Themes becomes one of the most popular topic or trend about WordPress. If you are going to create a new site using WordPress, choosing the right theme might be a difficult decision to decide for because the more the options or opinions, the more it is difficult to decide.
Everyday a new developer or designer is born and creates a new WordPress theme for sale or free. In my opinion, there is no such thing as free theme. Why did I say that? In my experience as a WordPress developer and designer, those free themes might be just a trial theme. What do I mean by this? Trial themes are what they called “free” but they have a premium ones with the same look but with a lot of features and frequently updated. They use the free theme to drive traffic or if the customer is unsatisfied and want to have more features, they will be forced to buy the premium one. Easy logic, isn’t it? It is just like, I will give you a free trial of our product and if you like it, you can buy to use it fully. I am not saying that all theme developers use this tactics, but I just want you to be open-minded about it. So much for that, I will be discussing other things about it and let us proceed to some tips to choose the right WordPress theme for your site.
Design is a must.
This is one big reason in choosing the right WordPress theme. You might not want your site visitors to move away from your site because it looks ugly. How can you discern a good-looking design themes? It is simple as looking at a beautiful lady. You will find her beautiful if she is beautiful inside and out. In WordPress themes, you can discern if it is beautiful if its front-end and back-end is pleasing to the eyes and fully-functional. There’s no such thing as too much beautiful because you will find beauty in simplicity. Other people will say that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder but in WordPress theme, beauty also has its standards. There are three things to consider about the design. Layout, fonts and colors.
- Layout
Layout should be firm. It should be clean and clear. Responsiveness is a must. Nowadays, a theme that is not responsive is not beautiful because most site visitors doesn’t only use desktop/laptop computer but tablet and mobile phones is a trend.
- Fonts
Fonts must be compatible with the theme. For example, if it is a theme about news, fonts must be a news-like font. It should be readable as well. Its size should match the layout.
- Colors
Colors must be compatible with the theme as well. It must be visually comfortable to the eyes to avoid bounce rate to your site.
Feature is an asset.
Do you know that most theme nowadays, uses too much features? Multi-purpose themes are good but it must have its limitations. Take for example for a Swiss knife. It is amazing to have it because, you can use nail file, cork screw, small knife, scissor, screw driver and so on. But if you are going to fix a laptop, and you will need to open it, you need a screw driver that is specifically for its purpose. It’s like me, being a computer technician for so many years, I have a multiple set of screw drivers for it. What I am trying to say is that, if your site is about news, then choose a news WordPress theme. If it is about church, then choose a church WordPress theme. A specific-purpose theme is more optimized and more relevant to suffice your site needs. I am not saying a forum and shop plugin that is supported to a theme is not good. Take for example for a church site, you might need some e-commerce plugin to sell books, and a forum plugin to tackle discussion about the church issues. What I am trying to point out is that, themes with a lot of features which you don’t need just bloats your site.
Page builder is good for some reasons, but if you want the full potential on customization of a theme, why don’t you directly hire the theme developer of it? Too much shortcodes and modules makes me feel sick about the themes that are releasing these days. I do not promote bloated themes, period. In one of my theme, I use WordPress native widget features and page selector to customize a bit of block arrangements and customization for homepage as well as an unlimited sidebar creation. Page builder is good for those who want to customize their site by their own, but if you want a more professional approach like what I have stated above, hire the theme developer of it.
Choose a theme with less features which you only need and avoid themes with too much features which you don’t need all of its features. Overall, choose a niche themes like for example, a news theme, food blog theme, church themes and so on.
Quality is a qualification.
This is one of the most important factor is choosing the right WordPress theme. In WordPress, quality means by asking these questions:
- Does the theme uses recent standards of WordPress?
- Does the theme has less or no errors on its script, CSS and PHP code?
- Does the theme uses data sanitization and validation?
- Does the theme uses translation properly?
- Does the theme passes W3C validation?
You might wonder how to answer these questions. In easy
Price matters.
I am not a huge fan of cheap themes. Before, if you want to have a website, you need to invest thousands of dollars. I don’t judge those who sell themes at a cheap price. But in my observation, the cheaper the price of a theme is, the more complain a consumer has because the lesser the priority of support a developer provides. Imagine if a theme is priced a hundred dollars and you want some support from its developer, you are more prioritized than those who buy from a marketplace who sells at cheap price. I am not saying that it applies on all sellers, but generally speaking if you want to buy themes at a cheap price, expect a lower priority of support from its developer. It’s a principle, you will get what you pay for.
Why would you buy an expensive theme which is not beautiful and has a lot of errors on it? If you are looking for a theme based on its price, consider this question: Does its price reasonable in terms of its design, features, quality and support?
To sum up
Choosing the right theme for your project is not easy. If you’re going to decide what’s best, you should not only think twice, but you should also consider if it will fit your site niche regardless of its price. There are a lot of themes you could choose on ThemeForest and other WordPress themes marketplaces. You may check out our work as well if you need a church theme or a blog theme for your project.
