaded template.
A Betheme prebuilt website allows you to have a fully loaded website up and running in less than a minute. With just a few hours of customization, your website will be ready to launch. That’s even true for more complex websites, as long as you have your content readily available.
A long-standing favorite among users is Betheme’s library of 700+ pre-built websites, all accessible with just a single click. Betheme’s Be Business pre-built website ranked among the top 10 downloaded demos of 2024 for a good reason. It offers an excellent design approach for advertising a new business, particularly a service-oriented one.
Additional features include a wealth of super-fast builders like:
Include multiple customizable layouts for your portfolio, blog, and shop pages and you are still at the tip of the iceberg.
New pre-built websites and demos are released monthly.
Readily Accessible support materials: Support documentation along with an extensive library of Video Tutorials.
Short Description: Blocksy is responsive, WooCommerce ready, SEO optimized and has many customization options.
Click the video to explore Blocksy’s most downloaded template.
Blocksy’s remarkable feature is a Header Builder together with accompanying header elements you can use to design a header designed precisely to your specifications.
Additional standout features include:
Have you ever experienced “designer’s block” trying to start a new project? The e-Bike Starter Shop template might be just what you need to get started, whether your business involves e-bikes or something totally different. There are many other popular sites worth exploring, and new pre-built websites are added every month.
Readily Accessible support materials: The average support ticket resolution time is under 24 hours.
Product Rating: 4.97/5 on WordPress.org
User Review: I’m using Blocksy with the premium extension since December 2020 and so far the experience has been really positive. Found some bugs, but they were successfully squashed by the extremely helpful support team. How they keep adding helpful features and extensions is great and definitely not standard in the WordPress world.
Short Description: Litho WordPress theme is an all-around versatile and robust choice for those who want to create a professional website.
Click the video to explore Litho’s most downloaded template.
Litho is a creative multi-purpose Elementor WordPress theme you can use to create any type of business niche website, blog, plus portfolio, and eCommerce sites.
Litho features 300+ single-click importable templates you can customize to fit your specific needs. For example, Litho’s Journey to The Self through Meditation template features a straightforward approach with some clever special effects. In short, as a basis for website design it opens up all sorts of possibilities.
Additional features of Litho include:
Readily Accessible support materials: The average response time for support tickets is less than 24 hours. Immediate assistance is available through online documentation, a quick start guide, and comprehensive installation and update guidelines.
User Review: Very good response time and help in resolving situations. We are very satisfied. Good customer support.
Short Description: Uncode is designed with pixel-perfect attention to all details.
Click the video to explore Uncode’s most downloaded template.
Uncode is one of the top-selling creative themes of all time. People keep returning to use Uncode for more projects because of the results they can achieve.
A host of other design aids are at the ready, but it’s the demos that serve as the foundation and inspiration, ensuring projects get off to a successful start. Uncode’s Shop Bold demo, featuring clever hover effects, ranks among the 10 most downloaded demos for 2024.
Check out several of these demos to get an even better picture of the ideas and inspirations that await you. New demos and pre-built websites are released every 3 to 6 months.
Uncode’s other standout features include –
Free and reliable updates are consistently released to meet customer needs and preferences.
Product Rating: 4.89/5
Readily Accessible support materials: Narrated video tutorials are available, along with a dedicated support group on Facebook. Uncode also offers customer support with ticket resolutions typically under 24 hours.
User Review: I don’t know what is better. The theme or the support. The theme is very nice and the support is rapid fast! Well done!
Short Description: Avada is a versatile and powerful website builder for WordPress and WooCommerce that works for beginners, marketers, and professionals.
Click the video to explore Avada’s most downloaded template.
Avada is fully responsive, SEO and speed-optimized, WooCommerce-ready, and an excellent choice for both first-time web designers and seasoned developers managing multiple clients. It has been called the Swiss Army Knife of WordPress themes.
Whether you’re creating a simple one-page business website or a bustling online marketplace, Avada provides a wealth of powerful tools and plugins for building websites that include –
With over 750,000 satisfied clients, Avada has earned its place as an all-time best-seller among WordPress themes.
Updates & New Content Releases: Free lifetime updates.
Product Rating: 4.77 /5
Readily Accessible support materials: Comprehensive documentation, an extensive video library, and exceptional assistance from Avada’s Customer Support team.
User Review: Has many options to adjust post information! I like it a lot!
Short Description: Total is a WordPress theme optimized for WPBakery, offering exclusive features, unique elements, and enhancements you won’t find anywhere else.
