How to Choose Your next WordPress Theme

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In my post early in the week I discussed why we love WordPress and the first reason on my list was WordPress Themes and the fact there is thousands of these themes going around at any one time, so whether you want a two to 4 column theme, different color schemes, widget ready or just a particluar theme to the template e.g. sporting theme the choices are endless.

So how to choose your new WordPress Theme?

When looking for your WordPress theme you can look at two key areas and that is Functionality and Appearance.

Most people see a theme and go “WOW looks cool” or “nice colors” but when you look for a theme you should look for functionality first as not all of us can code our WordPress theme but to change a color or two will not be difficult, so I highly recommend to look for a functionality theme first then adjust the appearance or color later.

Here are 5 things I look for when shopping for a new WordPress theme:

Plugin Compatibility - Many WordPress themes will come with certain plugins incorporated in the theme, and if your changing from your first theme to your second and you have got used to certain plugins then it’s important to ensure these can work with your new theme.

Many people will look for a theme which is maybe SEO ready or even adsense setup, but this will purely depend on your objective with your blog and how capable you are with adding such features.

Widget Ready - Does your WordPress theme come widget ready? If you aren’t comfortable manually adding code into your sidebar, this is can be an important factor when choosing.

Page Menu Location - Does not sound to important, but some WordPress themes have the menu in the sidebar, which at times can be difficult to find and will take up valuable advertising space in future, so its recommended to find a theme with the menu bar located above or below the heading of the blog as this is the accepted location.

Heading Space - Does your theme give enough room to add your blogs heading/logo, we see many blogs that just leave enough room to add a simple text heading but nothing else.

AJAX Comments - This is more for user friendly side to your readers, this is when the a comment is added and you find the page does not have to reload before the comment appears. This is good as readers will get frustrated waiting for the page to reload before continuing to search your blog.

Do you have any Considerations when you choose your WordPress theme?

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February 24, 2008 | Filed Under Wordpress

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Comments

2 Responses to “How to Choose Your next WordPress Theme”

Jug on February 25th, 2008 10:21 am

Hey, nice post man. Usually, when I’m looking around for WP themes, I always check the footer if there are too many outbound links. Some of the themes that look great have a LOT of sponsors which make me not use them.
Thomas Sinfield on February 25th, 2008 10:14 pm

I always look for something that is simple and clean, as I want to focus to be on the content. But then again it has to be eye catching enough to make people stay long enough to read your content.