How to Choose a WordPress Theme

3 Comments / Block 3, How To, Themes / By Susanna

When you choose the right WordPress theme, your site will be easy for readers and customers to use, and a pleasure to look at. Choosing the wrong theme can cause problems.

So out of the thousands of free and paid WordPress themes available, how do you know which one to pick?

Free vs Premium Themes

There are thousands of premium (paid) themes, and tens of thousands of free themes available.

If you’re creating your website as a personal blog, journal, or showcase for your photos, videos, arts or crafts you may be able to get away with a free theme.

WordPress comes with free themes pre-installed: TwentyNineteen is the newest one, and it’s a good, basic blogging theme.

A word of caution. . .

Don’t go searching on Google or anywhere else for a free theme for your WordPress site. Many of them contain malicious or harmful code.

If you’re creating your website as part of a business or money-making venture of any kind, you’re better off with a premium theme.

How to Choose the Right Premium Theme for your WordPress Website

When you’re purchasing materials to build an actual house, you want to do business with a reputable company that offers quality products and stands behind them.

Choosing a theme designer is no different.

I’ve chosen to work with two design companies. I’ve chosen these two because:

They’ve been in business for a long time
They offer a solid product — their code is strong, uncluttered and they keep it updated
They offer a high level of support, including documentation and online assistance
They offer a wide variety of designs to meet a wide variety of needs, and their designs are attractive

Here are my go-to theme designers:

Where’s Your Blueprint?

If you’re building a house, you know that your framing contractor will want blueprints to work from. What are the dimensions? How many storeys? Where are the doors and windows?

When you’re choosing the framing for your WordPress website, start with the blueprint for your website.

What are you using it for? If you plan to showcase your stunning, fine art photographs, your needs are very different from mine, for example. So, before you even start theme shopping, answer these questions:

What’s the main purpose for the website?
What will be my primary type of content — text, images, video or audio?
What will be my secondary type of content?
Will I be selling anything directly from the website?
Will most of my readers/customers/clients come from my local area?
Will I have a members-only section of the site?

Once you have the answers to these questions, you can start looking at themes.

Each of the theme designers I listed has tools to help you narrow down your search so you can choose the perfect theme.

The type or category of theme you’re looking for depends on your site’s main purpose and the type of content you’ll mostly be featuring.

Common category types include:

News or Magazine
Business
Corporate or Enterprise
Tumblog
Portfolio
Traditional Blog
Specialty or App — specific themes for real estate agents, schools, restaurants, or events, for example
Women

The theme’s layout refers to the number and placement of columns. Keep in mind that the home page can be very different from the other pages on the website.

Features refers to what the theme can do. Can you change the color scheme easily? Does it display cleanly in a phone or tablet?

StudioPress

StudioPress lets you filter all their available themes by

Category
Features
Layout

If that’s not helpful enough, they have a nifty little interactive tool that makes it even easier.

When you see a theme you like, click the Live Demo link. You’ll be able to look at the home page and inside pages. You can also change the color scheme and other features to see what they’ll look like.

Elegant Themes

As of July, 2019, Elegant Themes offers only two themes: Divi and Extra. Both use their excellent page builder, giving you the ultimate in flexibility.

Don’t know how to choose a WordPress theme? I’ll make personalized recommendations for you!

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3 thoughts on “How to Choose a WordPress Theme”

Dawn
March 19, 2013 at 7:30 am

I am attempting to build a website for my husband. He is a golf pro and the goals of the site are to increase his visibility, increase his lesson business, and eventually sell items on the site such as ebooks, DVDs, product. We’d also like to make money through affiliates and advertising on the site.
I am completely overwhelmed with choosing a theme. I want the site to be clean and uncluttered. I want a custom header across the top and page headers running across the top of the page under the graphic. I think I want a 2 column page layout. Content being in the first column and a side bar as the second column. I also want the theme to be ready for mobile users. Any suggestions?
I have spent some time on your site this morning and find it very user friendly and helpful. I am a member of AWAI and read a post on the money making website thread about your site a while ago.
One last question…I already set up hosting with Bluehost and registered my domain name with them. If I buy a theme through your affiliate program could I take advantage of your free set up offer?
Thanks for your help.
1. Susanna
  March 19, 2013 at 12:04 pm
  
  Of course I’d be happy to work with you on your husband’s site. I’ll email you directly to make arrangements 🙂
LuSinda
April 8, 2015 at 9:04 am

Here I narrowed my choice to between two themes Parallex Pro and Modern Studio Pro. Idly flipping through your wonderful site I came across Cafe Pro which I had not considered as i thought if would be only for restaurants.
Wow That is one wicked piece of software!
Now my Theme search has moved up to three! Have you or are you planning to do a article about Cafe Pro. I think the plans for this could be endless.