Click the video to explore Total’s most downloaded template.
With its unmatched flexibility and efficient, time-saving features, Total can handle any website design project you throw at it.
For example:
Total’s demos provide an excellent starting point for your projects, offering a quick launch option while also serving as valuable sources of inspiration. Total’s Bryce demo provides a strong foundation for a one-page introductory site to a startup business.
Product Rating: 4.86/5
User Review: The Total Theme is really great. Very flexible to use, and the author, AJ, has gone to great pains to integrate his other plugins to work seamlessly with Total and also to open additional features when used together. It is a really great ecosystem that is being built. The support for this theme is, in a word, unbelievably-incredibly-awesome.
Short Description: Begin with one of WoodMart’s pre-built websites and customize it to your needs using the powerful Elementor and WPBakery plugins.
Click the video to explore Woodmart’s most downloaded template.
Whether you’re building a small store, a high-volume shop, or a multivendor marketplace, size doesn’t matter – WoodMart provides everything you need for success.
Woodmart demos can be used to design websites for any type or niche, but Woodmart offers much more than just shops, product sales, and furniture. Woodmart’s Pottery demo for a pottery workshop or class can be customized to fit a variety of uses. But that is what you can expect from Woodmart, even though you need to provide your own content!
Updates & New Content Releases: New pre-built websites and demos are released monthly.
Short Description: Pro Theme with its powerful Cornerstone feature gives you website building at its very best.
Click the video to explore Pro Theme’s most downloaded template.
Pro Theme’s key feature is its continuous stream of updates and new features, offering more than you’ll find with any other WordPress theme. In 2024 alone, Pro Theme released 27 updates, including –
When it comes to custom-designed websites, are you planning to open or advertise a Spa? Perhaps not, but this short but sweet Pro Theme demo gives you a taste of how easy it might be to customize it to perfectly fit your own planned business niche.
Updates & New Content Releases: New updates are released every two weeks.
Readily Accessible support materials: a forum, a support manual, and collection of YouTube tutorial videos.
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It’s almost guaranteed that any of these 9 incredible WordPress themes has all the tools you need to create a stunning, future-proof website. However, we recommend taking the time to explore each option to find the one that feels most intuitive to use or helps you achieve your goals with greater ease.
Rather than listing every possible feature you might need, we’ve concentrated on highlighting the key points in the theme summaries. When you explore specific themes, you’ll find it simple to gain a clear understanding of how they can meet your needs.
| WordPress Theme | Quick Overview |
| UiCore PRO | Intuitive interface with premium design packs |
| Betheme | Integrated tools for SEO optimization |
| Blocksy | Best for visually stunning WooCommerce sites |
| Uncode | Dynamic theme with creative features |
| Avada | Comprehensive tools for website customization |
| Litho | Tailored for photographers and designers |
| Woodmart | Offers multi-language support out of the box |
| Pro Theme + Cornerstone Builder | Enhanced for marketing-focused designs |
| Total Theme | Flexible layouts with drag-and-drop editor |
(This is a sponsored post.)
It’s probably no surprise to you that CSS-Tricks is (proudly) hosted on Cloudways, DigitalOcean’s managed hosting arm. Given both CSS-Tricks and Cloudways are part of DigitalOcean, it was just a matter of time before we’d come together this way. And here we are!
We were previously hosted on Flywheel which was a fairly boutique WordPress hosting provider until WP Engine purchased it years back. And, to be very honest and up-front, Flywheel served us extremely well. There reached a point when it became pretty clear that CSS-Tricks was simply too big for Flywheel to scale along. That might’ve led us to try out WP Engine in the absence of Cloudways… but it’s probably good that never came to fruition considering recent events.
Anyway, moving hosts always means at least a smidge of contest-switching. Different server names with different configurations with different user accounts with different controls.
We’re a pretty low-maintenance operation around here, so being on a fully managed host is a benefit because I see very little of the day-to-day nuance that happens on our server. The Cloudways team took care of all the heavy lifting of migrating us and making sure we were set up with everything we needed, from SFTP accounts and database access to a staging environment and deployment points.
Our development flow used to go something like this:
I know, ridiculously simple. But it was also riddled with errors because we didn’t always want to publish changes on push. There was a real human margin of error in there, especially when handling WordPress updates. We could have (and should have) had some sort of staging environment rather than blindly trusting what was working locally. But again, we’re kinduva a ragtag team despite the big corporate backing.
