Are you looking to create a website? Are you considering going with WordPress, but don’t know much about what to look out for or how to choose a theme? Whether it’s your first website or you are looking to replace an older website built with a website builder, WordPress is a new reality for you.
There are a lot of terminologies and intricacies you probably aren’t that familiar with, but in this article, I will give you an overview about what you need to know before purchasing your first WordPress theme.
What’s a theme?
Using a theme is mandatory. If your website runs with WordPress, you do have to choose a theme to run the website with.
A theme is like the skin of a website.
A freshly created WordPress website looks pretty generic and naked. After installing WordPress, there is already a theme pre-installed, and there are two to three other themes available to switch to. These are the default themes that are provided by WordPress.
A theme gives a website its unique touch. It takes all the content stored in the website (posts, pages, sidebars, headers, – everything) and by virtue of its coding, it determines how this content is organized and displayed to the website visitor.
It may control the look of the menu bar, of the header and of the footer. It may determine the options a blog post can be display, it may determine the way a logo can be displayed, or it may rule the color sets a website can use. It has the power to enable or disable hundreds of features. In other words, it determines the visual logic displayed.
Selecting a theme
The most basic differentiation to make is on the monetary level. I firmly believe the theme’s price shouldn’t be the major factor when making your decision, it is however, a valid option for categorization.
There are many free themes offered in several websites like in the WordPress-owned market place. I’ll reflect on the disadvantages that come with free themes in the last part of this article, but the reason why I believe a theme’s price shouldn’t be the significant factor when choosing a theme is because the premium themes come to a price somewhere between $60-90, which is nothing when compared to the cost a hired web designer will charge.