Comments are closed.

Michelle Detlaff

I wish they would let me add more attributes instead of only 3. They all apply to you Susanna. I am so grateful to work with you. Blogging and copywriting are so important to my business and I don’t always have the time to do these tasks myself. The best part about working with you is that I KNOW you will get job done right with very few edits (if any).

I’m very satisfied with the great results you’ve provided. I consider you an expert in your field and you are extremely creative and personable. Your writing carries a sense of humor which I appreciate (and my clients appreciate because they have also commented on it)

Keep up the good work.

Thank you,

Deb Svanefelt

Susanna has been an awesome support for designing 3 websites for me – she has Superpowers when it comes to knowing her way around WordPress – or finding her way in new areas with flexibility and creativity. She’s been incredibly patient with getting answers to my many questions, has been cheerful and calm [even when I’ve been tech-anxious – gotta love that in a person!]

Her work is fantastic – she thinks of stuff I have no idea about, and adds it in for me. I trust her work and skills implicitly, and I’ll continue to use her skills, and recommend her to other friends and colleagues. She’s just the best – like I said, the Super Woman of website designs!! 🙂 🙂

Persistence and Attention to Detail. . .

That’s one of the MANY things I like about working with you: persistence, attention to detail, desire to make a positive difference.

Wait! That’s three things instead of one…

Well, I can’t put the genie back in the bottle!

SO, please accept my heartfelt thanks for solving the HTTPS issue … and all the other “pesky” ones that led to project successes!!

– Rod Harkins

A Good Thing

As for the group, I’ve joined, and let’s face it, anything with Susanna Perkins is a good thing.

– Joe Burnham

I Move Pilates

Susanna worked with my marketing person to help us move my unhosted Pilates website over to a host she recommended, and get me up and running with a brand new theme. All the content, pictures and layout transferred over without a hitch thanks to her WordPress wizardry! And, she did this on a very tight deadline.

Anne McDonald

Susanna is a great teacher. Her knowledge of building and using websites for professional and personal use is extensive, and she shares her expertise willingly. I am so grateful for her presence on this forum. Thank you, Susanna

Misty S.

Susanna is extremely knowledgeable about the WordPress platform and has sharp insight into which themes to use. Her step-by-step instructions really make setting up a WordPress site fast and painless.

I appreciated her friendly attitude and willingness to help me quickly find a theme I like. She went above and beyond what I expected.

Her Wordpress Building Blocks system is easy to understand and follow. I highly recommend her!

Shea McNaughton

Updated April 27, 2020

Thanks a million, Susanna, for helping me out. This has gone so much smoother than previous web builds, thanks to you!

Warmest regards,

Shea

I was in the process of trying to launch a new business, and I had known for months that I would need a new website. I had once built a blog from scratch and thought how hard could it be to build a website.

WELL. Maybe it’s not impossible, but it was technical enough that I found out quickly that it would take more time to get it up and running than I wanted to spend. A LOT more time.

I had discovered Susanna’s services in the course of learning my new business, and so I called on her to help me out. She took the reins and built a fantastic website, leaving me to the business of creating my business. Never having built a website, I knew NOTHING about it and constantly asked her opinion. Being the pro, her opinion was extremely valuable, and I have a beautiful website to show for it.

After the site was finished, Susanna handed the reins back to me with the assurance that she would be available for questions should I have any (which I did). Her website, WPBuildingBlocks.com fills in the blanks for me as I move forward with my business and continue to build my site with content.

Susanna took a huge load off my mind when she built my site. I had so much going on that I just couldn’t spare the time to build it myself. Not only that, her prices were completely reasonable. I had done the research with other design companies and had resigned myself to limping along with an “eventual website” in mind. But Susanna rescued me with her skill and sheer know-how when it comes to building a professional website. She is FANTASTIC.

Thanks so much, Susanna, I will recommend you to anyone and everyone who needs a webmaster / designer / builder.

Pat White

Dear Susanna,

Your knowledge and expertise in helping me develop my website has been invaluable. My technology skills and confidence have grown a great deal with your help. But I am sure I will need further guidance, and I will look to you for direction again.