The flow now looks like this:
This is something we could have set up in Flywheel but was trivial with Cloudways. I gave up some automation for quality assurance’s sake. Switching environments in Cloudways is a single click and I like a little manual friction to feel like I have some control in the process. That might not scale well for large teams on an enterprise project, but that’s not really what Cloudways is all about — that’s why we have DigitalOcean!
See that baseline-status-widget branch in the dropdown? That’s a little feature I’m playing with (and will post about later). I like that GitHub is integrated directly into the Cloudways UI so I can experiment with it in whatever environment I want, even before merging it with either the staging or master branches. It makes testing a whole lot easier and way less error-prone than triggering auto-deployments in every which way.
Here’s another nicety: I get a good snapshot of the differences between my environments through Cloudways monitoring. For example, I was attempting to update our copy of the Gravity Forms plugin just this morning. It worked locally but triggered a fatal in staging. I went in and tried to sniff out what was up with the staging environment, so I headed to the Vulnerability Scanner and saw that staging was running an older version of WordPress compared to what was running locally and in production. (We don’t version control WordPress core, so that was an easy miss.)
I hypothesized that the newer version of Gravity Forms had a conflict with the older version of WordPress, and this made it ridiculously easy to test my assertion. Turns out that was correct and I was confident that pushing to production was safe and sound — which it was.
That little incident inspired me to share a little about what I’ve liked about Cloudways so far. You’ll notice that we don’t push our products too hard around here. Anytime you experience something delightful — whatever it is — is a good time to blog about it and this was clearly one of those times.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that Cloudways is ideal for any size or type of WordPress site. It’s one of the few hosts that will let you BOYO cloud, so to speak, where you can hold your work on a cloud server (like a DigitalOcean droplet, for instance) and let Cloudways manage the hosting, giving you all the freedom to scale when needed on top of the benefits of having a managed host. So, if you need a fully managed, autoscaling hosting solution for WordPress like we do here at CSS-Tricks, Cloudways has you covered.
A Few Ways That Cloudways Makes Running This Site a Little Easier originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.
Google’s Willow quantum computer presents both revolutionary opportunities and significant risks, particularly by threatening to disrupt systems that secure modern digital infrastructure. Designers must urgently rethink how to build future-proof systems, balancing innovation with the challenges of quantum-level security threats.
Illustration has been used for 10,000 years. One of the first ever recorded drawings was of a hand silhouette found in Spain, that is more than 66,000 years old. Fast forward to the introduction of the internet, around 1997, illustration has gradually increased in use. Popular examples of this are Google’s daily doodles and the Red Bull energy drink, both of which use funny cartoon illustrations and animations to great effect.
Typically, illustration was done using pencils, chalk, pens, etchings, and paints. But now everything is possible — you can do both analog and digital or mixed media styles.
As an example, although photography might be the most popular method to communicate visuals, it is not automatically the best default solution. Illustration offers a wider range of styles that help companies engage and communicate with their audience. Good illustrations create a mood and bring to life ideas and concepts from the text. To put it another way, visualisation.
Good illustrations can also help give life to information in a better way than just using text, numbers, or tables.
How do we determine what kind of illustration or style would be best? How should illustration complement or echo your corporate identity? What will your main audience prefer? What about the content, what would suit and highlight the content best, and how would it work for the age range it is primarily for?
Before we dive into the examples, let’s discuss the qualities of good illustration and the importance of understanding your audience. The rubric below will help you make good choices for your audience’s benefit.
What Makes A Good Illustration
Just look at what we are more often than not presented with.
It is really important to know and consider different audiences. Not all of us are the same and have the same physical, cognitive, education, or resources. Our writing, designs, and illustrations need to take into account users’ make-up and capabilities.
There are some common categories of audiences:
Below are interesting examples of illustrations, in no particular order, that show how different styles communicate and echo different qualities and affect mood and tone.
Watercolour
Good for formal, classy, and sophisticated imagery that also lends itself to imaginative expression. It is a great example of texture and light that delivers a really humane and personal feel that you would not get automatically by using software.
Strengths
Drawing With Real-life objects
A great option for highly abstract concepts and compositions with a funny, unusual, and unreal aspect. You can do some really striking and clever stuff with this style to engage readers in your content.
Strengths
Surreal Photomontage
Perfect for abstract hybrid illustration and photo illustration with a surreal fantasy aspect. This is a great example of merging different imagery together to create a really dramatic, scary, and visually arresting new image that fits the musician’s work as well.
