What is a WordPress Theme?
“WordPress themes are files that work together to create the design and functionality of a WordPress site. Each theme may be different, offering many choices for site owners to instantly change their website look.” – WordPress Codex
When you’re building a new website with WordPress, the biggest decision is to choose the best theme to suit your needs. Like all things in life, not all WordPress themes are created equally and this provides users with a lots of themes to choose from.
A search in Google for “WordPress Themes” will give over 20 million results and installing a theme from within your WordPress admin area will give you over 4 thousand free themes to pick from.
Take some time to insure that you find the theme that meets your needs as changing themes after you’ve customised your website can be troublesome. So take a look at our top tips to consider when your looking for the prefect theme for you.
1. What’s In A Name
When it comes to WordPress themes, a name is just a name and you could a lot of time checking out themes with great names that sound like it’s what you’re looking for. For example, the “Organ” theme available at themeforrest.net has nothing to do with your body or musical instruments in churches. Theme developers tend to use names that are inline with WordPress guidelines and also stand out in listings.
So our first top tip is when you’re looking at themes don’t be distracted by the name and concentrate on the included functions that you may need.
2. Keep It Simple
WordPress themes are built to be versatile and adaptable. They can change to provide layout styles with many built-in tools for the end user. Some features are standard across themes (such as sidebars, menus and footers) and this ability is one of the major advantages of using WordPress.
However, the downside is that some themes try to be all things to all people and can become bloated with extras that you’ll never need. So take some time to check out what comes with different themes and don’t think that more settings means more suitable. After all when you get a smart phone you don’t download every app available.
3. Responsive Is Required
As more people access the web using tablets and phones, your site needs to be able to respond to different screen sizes. This responsiveness is necessary to ensure that your visitors get a good user experience and if they don’t they’ll simply go somewhere else. Google has highlighted the need to have a responsive website in how they rank websites and the Experte.com website provides a great responsiveness checking tool here.
WordPress theme developers are aware of this so most well-maintained themes will be okay and when you’re looking for a theme always check how it will look on a phone or a tablet (most good themes will have a link to a demo site).
