The number of WordPress themes available might be a bit daunting. They appear to be present everywhere you look. Most WordPress users currently prioritize responsive design, with other capabilities trailing closely behind.
Your website may become more appealing, and user-friendly, and increase visitor engagement by using the proper theme. Hence, in this article, I’ll be talking about 11 features that you should look out for when you’re in the market for a good theme for your website.
What is a WordPress Theme?
A WordPress theme is a collection of files that work together to create the style of your website. A theme contains template files, stylesheets, graphics, and perhaps JavaScript files. All of those files affect how your blog articles and pages are presented.
A WordPress theme serves as the foundation for your site’s general look. It directs the appearance, feels, and operation of your website, including color palettes, typography, page layouts, margins, header/footer placement, and more.
A theme allows you to manage the appearance of your site rather than just giving a look and feel to your blog. For example, suppose you have a pictures blog for your photography business, the correct theme will show your blog entries in a specific manner while providing an entirely different style for your store’s pages.
WordPress Theme vs WordPress Template
A WordPress theme includes template files as well as other sorts of files such as stylesheets, scripts, and graphics. Individual template files cannot be installed. They collaborate with the rest of the files of a WordPress theme to modify the appearance of your website.
Most themes, for example, include different template files for your site’s header, footer, sidebar, comments, and other areas. The template files aid in controlling the information presented as well as the layout of each page.
Simply put: If you’re looking to build a website from the ground up, you should begin looking for WordPress themes that will provide your site with the style and functionality you want as a company owner. After you’ve established the framework, you may begin to investigate customization choices via additional templates.
If you currently have a website design that you like but need more information, pages, or functionality, you’ll need a template to fill in the blanks. This might be a blog, a custom footer, a blog archive, or something else.
A theme is in charge of the overall look of your website. A template is used to determine the layout of a single page. Thus, themes feature a variety of templates.
What are the Best WordPress themes?
Some of the best WordPress themes available for download include:
Turn on your notifications to be notified when I publish a comprehensive and extensive list of some of the best WordPress themes in the market.
Installing a WordPress Theme.
Installing your selected WordPress theme on your site will allow you to customize the appearance of your website.
If you want to know how to install WordPress themes, read this article.
Advantages of Using WordPress Themes over Building from Scratch
Quick Website Building Solution
There are many website templates available online. Simply describe what you need and what you’re searching for as accurately as possible.
The next step is to select the template you like the most and fill it up. Your website may be up and operating quickly, even if it could otherwise take hours. All you have to do is add a few things, including the photographs you want to utilize and any other content you want to publish.
Affordable
There are many affordable and free templates. The cost is inexpensive because you must modify the chosen template to fit your needs rather than paying someone to design a website according to your specifications. Custom websites might cost anything from $5,000 and $50,000 to build. For nonprofit organizations, this investment might not make sense.
Using premium themes is the preferable choice. The best feature of premium themes is that they are well made and affordable to everyone. When compared to having a website that is specifically developed, they are surprisingly affordable.
Easy to Use
Theoretically, themes should be developed in a way that makes it possible for anybody to utilize them without any programming experience. All you need to do is just spend time modifying it to your needs if you want to include extra features like galleries, forms, social network buttons, and action buttons, among others. The functionality of the basic product is frequently designed to be compatible with third-party plugins and modules.
What are the Features of a Good WordPress Theme?
Let’s look at the most essential factors you must consider while choosing the ideal WordPress theme.
Responsive Design
Responsive design is the top must-have feature for all websites in 2013, and it is also a must for WordPress themes. With the increasing number of people consuming information on tablets and mobile phones, it is critical to adopt a theme that allows consumers to clearly view material regardless of device.
Before you choose a theme, make sure it is highly responsive, whether you are opening a site on a smartphone or a tablet. Because the majority of people visit websites via mobile devices, it is critical that the theme does not impede access to your website’s mobile version.
The primary benefits of using a responsive theme are straightforward: there is no need to manage numerous sites and content, as well as visual and user interface uniformity across devices. Many of these responsive themes are based on Twitter Bootstrap, but there is a range of others available as well.
Compatible with Page Builders
Because most individuals who buy WordPress themes have no CSS or HTML skills, it is critical to make the themes as user-friendly and WYSIWYG as possible. Business websites require a bit more since users will want to include buttons everywhere (like purchase now or call us button), incorporate testimonials into their pages/posts, build galleries, tabbed content…etc, etc.
A visual page builder can help with this. Builders, whether you like them or not, make it simple for anybody to design unique page layouts, headers, and footers. Yes, WordPress comes with Gutenberg by default, but it’s still restricted and tedious to use. This is why we recommend utilizing a high-quality page builder that is highly compatible. Most themes use:
- Elementor
- WPBakery
- Visual Composer.
Related: 7 Best WordPress Website Builders-No Coding? No Problem
Social Media Compatible
Social sharing is essential in today’s web world, and themes must be extendable and adaptable in terms of the number of social networks supported. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest are examples of prominent social networking programs that should be included. Including social network share buttons on your website will improve its reach as sharing material becomes easier. If the theme you chose does not feature social media, you may always install the necessary plugins.
