Install WordPress. Next step is to browse thousands of WordPress themes. Yes, How to choose a WordPress theme? Finally, select a theme that you feel will look good on your website. No theme is complete on its own. You’ll need to customise it or extend it using a child theme. You may also need to add some functionality in the form of plugins.
Yet, picking the right theme can save you precious time & money. Here’s 9 point checklist to help you to select a perfect theme for your WordPress website.
Choose a WordPress theme that matches your website’s purpose
For example, for a portfolio, you’ll need a theme that showcases images attractively. For a blog, you need a theme that comes with better readability and attractive typography. On the other hand, for an ecommerce site, you need a theme that makes buying easier and shows products perfectly. You’ll also find some multi-purpose themes. But such themes are often bloated and can slow down your website.
Easy to customize & use
Chances are you’ll need to customise your theme. Most good themes come with enough customisation options to help you make the theme your own. But there are also themes that come with too few or too many customisation options.
You don’t want either too few or too many customisation options. Too few and you’ll feel helpless. Too many and you’ll feel like you need a degree in website design. Plus, websites with too many options tend to slow down the website. Ideally, you want a theme that allows you to customise the branding, navigation, colours, and typography.
Choose a WordPress theme that match your budget:
Like it or not, your budget will play an important role in choosing a theme. WordPress themes come for all budgets. You can get a free theme from WordPress.org or even from theme shops like us that sell premium themes. Before you start looking for a theme, decide on a budget. Then find a theme that matches your budget.
– Responsive theme
According to Google, over half of the traffic, today comes from mobile devices. In 2018, Google made mobile site speed a factor for ranking search results. It’s obvious that your website needs to look and work well across devices.
Like we discussed before, your theme dictates how your website looks. Choosing a responsive WordPress theme is critical if you want traffic to your website.
– Work across browsers
Apart from devices, your website also needs to look and work well across browsers. While you don’t need that supports browsers as old as Internet Explorer 6, you need to make sure the theme works well with all major browsers.
– Work with common plugins
It’s very rare that your WordPress site will have no plugins.
Commonly used plugins include plugins for SEO, backup, social sharing, contact forms and adding WordPress Privacy & Terms Generator Plugin – WP Legal Pages to your website.
it is really important to choose a WordPress theme that shouldn’t cause conflicts with these common plugins. In addition, conflicts can occur when your theme defines or include the same code as these common plugins. Most good themes will also come with default styling for these plugins. Your theme should too.
– Choose a WordPress theme that come with documentation
Sometimes you’ll need to know how to configure specific theme options. Requesting support can be time-consuming. That’s where theme documentation can come in handy. Ensure that the theme you pick comes with sufficient documentation about how to install and configure the theme.
– Theme developers provide support
Support is really important to choose a WordPress theme While documentation is enough in most cases, sometimes you’ll need to get in touch with the theme developer for help.
Most good theme developers provide either forum-based or ticket-based support. Go over the forums to look at how quickly the theme developer responds to support requests.
Choose a theme that comes with sufficient support, for times when you need it.