As you know, I am a “do-it-yourselfer”, so for those who want to learn how to get started and to have direct input into the process, you offer just the right amount of direction.

I am grateful for your patience in the overwhelming projects of building my two websites (Patricia White Copywriting and Healthy Avatar), and for your willingness to lead me through all the steps from beginning to end.

Your prices are so reasonable for the guidance and amount of setup you
do!

Trent Daly

Thank you so much for all your help in building my first website. Thank you also for your patience and persistence in dealing with a novice such as myself.

It’s been an enjoyable learning experience and I appreciate all your time, effort and expertise in helping me to bring my site to life. You truly are an expert when it comes to WordPress and websites and nothing was ever too difficult.

I would highly recommend your services to others and would not hesitate to use your services again.

Many thanks.

Thank You for the Great Work!

Susanna,

Thank you for the great work updating EngineerYourCopy.com!

You helped me wade through dozens of WordPress theme options and choose the right one for my website. Then, you took care of all the technology details – the hosting, the WordPress databases and the right plugins.

As somebody who has managed multi-million-dollar IT projects, your project management skills were excellent. From your Trello board to how you kept the project moving forward despite obstacles, I appreciated your professionalism.

I sincerely appreciated your Zoom walk-through of the updated site. You showed extensive WordPress knowledge, along with knowledge of brand-new features of the theme and Genesis framework. And it helped me understand the new Genesis framework and very different block-based page structure.

I can confidently recommend you to anyone who needs to update their WordPress website or build one from scratch… in fact, I expect we’ll be working together on another site update soon!

– KATrimels

Roseanne Beers

I first checked Susanna out because she and I were both AWAI members and had both taken a class on Money Making Websites. When I saw her website, I was really impressed. Then I saw another website she had designed and loved it too, so I scheduled a consultation with her to talk about helping me.

Susanna is extremely knowledgeable about the products she recommends and CSS coding. And, she was very patient with me regarding my lack of technical background and my delays getting information to her because of my lack of understanding how to make decisions she needed me to make, and ultimately because of unexpected health issues that stopped me in my tracks. She was generous in understanding what I was going through and a resulting change in our plans.

Excellent WordPress Guru

“She is an excellent WordPress guru/ instructor and web designer.”

– Savia Muhammad
Thornton Reformer Gazette

Aisha Ashraf

I contracted Susanna to move my site to a self-hosted platform. Right from the start she made herself available on various mediums to discuss my requirements and help me understand the process. Her advice was clear and precise; with step-by-step instructions that never failed to deliver.

Her product knowledge is excellent in a field where updates are a constant and her calm, humorous approach was a real help when my nerves kicked in or indecision struck.

I’d work with her again in a heartbeat and have no qualms in recommending her to friends and colleagues (in fact I’ve already done just that!)

Shawn Vincent

Here’s the deal with Susanna: she gets it.

As a business owner, the thing I value most about Susanna is that she manages up, helping me line up the resources I need for her to do the job. As a result, work gets done quickly, with a minimum effort from me.

Doak Ewing

Susanna took the weight off my shoulders transferring content from my 20-year-old website to a clean, modern WordPress version. She gave patient support and encouragement throughout. She was always available to answer questions and I know if I stumble, she’ll be there to help me get up. I highly recommend Susanna to anyone needing help with WordPress!

– Doak Ewing, Naperville, Illinois

Murray Landa, B.A., LL.B.

Susanna saved me enormous amounts of time and aggravation. She answered all questions promptly and kept the project moving forward. I highly recommend her.

Panama Relocation Tours

Susanna Perkins, of WordPress Building Blocks, helped to redesign my web site www.PanamaRelocationTours.com. This is a wordpress web site which had the same look for more than 3 years so it was time for a facelift.

Susanna helped me identify a good word press theme, installed it and got it all configured. She has a keen eye for the little details that make a site look more professional and run more efficiently.

Good communications are essential during a web site project, whether it is a new design or a rebuild. This is the only way the “vision” for the site can come together. Susanna took time to understand what I wanted to accomplish with the site and made it happen seamlessly. She kept me informed via email during every phase of the redesign process. She made excellent recommendations for plugins which made the site look and work better.

I am very pleased with the results and with Susanna Perkins. My redesign came in on time and on budget. I would highly recommend her to anyone who needs a web site built or redesigned. She knows what she’s doing!

Jackie Lange
PanamaRelocationTours.com