Do you know, a good theme plays a key role in attracting visitors to search and read more on the blog? Every blogger thinks to have a perfect and elegant theme for their blog/website but they are getting confused on choosing a perfect theme that suits and fit for their blog. This post helps you to choose a Perfect WordPress Theme for Your Blog. Let’s check.
How to Choose A Perfect WordPress Theme For Your Blog??
What is a Theme??
A theme is a collection of template files that work together to produce a graphical interface for your blog. A theme modifies the design of your website without modifying the underlying software.
Theme contains customized templates, image files, stylesheets and custom pages to modify the blog interface easily.
How A Good Theme Plays A Key Role In Attracting Visitors To The Blog?
A theme is like a Map of your website with a header, sidebars and footer. It shows the way to find out the content of your website easily. A good theme with an attractive header, sidebars and footer draws visitor’s attention to read more on your blog. Visitors always love a well-designed and fully informative layout or else they leave your blog instantly and look for others if your blog has a clumsy interface.
Do You Require A Free Or Premium WordPress Theme??
There are so many free and premium WordPress themes are available and we have to decide whether to choose a free or premium WordPress theme for your blog. Before deciding, let’s differentiate Free and Premium WordPress Themes.
Difference between Free and Premium WordPress Themes:
If you don’t want to customize your website and only blogging for personal writings can go with a free theme. If you can spend some money and want your website to more responsive, elegant, customizable and mobile friendly then you needs to go for a premium theme. There are so many free and premium themes are available and you can select as per your needs but consider 9 things before selecting any theme.
9 Things to Consider Before Selecting a Theme:
Select A Theme Which Reflects Your Blog Niche:
WordPress is meant for all types of websites, that’s why every theme caters to a different market. So always select a theme which reflects your blog niche. If you are planning to start a blog for technology, you must select a theme which belongs to it.
Simple and Stylish:
So many themes come with lots of colors, fonts and complex layouts which we don’t require sometimes and they slowdowns the speed of the website too. So always look for a theme which meets your needs without compromising on simplicity.
Our goal is to provide the better interface for visitors to search and read the content on your website easily. If a theme looks great and not provides the better user experience for the visitor, then it’s the bad and useless theme. So make sure to select a theme which is simple, stylish and meet your goals easily.
Responsive Design and Layout:
A responsive WordPress theme can easily adjust its layout based on the screen size and resolution. A responsive WordPress theme provides an optimal experience by resizing the screen across a wide range of devices without the need of a separate mobile design for each platform.
A significant traffic generated from mobile devices and it may vary depending on your website niche. Irrespective of a topic, all websites should mobile friendly to gain more visitors and attract all types of people. Google also love only mobile friendly websites. So we must select a theme which is mobile friendly.
Most of the themes are not mobile friendly, so always do mobile-friendly test for its demo website before choosing a theme. Just paste the demo website link in Google’s mobile-friendly test page to get the results.
Website Speed:
Website Speed plays a key role in getting more visitors to your website. No one likes a slow website and looks for an alternative if your website does not load fast. In a present scenario, daily lots of new websites are producing and we have plenty of websites to check on any particular website.
Some themes contain rich content formats and full-width images for stylish appealing but it takes so much time to load. So many website speed test tools are available and always check for website speed before selecting a theme.
Simply paste the demo website link in Pingdom website speed test tool to get the results.
Browser Compatibility:
Nowadays so many browsers are available and your users may use different types of browsers. So your theme should compatible with all browsers.
One theme may look perfect in one browser but may not work in other browsers. So always check whether your selected theme compatible with all browsers and do some test by checking in all browsers like Google chrome, internet explorer by surfing that particular demo theme.
Supported Plugins:
A plugin extends the performance of the website and you can do almost anything that you imagine with the help of a plugin. WordPress offers several free and paid plugins to improve the performance of the website. Make sure that your theme should compatible with all free and paid third party plugins that you want to use.
Help Support:
A high-level support is required from a theme developer when installing a theme for your website. Sometimes even an experienced user may get stuck and need help in fixing any errors. If that theme does not provide any support, you need to figure out the problem on your own or need to contact a third party developer for help.
A big disadvantage of using a free WordPress theme is you will not get any support from the theme developer. Some developers may offer support but it’s very minimal.
Always select a theme which offers help and documentation support.
Ratings N Reviews:
WordPress offers several themes and you should pick the best one from the list that useful to improve the website performance. So always check the plugin ratings, downloads and reviews of the plugin before downloading. You’ll get all WordPress theme reviews and ratings in the theme directory. If the theme sold by market places or third party, you’ll also get the reviews on their web page.
Always better to choose 4-star and 5-star rating themes only. In my opinion better to avoid, if the theme has more 1 star and 2-star ratings by their users.
Check for updates:
Before selecting a theme, we need to check for theme last updates. A rarely updated theme may not be compatible with WordPress version and leads to security vulnerabilities. Regularly updating theme improves the security of the website. So always select a theme which is regularly updating.
You must consider all above factors before selecting a theme for your WordPress website. There are so many other factors are there to consider but these are the main factors we should not forget.
Let me know, which theme you are using and how it is working on your website.
I hope this article helped you in choosing the best theme for your WordPress website.
If you have any questions regarding WordPress, let me know via comment section.
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Akshay Malhotra says
If you entering the world of blogging by creating your own blog specially on WordPress, this article will guide them with the best tips and guidance. Usually people get impressed by the look of the theme and miss out the other factors like support, responsiveness etc. This article will guide them to go through the checklist above.
Very well written, looking forward for other post.
Rahel says
This is so helpful to new bloggers. There is so much to learn when you start a blog and often times it can be difficult to find support and guidance.