In our last post, we discussed how to install and start your WordPress blog therefore today having installed it, we’re going to learn how to beautify it using the theme.
Themes are used to basically design the layout and look off your blog including colors, background, fonts, and positioning.
Here in this article, we will discuss the various topics related to WordPress Theme?
What is WordPress Theme?
WordPress theme is the collection of files that works together to create the design of your website / blog. The theme include the template files, graphics, Java script & various style sheets along with the images. The theme can control the overall look of the blog, you can change the theme of the website at any point of time, but that does not impact the content of the website at all. The theme of the website can decide how the information is displayed on the website.
WordPress theme; Paid or Free, Which one is better and Why?
The first thing to do is to find a theme that you like, the easiest way to get started is to download free themes.
There are multiple free and paid wordpress themes available online for a blog / website to work properly. Both free and paid themes are good to use. If you are new in the blogging field and want to explore the things in detail, use the free wordpress theme to set up your blog. Although the free wordPress theme has limited features, but its good to start.
The paid wordpress theme can be used if you need advanced features with the dedicated tech support along with the customized options as per the business requirement to set up your blog. The huge benefit of buying a premium theme is that you don’t have to spend 100’s of hours and thousands of dollars to get the same results as the professionals. With the paid theme, you will get a lot of advanced features and support to set up your blog.
When you saw Top Blogging Coach you probably smiled and thought, WOW, and then thought to yourself, just if I could create a blog like that!
Well, I have to be honest with you, I paid $70 for my WordPress theme and it’s not just that theme, they have dozens, which have lots of great features to personalize it yourself!
Things to Consider While Choosing the WordPress theme?
Before finalizing the wordPress theme, you should have the rough sketch in your mind and pen down the features that you want to in-corporate in the blog. We have listed down the important things that should be kept in mind before finalizing any theme (free or paid) for your website / blog.
The objective of the blog:
The most important thing is to think the objective of the blog. What your blog / website want to achieve? Once the objective of the blog is clear, then it will be easy for you to choose the wordPress theme from the store of available free and paid themes.
Every theme has its own unique features, for example if you want to develop an online store then the themes having built in ecommerce features are the best to use. Sharing an example below showing the example of WooCommerce WP theme – which is the ideal and best to set up the ecommerce website. Metro Ecommerce theme comes with the multiple home page designs with built in ecommerce features like listing of products under different categories, setting up the payment gateways and add to cart options etc
In nutshell, you need to answer “What is the goal of the website?” – If your blog want to make money through the affiliate marketing / want to raise a charity, then the website theme should be completely dependent upon your answer as in both the cases some unique features are required to serve the purpose
List of Functions you want for your blog:
Once the goal / objective of the website is finalized, the next step is to list down the functions that you need for your blog. You need to list down all the important functions / features which are important for your website / blog. Be it a technical features / Design layout features including different types of templates to use / marketing features like email campaign, SEO, Social media icons, e-commerce compatibility, comments section at the end of the blog.
In most of the cases – one or two features are not fulfilled by the selected WP theme, here you can use the WordPress Plugins to fulfil the requirement.
WordPress Theme should be Responsive:
The WordPress theme selected by you should be responsive in design, now a days the basic requirement of the website is to serve on multiple devices, be it a laptop, smartphone or tablet. The another advantage of the responsive design is that you don’t need to maintain different codes for different devices. In case of responsive design, the look and feel including the top navigation, page layout, important elements on the page should be auto adjusted as per the device resolution and that will not impact the user experience.
Responsive design feature is also recommended by Google – when we are talking about the SEO process of any website / blog. 100% responsive in nature will help in better ranking in search engine. You can Learn more about the SEO including on page SEO factors to optimize your website at Top Blogging Coach.
You can also check the mobile friendliness of the blog / website through the mobile friendly test tool provided by Google and extensively used by various bloggers / experts
WordPress Theme Speed:
Another important thing to notice here is the speed of the website. If your blog / website takes ages of time to open then it is of no use. The user who is looking for some information is not landed on your website because of poor load time, then you are actually loosing the potential revenue and engagement. Choosing the right theme, that will not impact the speed of the website is most important factor to consider. If your theme contain lot of Junk code, heavy images, videos – that takes lot of time to load, then it is of no use. You can check the speed of the website through the page speed insight tool provided by Google and universally accepted by digital marketing and techies.