Strengths
Cartoon
Well-suited for showing fun or humorous aspects, creating concepts with loads of wit and cleverness. New messages and forms of communication can be created with this style.
Strengths
Cartoon With Block Colour
Works well for showing fun, quirky, or humorous aspects and concepts, often with loads of wit and cleverness. The simplicity of style can be quite good for people who struggle with more advanced imagery concepts, making it quite accessible.
Strengths
Clean Vector
Designed for clean and clear illustrations that are all-encompassing and durable. Due to the nature of this illustration style, it works quite well for a wide range of people as it is not overly stylistic in one direction or another.
Strengths
Textured Vintage Clean Vector
Best suited for imagining rustic imagery, echoing a vintage feel. This a great example of how texture and non-cleanliness can create and enhance the feeling of the imagery; it is very Western and old-fashioned, perfect for the core meaning of the illustration.
Strengths
Pictogram
Highly effective for clean, legible, quickly recognizable imagery and concepts, especially at small sizes as well. It is no surprise that many pictograms are to be seen in quick viewing environments such as airports and show imagery that has to work for a wide range of people.
Strengths
Abstract Geometric
A great option for visually attractive and abstract imagery and concepts. This style lends itself to much customising and experimentation from the illustrator, giving some really cool and visually striking results.
Strengths
Lithography Etching
Ideal for imagery that has an old, historic, and traditional feel. Has a great feel achieved through sketchy markings, etchings, and a greyscale colour palette. You would not automatically get this from software, but given the right context or maybe an unusual juxtaposed context (like the clash against a modern, clean, fashionable corporate identity), it could work really well.
Strengths
3D gradient
It serves as a great choice for highly realistic illustration with a friendly, widely accessible character element. This style is not overly stylistic and lends itself to being accepted by a wider range of people.
Strengths
Sci-fi Comic Book And Pop Art
It’s especially useful for high-impact, bright, animated, and colourful concepts. Some really cool, almost animated graphic communication can be created with this style, which can also be put to much humorous use. The boldness and in-your-face style promote visual engagement.
Strengths
Tatoo
Well-suited for bold block-coloured silhouettes and imagery. It is so bold and impactful, and there is still loads of detail there, creating a really cool and sharp illustration. The illustration works well in black and white and would be further enhanced with colour.
Strengths
Pencil
Perfect for humane, detailed imagery with plenty of feeling and character. The sketchy style highlights unusual details and lends itself to an imaginative feeling and imagery.
Strengths
Gradient
Especially useful for highly imaginative and fantasy imagery. By using gradients and a light-to-dark color palette, the imagery really has depth and says, ‘Take me away on a journey.’
Strengths
Charcoal
It makes an excellent option for giving illustration a humane and tangible feel, with echoes of old historical illustrations. The murky black-and-white illustration really has an atmosphere to it.
Strengths
Woodcut
It offers great value for block silhouette imagery that has presence, sharpness, and impact. Is colour even needed? The black against the light background goes a long way to communicating the imagery.
Strengths
Fashion
A great option for imagery that has motion and flare to it, with a slight feminine feel. No wonder this style of illustration is used for fashion illustrations, great for expressing lines and colours with motion, and has a real fashion runway flare.
Strengths
Caricature
Ideal for humorous imagery and illustration with a graphic edge and clarity. The layering of light and dark elements really creates an illustration with depth, perfect for playing with the detail of the character, not something you would automatically get from a clean vector illustration. It has received more thought and attention than clean vector illustration typically does.
Strengths
Paint
It serves as a great choice for traditional romantic imagery that has loads of detail, texture, and depth of feeling. The rose flowers are a good example of this illustration style because they have so much detail and colour shades.
Strengths
Chalk
Well-suited for highly sketchy imagery to make something an idea or working concept. The white lines against the black background have an almost animated effect and give the illustrations real movement and life. This style is a good example of using pure lines in illustration but to great effect.
Strengths
Illustration Sample Card
There are plenty of options, such as using pencils, chalk, pens, etchings, and paints, then possibly scanning in. You can also use software like Illustrator, Photoshop, Procreate, Corel Painter, Sketch, Inkscape, or Figma. But no matter what tools you choose, there’s one essential ingredient you’ll always need, and that is a mind and vision for illustration.
Walmart has introduced a modernized visual identity that balances its rich heritage with innovative updates, including a refined logo, accessible designs, and sustainable practices.
