In order to answer the question, “What theme is best for me?” Let’s take a look at some of the WordPress Theme basics bellow.
1. Theme
It is the design of your website. Sometimes it is called a skin, or a template, like the ‘clothes’ of your website. Template is often used interchangeably as themes are made up of template files.
2. Magazine Style
It means rather than showing the Posts in a list on the home page they may show the top posts from different categories, perhaps with images for the latest or featured posts. There are many examples, Delicious Magazine from Woothemes is one of them.
3. Columns
Your content counts as a column, so a two column theme means one content column and one sidebar. If you want two sidebars, you will need a three column theme.
4. Widget Ready
It means you can use sidebar widgets. So you can manage your sidebar more easily. Also sometimes this kind of sidebars are called “widgetized sidebars”.
5. Flexible Width
The width of the website will expand or contract depending on the width of the browser window and/or the users screen size. The common ones are “fixed width”.
6. Theme Options
Some templates have an option panel to configure elements of the website without any coding, which offers you more flexibility on your web design.
7. Theme Framework
It is used to describe a basis from which other themes can be created. Thesis and Headway are often described as theme frameworks outright, while Woothemes create all their different themes based on their own frameworks to provide commonality of options and coding.
8. Free Themes
There are thousands of free themes available, and the new ones are coming. Please note some free themes require links in the footer to remain as “cost” for using it.
9. Premium Themes
Premium themes cost some money. However, they have many advantages.
- They offer theme options menu. You may change colors, layout, adding/removing links, and advert blocks. You may choose SEO options as well.
- They have support forums. Most good premium themes will have a support forum to answer your technical and how-to questions.
- They offer updates. Since the theme authors are getting paid for their work they will often provide updates with bugs fixed or new features added. Usually these are free upgrades to paid members.
The main disadvantage is that licenses can be restrictive. You may only be able to use it on one or two websites.
Woothemes have both free themes and paid-for themes. They have themes in all different categories for different types of websites, plus each theme usually comes with between 5 and 10 in-built colors schemes you can switch between. Usually there are a great number of menu options too. They have an excellent demo viewer on their website where you can switch between any template and style.
10. Custom Themes
The truly professional website needs a unique custom theme. The advantage of this is that nobody else will have the same design as your website, and you can brand it well with your own business personality. The downside of course is the cost.
When you choose a suitable WordPress theme, consider not only design/look but also theme options for flexibility. Building a website, which presents your online business effectively is a great start for starting or growing your online business.
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