Creating a website for your business is no small task. First, you have to decide if you want to build your own site from scratch or use a WordPress theme.
If you’re going to build your site, you could use the design framework Bootstrap to help you. Learning how to use bootstrap with WordPress to create your own theme is fairly simple.
If that doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, you can use a template. WordPress offers over 10,000 themes and selecting the right one is essential to your website’s success. The ideal theme will give your content pizzazz, be responsive across devices, and load quickly.
However, looking through all the themes would take you days. Therefore, you need a better way to narrow down your options to find the theme that meets your needs. Read through this list of tips on how to find the perfect theme for your site.
7 Tips for Finding the Perfect WordPress Theme
1. Make a List of the Features You Want
Different themes will come with different features. Once you know which features you want, you can search through themes using the WordPress Feature Filter. This filter allows you to customize your search for free themes based on the exact features you want.
You should also consider how you want your website to look. For instance, do you want one column or multiple columns? Do you need a flexible header? Where do you want the sidebar to be located? Knowing this information will help you further narrow down your choices.
2. Always Choose a Responsive Theme
The majority of internet users use their phones to access websites. For this reason, your website must be responsive. A responsive design means your site will be easily readable on various devices. Features of a responsive design include a fluid site grid and flexible images.
If the theme you love isn’t responsive, all is not lost. There are ways to customize your chosen theme to make it responsive.
3. Consider Choosing a Premium Theme
Free themes are great, but they can present some issues. For instance, compared to premium themes, the coding isn’t always up to par. Additionally, free themes aren’t always updated regularly. They can also lack support, and in some cases, the theme designer will abandon the theme altogether. Premium themes, on the other hand, usually offer more features and consistent support.
4. Avoid Bloated Themes
A bloated theme is overloaded with features. While it might seem like more is better, too many features will create a cluttered site that takes a long time to load. Furthermore, developers often use code they found on the internet for these features. As a result, these features may have weak security spots because they are focused on performing a specific function rather than keeping your site secure.
5. Keep Color in Mind
Humans are visual creatures. For that reason, it’s important to consider the color scheme of your site. You want colors that increase brand recognition and don’t detract from your site’s content. Furthermore, visitors prefer lighter colored sites. This is because darker sites tend to reduce readability, which makes them less desirable. It’s fairly simple to alter your theme’s appearance by going directly into the file or by entering custom CSS.
6. Be Conscious of Fonts
Readability is essential to capturing a site visitor’s attention. Make sure that when choosing a theme, you choose one with easy-to-read fonts. The most popular fonts for readability are Josefin Slab, Arvo, Lato, Open Sans, and Vollkorn.
7. Test Your Theme
Before choosing a theme, you should test its efficiency by installing the Theme Check plugin. This plugin checks to make sure that your theme is up to all the current WordPress standards. You may also want to choose a hosting solution that offers staging environments, so you can see what your theme looks like with your content before going live.
Choosing Your WordPress Theme
It’s important to choose your WordPress theme carefully as it can affect the performance of your site.
When narrowing down your WordPress theme options, consider the theme’s responsiveness, how well the theme functions, whether it has too few or too many features, the colors it comes in, and the fonts it offers. Lastly, be sure to test your theme out before going live.
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