New features don’t just pop up in CSS (but I wish they did). Rather, they go through an extensive process of discussions and considerations, defining, writing, prototyping, testing, shipping handling support, and many more verbs that I can’t even begin to imagine. That process is long, and despite how much I want to get my hands on a new feature, as an everyday developer, I can only wait.
I can, however, control how I wait: do I avoid all possible interfaces or demos that are possible with that one feature? Or do I push the boundaries of CSS and try to do them anyway?
As ambitious and curious developers, many of us choose the latter option. CSS would grow stagnant without that mentality. That’s why, today, I want to look at two upcoming functions: sibling-count() and sibling-index(). We’re waiting for them — and have been for several years — so I’m letting my natural curiosity get the best of me so I can get a feel for what to be excited about. Join me!
At some point, you’ve probably wanted to know the position of an element amongst its siblings or how many children an element has to calculate something in CSS, maybe for some staggering animation in which each element has a longer delay, or perhaps for changing an element’s background-color depending on its number of siblings. This has been a long-awaited deal on my CSS wishlists. Take this CSSWG GitHub Issue from 2017:
Feature request. It would be nice to be able to use the
counter()function inside ofcalc()function. That would enable new possibilities on layouts.
However, counters work using strings, rendering them useless inside a calc() function that deals with numbers. We need a set of similar functions that return as integers the index of an element and the count of siblings. This doesn’t seem too much to ask. We can currently query an element by its tree position using the :nth-child() pseudo-selector (and its variants), not to mention query an element based on how many items it has using the :has() pseudo-selector.
Luckily, this year the CSSWG approved implementing the sibling-count() and sibling-index() functions! And we already have something in the spec written down:
The
sibling-count()functional notation represents, as an, the total number of child elements in the parent of the element on which the notation is used.The
sibling-index()functional notation represents, as an, the index of the element on which the notation is used among the children of its parent. Like:nth-child(),sibling-index()is 1-indexed.
How much time do we have to wait to use them? Earlier this year Adam Argyle said that “a Chromium engineer mentioned wanting to do it, but we don’t have a flag to try it out with yet. I’ll share when we do!” So, while I am hopeful to get more news in 2025, we probably won’t see them shipped soon. In the meantime, let’s get to what we can do right now!
The closest we can get to tree counting functions in terms of syntax and usage is with custom properties. However, the biggest problem is populating them with the correct index and count. The simplest and longest method is hardcoding each using only CSS: we can use the nth-child() selector to give each element its corresponding index:
li:nth-child(1) {
--sibling-index: 1;
}
li:nth-child(2) {
--sibling-index: 2;
}
li:nth-child(3) {
--sibling-index: 3;
}
/* and so on... */Setting the sibling-count() equivalent has a bit more nuance since we will need to use quantity queries with the :has() selector. A quantity query has the following syntax:
.container:has(> :last-child:nth-child(m)) { }…where m is the number of elements we want to target. It works by checking if the last element of a container is also the nth element we are targeting; thus it has only that number of elements. You can create your custom quantity queries using this tool by Temani Afif. In this case, our quantity queries would look like the following:
ol:has(> :nth-child(1)) {
--sibling-count: 1;
}
ol:has(> :last-child:nth-child(2)) {
--sibling-count: 2;
}
ol:has(> :last-child:nth-child(3)) {
--sibling-count: 3;
}
/* and so on... */This example is intentionally light on the number of elements for brevity, but as the list grows it will become unmanageable. Maybe we could use a preprocessor like Sass to write them for us, but we want to focus on a vanilla CSS solution here. For example, the following demo can support up to 12 elements, and you can already see how ugly it gets in the code.
That’s 24 rules to know the index and count of 12 elements for those of you keeping score. It surely feels like we could get that number down to something more manageable, but if we hardcode each index we are bound increase the amount of code we write. The best we can do is rewrite our CSS so we can nest the --sibling-index and --sibling-count properties together. Instead of writing each property by itself:
li:nth-child(2) {
--sibling-index: 2;
}
ol:has(> :last-child:nth-child(2)) {
--sibling-count: 2;
}We could instead nest the --sibling-count rule inside the --sibling-index rule.
li:nth-child(2) {
--sibling-index: 2;
ol:has(> &:last-child) {
--sibling-count: 2;
}
}While it may seem wacky to nest a parent inside its children, the following CSS code is completely valid; we are selecting the second li element, and inside, we are selecting an ol element if its second li element is also the last, so the list only has two elements. Which syntax is easier to manage? It’s up to you.