Important things to consider:
- The theme coding should be optimized and does not contain the junk code.
- Images & Videos should load faster.
- Embedded code in the form of Twitter and Instagram should load faster.
- Metrics like FCP, CLS & LCP should be optimized.
- Page Experience and Core Web Vitals should be taken care. You can measure these parameters through the Google Search Console.
Browser Compatibility
The theme should be compatible for all browsers across the world. If one theme is OK for your browser, but that doesn’t mean the theme works well for your user browser. You need to check the browser compatibility of your selected theme, before moving ahead in the blog set up process.
If the selected WordPress theme does not have the browser compatibility feature – then you can check the same through the browser compatibility test on various browsers like Google Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer, Fire Fox etc.
If the selected theme is OK in browser compatibility test then its a winning game for you.
Supported WP Plugins
The plugin is the piece of software written in PHP (programming language) containing a group of functions that can be used to resolve a problem / add a new feature in your WordPress blog.
We have been noticed since ages that none of the theme is available that fulfil all your requirements to start a blog. Few of the things are still in your Wishlist that needs a plugin to help you.
In short your selected WP theme coding should support all available plugins for your blog.
For example to set the SEO friendly blog you need to install different types of plugins like All in one SEO, Rank Math, Redirection, WP Cache etc.
If you are not sure about this feature for any of the selected theme, you can ask the developer / tech support of that plugin.
Think about SEO
SEO – the most important funnel to acquire the users for your website. A poor coded theme, that takes a lot of time to load, actually impacting the user experience of your blog. Check out the features of the selected theme and make sure the theme is SEO friendly. You can check the various online tools to check the technical SEO stuff of your blog like Page speed insight, mobile friendliness, Various meta tags optimization etc.
Developer Support Policy
Support is very much required to set up your blog. If you have purchased the Premium theme and need to check all the features, then the tech support is very much required for the set up process. Therefore it is suggested to check with them whether they provide the support to the blogger in case it is required, only then it is good to go ahead with this theme. It is also suggested to choose the WP theme that has proper support system in terms of documentations and PDF / techies are available.
Rating and Reviews
Since all of us know, before buying any thing online – we need to do some research work. We need to check whether the product which we are going to buy is good enough to fulfil our requirements or not. The same process is also applicable here, we need to check the reviews and ratings of the selected WP theme on various sites and then take the decision.
Through the review and rating process you will come to know about the theme whether its good to use or not. You can check the review of your selected WP theme on multiple review sites or you can find the same on Google search engine by searching the keyphrase <<Theme name>> Review.
How to upload the WordPress theme:
Once you have purchased your theme, uploading is simple. Login to your WordPress Admin and click Appearance, followed by Add New Themes, and then at the top of the page click Add New.
Search for your theme zip file and then upload – it’s as simple as that, back when I first started we had to do it manually which took hours, so there’s no excuses!
However, in the cause of this training, we will focus on free themes until you have the money to purchase a premium theme.
But if you bought your theme from Woothemes, then you can play around with all their really cool settings by logging in to your WordPress Admin and scrolling down to the bottom of the sidebar and clicking the name of your theme.
We recently interviewed the founder of Woothemes about the importance of great blog design, check it out by clicking here.
To change the default theme, simply login to WordPress Admin and click on Appearance, select themes and click on install Themes. Here you will see where you’ll see lots of option for you to choose all you want your desired theme to have, e.g. – you may like a two-column theme that has a custom menu, etc. Theme click on Find Theme.
The next page will show you different types of themes based on the options you selected. If there is anyone you like among them, you can preview it and if it suits you, click on install and then click on activate and that ends it.
- Theme should be Responsive
- Support all available plugin, SEO Friendly
- Check the technical features like theme speed, browser compatibility, support desk.
If you want to learn more about the WP theme along with the SEO best Practices / Want an SEO Audit for your website/ blog. Pls email me at [email protected] with your requirement. I will reply in 24 – 48 hrs.
Bestthemeforest.com says
Hi! I know this is somewhat off topic but I was wondering if you knew where I could locate a captcha plugin for my comment form? I’m using the same blog platform as yours and I’m having difficulty finding one? Thanks a lot!
Nwangene Theodore says
Hi Dear,
I don’t use that but you can try SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam which you can download at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/si-captcha-for-wordpress/. Although i haven’t used it before but i heard its a nice one.
Thanks and Good Luck