How to pick a WordPress Theme

In this blog post I am just going to talk about some of the problems you can face when starting a new project and the possible pitfalls when choosing a new theme.

We have all been there. Thinking about starting a new project/web site and one of the first things we think of is how is the site going to look. We may even have a WordPress theme in mind or at least a color scheme. Thinking about the look, design and colors of a blog or website is fun. The actual implementation can be the much harder part of the whole process and to tell you the truth the look of the website is probably one of the last parts of the process. Theoretically you should be thinking about the content, what the website is trying to achieve and how it fits with in whatever niche you are trying to enter.

Let’s assume you have done all that and move on to choosing a theme. This article is going to assume you chose WordPress as the CMS and by doing so you are already well ahead of the game. WordPress is the most Popular CMS on the web today. There are literally thousands of themes that have been developed for WordPress and most niches will have specific themes already built for them. Some of these themes come for free others are premium and need to be paid for.

What is the difference between Premium and Free themes?

Well the obvious answer to this is that premium themes are generally paid for, although this is not always the case. There are themes like Arras that are free or have been for most of their existence (there are rumours that Arras has finally become paid for).
There is more to this story though as most premium themes have many more features and are generally responsive. What is so important about a responsive theme? Google claims that they prefer that websites handle mobile devices in a responsive manner. So whether using WordPress or not responsive website design should always be front and centre of your mind. In fact Clash Media has decided that in the very near future all themes we design will be responsive. If you find a site that you like you can always plug it into WP theme Detector and see what theme it uses and install it on your own site.,

However having said that there are some good free themes on offer at WordPress that offer responsive mobile device handling. I personally will always consider free themes first before looking at premium themes. You never know you may find one that suits your idea perfectly. The added bonus for me, is that I am able to modify existing themes pretty easily so one may be close to what I want and then I can perfect it for my circumstance. That is something you should consider WordPress programming is quite easy. All you need is a basic to moderate understanding of PHP, HTML and CSS and you will be customizing themes like a boss 

Conclusion

So this is the first in a series of articles I will be doing regarding theme selection and possibly design at a later date. Hopefully it was useful.