But that’s just a slight improvement. If we had, say, 100 elements we would still need to hardcode the --sibling-index and --sibling-count properties 100 times. Luckily, the following method will increase rules in a logarithmic way, specifically base-2. So instead of writing 100 rules for 100 elements, we will be writing closer to 10 rules for around 100 elements.
This method was first described by Roman Komarov in October last year, in which he prototypes both tree counting functions and the future random() function. It’s an amazing post, so I strongly encourage you to read it.
This method also uses custom properties, but instead of hardcoding each one, we will be using two custom properties that will build up the --sibling-index property for each element. Just to be consistent with Roman’s post, we will call them --si1 and --si2, both starting at 0:
li {
--si1: 0;
--si2: 0;
}The real --sibling-index will be constructed using both properties and a factor (F) that represents an integer greater or equal to 2 that tells us how many elements we can select according to the formula sqrt(F) - 1. So…
2, we can select 3 elements.3, we can select 8 elements.5, we can select 24 elements.10, we can select 99 elements.25, we can select 624 elements.As you can see, increasing the factor by one will give us exponential gains on how many elements we can select. But how does all this translate to CSS?
The first thing to know is that the formula for calculating the --sibling-index property is calc(F * var(--si2) + var(--si1)). If we take a factor of 3, it would look like the following:
li {
--si1: 0;
--si2: 0;
/* factor of 3; it's a harcoded number */
--sibling-index: calc(3 * var(--si2) + var(--si1));
}The following selectors may be random but stay with me here. For the --si1 property, we will write rules selecting elements that are multiples of the factor and offset them by one 1 until we reach F - 1, then set --si1 to the offset. This translates to the following CSS:
li:nth-child(Fn + 1) { --si1: 1; }
li:nth-child(Fn + 2) { --si1: 2; }
/* ... */
li:nth-child(Fn+(F-1)) { --si1: (F-1) }So if our factor is 3, we will write the following rules until we reach F-1, so 2 rules:
li:nth-child(3n + 1) { --si1: 1; }
li:nth-child(3n + 2) { --si1: 2; }For the --si2 property, we will write rules selecting elements in batches of the factor (so if our factor is 3, we will select 3 elements per rule), going from the last possible index (in this case 8) backward until we simply are unable to select more elements in batches. This is a little more convoluted to write in CSS:
li:nth-child(n + F*1):nth-child(-n + F*1-1){--si2: 1;}
li:nth-child(n + F*2):nth-child(-n + F*2-1){--si2: 2;}
/* ... */
li:nth-child(n+(F*(F-1))):nth-child(-n+(F*F-1)) { --si2: (F-1) }Again, if our factor is 3, we will write the following two rules:
li:nth-child(n + 3):nth-child(-n + 5) {
--si2: 1;
}
li:nth-child(n + 6):nth-child(-n + 8) {
--si2: 2;
}And that’s it! By only setting those two values for --si1 and --si2 we can count up to 8 total elements. The math behind how it works seems wacky at first, but once you visually get it, it all clicks. I made this interactive demo in which you can see how all elements can be reached using this formula. Hover over the code snippets to see which elements can be selected, and click on each snippet to combine them into a possible index.
If you crank the elements and factor to the max, you can see that we can select 48 elements using only 14 snippets!
Wait, one thing is missing: the sibling-count() function. Luckily, we will be reusing all we have learned from prototyping --sibling-index. We will start with two custom properties: --sc1 and --sc1 at the container, both starting at 0 as well. The formula for calculating --sibling-count is the same.
ol {
--sc1: 0;
--sc2: 0;
/* factor of 3; also a harcoded number */
--sibling-count: calc(3 * var(--sc2) + var(--sc1));
}Roman’s post also explains how to write selectors for the --sibling-count property by themselves, but we will use the :has() selection method from our first technique so we don’t have to write extra selectors. We can cram those --sc1 and --sc2 properties into the rules where we defined the sibling-index() properties:
/* --si1 and --sc1 */
li:nth-child(3n + 1) {
--si1: 1;
ol:has(> &:last-child) {
--sc1: 1;
}
}
li:nth-child(3n + 2) {
--si1: 2;
ol:has(> &:last-child) {
--sc1: 2;
}
}
/* --si2 and --sc2 */
li:nth-child(n + 3):nth-child(-n + 5) {
--si2: 1;
ol:has(> &:last-child) {
--sc2: 1;
}
}
li:nth-child(n + 6):nth-child(-n + 8) {
--si2: 2;
ol:has(> &:last-child) {
--sc2: 2;
}
}This is using a factor of 3, so we can count up to eight elements with only four rules. The following example has a factor of 7, so we can count up to 48 elements with only 14 rules.
