One of the most important decisions you have to make when building your website is deciding what theme to use. There are thousands and thousands of themes available and it can be quite a daunting task choosing that perfect theme.
In this article, we are going to share with you the 9 things to consider when choosing your theme.
1 – Theme Category
Themes are very often grouped on the different categories like blog, business, e-commerce or even multi-purpose. All which indicate the kind of website the symbol designed for. For example, if you’re looking to build a website for your business, be sure to set your search for themes on the business category.
2 – General Design & Functionality
The second thing to consider while searching a theme for your business is the general design and functionality of the theme. Observe if the homepage has been designed to have a slider or if the posts have their featured images displayed. Some Themes are already optimized for Adsense and even come with the very own child theme. These things can be time-saving if you are looking to develop such kind of website.
3 – Theme Options
A very important feature to look out for is the theme options. This is particularly important if you have no HTML or CSS experience. The theme options are what would allow you to customize both default functionality and design of your theme. At the very minimum, we recommend going for a theme that allows you to upload your logo, choose different color and background schemes and provide different forms of typography.
4 – Plugin Dependency
Another important thing to watch out for is whether or not the same is dependent on a plug-in to achieve its full capabilities. A classic example is the Divi theme that relies heavily on the Divi page builder plug-in to function.
If you’re going to go for such a theme be prepared to work with the plug-in it relies on. We also recommend avoiding themes that come bundled with plugins. It might seem like a great idea when you buy a theme that provides you with a premium plug-in for free but the problem is you will not be separate the plugins from the theme. The beauty of separating plug-ins and themes is that if a plugin breaks something you can simply deactivate and your website will run normally again.
5 – Sidebars
Sidebars are great places to display specific kinds of content on the website. This is why you want to make sure that the theme you choose has the kind of sidebars built in that you want. For example, if you’re planning to display some information at the bottom of your website, ensure that the theme you choose has the sidebar to display content in the footer section.
6 – Page Templates
The number of page templates or layouts offered by the theme should also be taken into consideration while choosing a theme WordPress theme for your website.
It is often a good idea to go for a theme that offers at least two different layouts one being the default template with a left or right sidebar and the other a full-width template with no sidebar.
7 – Documentation & Support
The next thing you should consider is the documentation and support. These are usually available only for premium themes due to their price and a higher level of sophistication. If you’re going for your premium theme be sure documentation and support are provided by the developers.
8 – Responsiveness
This is a very important factor that you must consider before choosing a theme. By responsive we mean that the theme has been designed to look good and all mobile devices including phones and iPads.
The responsive sites also rank higher on the search engine and it is a ranking factor for Google to rank your website.
9 – Theme Pricing
There are two basic pricing models are available if you opt for a premium theme. There are some market places like Themeforest which offer you to pay for a single theme which is in 40$ to 60$ range.
The other option is the membership sites which offer a yearly subscription and you can use all their themes and plugins. The example of such websites is ElegantThemes.Com.
We also recommend looking for deals and discounts before buying themes or web hosting. It will save your cost of running a website or a blog.