Related: How to Automatically Share Blog Posts on Social Media
Incorporating social media into a theme might help your material reach a wider audience by encouraging visitors to share it with their networks. These tools are incorporated into the finest and most popular themes without the need for plugins.
Customization Options
Using a pre-designed theme might make putting a site together faster and easier. Still, many individuals want to add their own flair, so personalization — from font to color to minor aesthetic tweaks — is crucial. The live theme customizer in WordPress 3.4 and later allows users to make these sorts of changes rapidly, by element and preview concurrently.
Themes may be modified in two ways: coding and non-coding (design). It is up to you, as the administrator, to decide what to do. Go for it if you are well-versed in coding. However, a word of caution: be mindful of the customization changes you make, or your website may wind up appearing sloppy. The second alternative is to seek themes that provide built-in plugin support so that you may personalize the website without using code Another alternative is that if you’re an accomplished designer, you may make your own themes in Adobe Photoshop and export them in PSD files, allowing you to modify not just the color but also the style and layout.
However, before you begin customizing, consider the user’s point of view. What do people want to see on the website? Is your website professional, clear, and straightforward, or is it cluttered? Is it also user-friendly? These minor details go a long way toward expressing your business and drawing a larger audience.
Plugins Compatibility
Plugins are software applications that enhance the functionality of a theme. A theme may be further adjusted to fulfill specific needs with the correct plugins.
Before you choose a WordPress theme, be sure that vital plugins may be added to it. Some themes come with their own set of plugins. Regardless, they must be compatible with the most critical third-party plugins.
Regular Updates and Support
Designers and publishers that release, support, and upgrade themes receive the greatest feedback and have the most recurring customers. These seemingly obvious elements are not as common as one might expect and are the foundation of establishing and managing a website.
Popular themes frequently offer thorough auto-update and update information in their descriptions, as well as specific and detailed instructions for use, installation, and customization. Even if a theme is visually appealing, it is customer service that sells (and maintains selling) themes in the long term.
Theme Settings Accessibility
The location and arrangement of the theme’s options are critical, especially if you are new to WordPress development.
The options allow you to make changes to the theme, including easy customization. When it comes to settings, the best practice is to keep them in a readily accessible location.
Some terrible theme designers position the settings in various locations. This makes it difficult to learn how to simply alter the theme.
Multiple Page Styles
With a WordPress theme that offers a range of page designs, you may show your audience everything and everything you could possibly want to. Looking for a specific section for reviews and testimonials? Do you want a section with just blogs? Choosing a WordPress theme that enables you to have a lot of pages with various styles will give your site variety.
These many page designs are frequently included with well-known themes, making everything essentially “out of the box” ready to use. Every page has a unique design that keeps the site’s overall aesthetic while keeping the user in mind. These themes provide smooth page-to-page changes and give a site a more polished, professional appearance.
SEO-Friendly
SEO (search engine optimization) determines how well a website ranks in search engines. Everyone is aware that search engines such as Google influence how successful a website will be in the future.
Read this article on simple SEO tips to improve your rank
When it comes to SEO ranking and optimization, the theme of a website is really significant. Search engine readability of website content, site performance optimization, indexable material, and support for additional SEO-specific elements such as Dublin core and microformats should all be included in themes. While these capabilities are crucial, you should also verify that your WordPress site uses a permalink structure for URLs and that custom and keyword-relevant slugs are used for page and blog articles.
So, before you choose a theme, make sure it is compatible with SEO plugins. Make sure SEO is mentioned in the theme’s feature list.
Compatible with Plugins
When selecting a WordPress theme, it will take care of the design, and WordPress plugins will handle any additional functions. You may use WordPress plugins to build a contact form for your website, gather leads, host contests, and much more.
Most WordPress plugins are supported by themes. However, if your theme is badly developed or if it adds too many functionalities akin to plugins, you can encounter a conflict and get WordPress issues. Additionally, you would lose such functionalities if you ever wanted to switch themes or modify the appearance of your website.
Make sure necessary plugins may be installed to the WordPress theme you choose. Some themes include their own plugins in the package. Despite this, they need to be compatible with the most crucial third-party plugins.
Retina Display Ready
With more customers purchasing smartphones with HD and retina displays, picture and visual quality is more important than ever. This is also true for WordPress themes. The number of retina-ready solutions accessible is increasing on a regular basis, and this feature is becoming increasingly popular.
Themes that are retina ready will look great on any device. Not only will the visuals be clearer and crisper, but so will the typography. When zoomed in, retina-ready themes will have higher resolution and allow for more detail in the overall design scheme (or theme).
Conclusion
What may be fantastic for another website may be a complete flop for yours. Don’t just go with the flow when choosing a topic; instead, conduct your research and take your time. Make your website’s theme worthy because it will serve as the consumers’ first impression of your website and your online persona.
Do you have questions? Let us know in the comments!