This method is great, but may not be the best fit for everyone due to the almost magical way of how it works, or simply because you don’t find it aesthetically pleasing. While for avid hands lighting a fire with flint and steel is a breeze, many won’t get their fire started.
For this method, we will use once again custom properties to mimic the tree counting functions, and what’s best, we will write less than 20 lines of code to count up to infinity—or I guess to 1.7976931348623157e+308, which is the double precision floating point limit!
We will be using the Mutation Observer API, so of course it takes JavaScript. I know that’s like admitting defeat for many, but I disagree. If the JavaScript method is simpler (which it is, by far, in this case), then it’s the most appropriate choice. Just as a side note, if performance is your main worry, stick to hard-coding each index in CSS or HTML.
First, we will grab our container from the DOM:
const elements = document.querySelector("ol");Then we’ll create a function that sets the --sibling-index property in each element and the --sibling-count in the container (it will be available to its children due to the cascade). For the --sibling-index, we have to loop through the elements.children, and we can get the --sibling-count from elements.children.length.
const updateCustomProperties = () => {
let index = 1;
for (element of elements.children) {
element.style.setProperty("--sibling-index", index);
index++;
}
elements.style.setProperty("--sibling-count", elements.children.length);
};Once we have our function, remember to call it once so we have our initial tree counting properties:
updateCustomProperties();Lastly, the Mutation Observer. We need to initiate a new observer using the MutationObserver constructor. It takes a callback that gets invoked each time the elements change, so we write our updateCustomProperties function. With the resulting observer object, we can call its observe() method which takes two parameters:
config object that defines what we want to observe through three boolean properties: attributes, childList, and subtree. In this case, we just want to check for changes in the child list, so we set that one to true:const observer = new MutationObserver(updateCustomProperties);
const config = {attributes: false, childList: true, subtree: false};
observer.observe(elements, config);That would be all we need! Using this method we can count many elements, in the following demo I set the max to 100, but it can easily reach tenfold:
So yeah, that’s our flamethrower right there. It definitely gets the fire started, but it’s plenty overkill for the vast majority of use cases. But that’s what we have while we wait for the perfect lighter.
counter() inside calc() #1026sibling-count() and sibling-index() #4559sibling-index() and sibling-count() with a selector argument #9572children-count() function #11068descendant-count() function #11069How to Wait for the sibling-count() and sibling-index() Functions originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.
Welcome to our first tools round up of 2025. It’s the first Monday of a new year, and many of you are back at work after a much needed break. Let us ease you back in with our pick of the latest tools to help you get stuff done faster, smarter, and with a little […]
The rental industry is a high-demanding one in recent decades. Convenience in accessing premium items may lead to familiar rental ventures. Among many use cases, the property and equipment rental business is the most reliable and the most needed.
Digitization in such industries brings new choices for the owners and the rentee. Rental software is one of the familiar platforms that redefine the entire workflow into digital.
This blog highlights rental business variations, startup costs, and why rental software is an essential thing in detail. Let’s explore.
A rental business is a platform that provides temporary access options for goods, services, or properties in exchange for a fee for individuals or other businesses.
The key components of the rental business are:
Assets – The core of the rental business is assets being rented out.
Rental Period – Duration for which item or service is rented out
Revenue Model – Fixed rental fee, subscription plan or pay-per-use charges
Target Market – Rental businesses cater to customer needs like individuals or large businesses.
The steps to start a rental business are:
Starting any rental business requires research, strategy, and the right tools. Let’s take a look at the basic steps to kickstart your rental business.
Selecting a niche is the first step in launching any rental business. Research the local market to find a gap or under-served segment.
Any rental business’s foundation is a solid business plan. Outline your revenue goals, operating expenses, and strategies for growth. Include market research, pricing structures, customer acquisition strategies, and funding plans.
Each rental business has specific legal requirements depending on its location and niche.
Research the required licenses, insurance policies, and tax obligations in your area.
You’ll need permits that vary from general business licenses to special permits for renting specific items like vehicles or party equipment.
Depending on your rental type, acquiring the right inventory is key. Consider whether you’ll:
Technology plays a huge role in running a modern rental business. A robust software platform can help you:
Once your software is in place, conduct thorough testing to ensure:
You should use both offline and internet platforms in your marketing plan. Here are a few tips:
Based on the types of devices or spaces, the rental businesses are classified into multiple types.
