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There was a time when you needed a web developer to build and launch your website. Thankfully though, we’ve come a long way since then. Nowadays, you can easily launch your website for cheap. You might not even have to pay for the website design but only the web hosting (unfortunately) has become expensive over time.
WordPress makes the whole process of setting up your website so much easier compared to before. And now unlike before you can easily customize your WordPress theme without running into any bugs.
The fact that there are so many good-looking, functional WordPress Themes today means that just about anyone can set up their website without much fuss.
However, the downside is that having so many WordPress themes to choose from can be confusing for any first-timer. This article will give you a breakdown of criteria you should use when selecting a WordPress theme for your needs be it blogging, an e-commerce store, consulting business, you name it.
Free or Paid
When choosing a WordPress theme most people will consider the price first. Though a free WordPress theme sounds enticing, you need to ask yourself whether it offers the support and flexibility that you require. If you realize what you need is a premium theme ask yourself if you have enough money.
Here are some differences between free and paid WordPress themes.
- For the most free themes tend to have very simple designs though more and more developer are putting out themes with complex designs and functionality for free. On the other hand, paid WordPress themes are the crème de la crème of WordPress themes. Developers thoroughly check for bugs in order to avoid making their customers unhappy as it would damage their brand.
- Paid themes are usually supported by the companies that create them. On the other hand you get no free support with free WordPress themes.
- In case you run into problems either installing or running your paid theme you can always refer to solutions offered by the developers in forums which is highly unlikely with free themes.
- Paid themes are usually updated frequently in order for your site to be more secure while the updates made on free themes aren’t as frequent.
- Sometimes a WordPress theme will be partitioned so that you’ll have a free version that doesn’t have all the features. To unlock those features you’d have to purchase the paid version.
In view of the above, what should you opt for? A free WordPress theme or a premium one.
I advise that if you don’t have any plans to customize your site and will be using it to blog about mundane issues without the intention of commercializing it, then you should go for a free theme.
However, if you’re planning on launching a business website then you should opt for premium WordPress themes as you’ll enjoy all the benefits listed above.
Places To Find WordPress Themes
It’s really not hard at all finding a WordPress theme whether free or paid. In fact, the hard work is in choosing the right theme for you from the many options that you’ll be presented with. Here’s a list of places where you can find a theme suited for you.
ThemeForest
When it comes to WordPress themes, ThemeForest has the biggest collection. ThemeForest is part of Envato’s marketplace. You can find a wide variety of WordPress themes on ThemeForest with different features as well as different pricing. In fact, you can currently get WordPress themes that go for as low as $2 and as high as $60.
StudioPress
StudioPress is a marketplace that is famous for creating Genesis Framework, a WordPress Themes that revolutionized the WordPress theme market. There’s so much you can do with the Genesis Framework. As a marketplace StudioPress features plenty of themes.
Some of their themes go for hundreds of dollars. However, if you’re a web developer you can benefit from their bulk package which comes included with all the WordPress themes that have been created with WordPress for only $499.
Elegant Themes
The range of WordPress themes that are found on Elegant themes are definitely worth their price as they live up to their name. In addition to the WordPress themes, Elegant themes also sells WordPress plugins such as Monarch and Bloom.
They have built a good reputation for themselves by offering top-notch support.
What sets Elegant Themes apart is that they seem to specialize in drag and drop themes making them very popular with novices.
Themify
Themify’s unique value proposition is that they sell all their themes as a package and not as individuals. Well, how’s that a benefit you might wonder? You get all their themes for just $79. Basically, Themify themes are just like the ones you get on Studiopress but for less and with fewer features.
WordPress Theme or WordPress Framework
When it comes to how you want to design your WordPress website, there are two ways to do it. You can either use a theme or a framework. Unless you’re a developer it’s hard to understand the difference between the two.
Frameworks are code libraries that are used to develop and customize a theme. They emerged due to the numerous problems that are associated with ordinary themes.
For example, assume that you’re a developer who uses a single theme as a starting point for all of your WordPress theme customizations. One day, you discover that there’s a security exploit in your main theme. You would need to go to all customized themes that are based off the first one and alter the code for each individual theme.
A WordPress framework negates the need for all this. What it does is it hosts the functionality as well as the source code hence acting as a parent theme on which child themes are based off. In the event something needs to be changed, it can be changed on the parent theme and those changes will be reflected on all the child themes that are based on the parent theme.
Mobile Responsive
Hand-held devices have quickly become the way people browse the internet and Google has not been slow to notice. Some time ago, Google announced that they would be using a site’s responsiveness as a metric to determine how well it ranked.
A responsive site simply refers to a website that automatically adjusts to fit the length of the screen of whatever device it’s being viewed on. The symmetry between a site viewed on a desktop or on a mobile phone provides a seamless experience for site visitors and Google likes this.
When shopping for a theme, you should ensure that it’s theme responsive as your site can suffer in the search result pages if it’s not.
SEO-Ready
Most SEO themes support the Yoast plugin which provides a checklist of things you need to do on your content in order not to fall foul of Google. Some WordPress themes lack a simple SEO framework so you should ensure that the theme developer has indicated the theme is SEO ready.
You should also check how fast the theme loads, after all a slow theme might cost you good business.