Types of rental businesses are:
Product Rental – Cars, furniture, electronics, tools or party supplies
Property rentals – Residential, commercial, or vacation properties
Service Rentals – Staffing, Equipment operators, or event planners
Special Rentals – Luxury Items like exotic cars, Yachts, etc.
Among these types, you can explore property and equipment rental businesses here.
Alt Text: Illustration with the text ‘What is Rental Software?’ and graphics of people, screens, and gears symbolizing software and technology.
Rental software is a digital solution designed to help businesses manage and streamline their rental operations efficiently.
It serves as a centralized platform that automates various processes involved in renting goods, properties, or services, from inventory management to customer bookings, payments, and analytics.
This technology ensures smooth interactions between rental providers and customers while optimizing operational workflows. Prior to development, you must be aware of the startup cost of the rental business in detail.
When starting a rental business, one key decision is whether to build your business platform from scratch, purchase a clone, or use a SaaS solution.
Each comes with different costs:
Opting for SaaS rental software is the most cost-effective and hassle-free way to get started. It allows you to skip development headaches and focus on growing your business.
Alt Text: Illustration with the text ‘Why Opting for SaaS Rental Software Is the Best?’ featuring graphics of a laptop, mobile, and gears symbolizing SaaS software.
Opting for best rental software is a smart choice for rental businesses due to its many advantages:
Alt Text: Illustration of the text ‘What is Property Rental Business?’ alongside a person searching for property rentals using property rental business software.
A property rental business offers a lucrative opportunity to earn passive income by renting out residential or commercial properties.
From short-term vacation rentals to long-term leases, it caters to diverse customer needs.
With strategic marketing, effective management, and the right technology, a property rental business can thrive, providing steady revenue while meeting the growing demand for rental accommodations.
As a business owner, you have doubts about what you need to know and the reason behind the start.
Wish to Start A Property Rental Business? You must be aware of the following key features:
Alt Text: Displays the text ‘Equipment Rental Business’ and graphic of heavy machinery representing the concept of an equipment rental business.
An equipment rental business provides a cost-effective solution for individuals and companies needing specialized tools, machinery, or equipment temporarily.
By offering a wide range of items, from construction tools to party supplies, it eliminates the need for upfront investment and storage.
With proper inventory management and customer service, this business model ensures consistent revenue and caters to various industries. There are many tips to build the Equipment Rental Solution.
From excavators to power tools, renting construction and heavy machinery is much more affordable than buying.
The key features that redefine the equipment rental business as seamless are:
Come to an end. This blog highlighted the rental business and its variations in detail. Mainly equipment and property rental business. Besides, the cost value associated with starting the rental business is also highlighted. The need for the rental software and the reasons for the usage of rental software are highlighted. Hope this will make you a profitable rental business owner in 2025.
Identify a lucrative property, secure financing, and either buy or lease properties for rental. Handle legal aspects, such as permits, and manage tenant relations through property management software or services.
Starting a rental business involves identifying a niche, acquiring the necessary inventory, and setting up a management system. Focus on understanding your target audience, pricing competitively, and leveraging marketing strategies to attract customers
Invest in popular equipment, set up software for bookings, and develop a solid maintenance plan. You can partner with construction firms or focus on specific niches like party equipment or landscaping tools for quicker success.
The cost of a rental management company typically ranges from 8% to 12% of the monthly rental income, depending on the services provided. Additional fees may apply for tenant placement, maintenance, or administrative tasks. Pricing varies by location and property type.
Starting a rental property business with no money is challenging but achievable with creative strategies: partnering with investors, lease-to-own agreements, and crowdfunding.
A rental business is profitable. If the initial setup is completed, then you can generate recurring income. Profitability depends on factors like the type of assets rented, market demand, pricing strategy, and effective management.
Real estate properties, construction equipment, event supplies, luxury cars, and vacation rentals. Additionally, tech gadgets and party supplies also offer strong returns, particularly in urban markets.
Rental property management software is a digital tool designed to simplify and automate the management of rental properties.
Yes, the equipment rental business is profitable. Construction, events, and landscaping, where customers prefer renting over purchasing. Due to high demands, the equipment rental business is profitable.
Starting a car rental business involves several steps: market research, business plan, legal requirements, fleet acquisition, technology, marketing, and customer service.
The post Rental Software for Property and Equipment Rental Business appeared first on noupe.
