Choosing A WordPress Theme-Part 1

A premium WordPress theme can be one of the best ways to really improve the looks of your WordPress web site.

Because WordPress is free you don’t have to spend money purchasing it,so with the money you’ll save you can afford to get a great looking premium theme—and it’ll still be cheaper than a custom-designed site.

When you purchase a premium theme you can avoid the somewhat shoddy work that sometimes shows up in free themes. That’s not to say free themes aren’t any good, because many of them are great themes, but often a lot of the detail work that really makes a theme special is missing.

Anyone can put together a free theme and offer it to the public, but it takes a lot more skill, care, and dedication to build themes people are actually willing to pay money for.

One the other side of the coin, just because you pay for a theme doesn’t mean it’s worth what you paid for it. There are bad premium themes, good premium themes, and great premium themes. And even the good and great ones may not work to exactly fill your needs.

This article is all about helping you make intelligent decisions when choosing premium themes.

Some things we will discuss:

1. Things to consider and plan for before you even start looking at themes.

2. How can you best assess a theme’s quality?

3. What you should be getting when you purchase a premium WordPress theme.

Item 1: Needs, Wants, and Expectations

The very first step to selecting a premium theme is to gauge your own needs, wants, and expectations. You surely can’t pick the right theme if you don’t even know what’s right for you and what you really need.

So, first step, before you start looking at all of the really cool themes and get excited about all of the really fancy designs, you need to sort out what it is that you really need and want. What do you really want your site to look like, and what do you want it to do?

And before you even do that first step, you should probably understand what you’re getting in a premium theme.

What, exactly, makes a theme a Premium Theme?

No discussion on premium themes would be complete if it didn’t answer one question: What is a premium theme?

There are a lot of different opinions on what a premium theme should include, including but not limited to:
customization, documentation, support, higher quality code, better “design” work, etc.

What it comes down to though is that a premium theme is a theme you pay for, it’s as simple as that. All the other potential extras and goodies depend on what the creator of the theme actually delivers to you.

You can see some demo sites featuring premium themes at iTheme and Revolution.

For sure, not all premium theme creators are equal, and not all premium themes are equal. Everyone has a different opinion on what makes a theme great. Where one premium theme creator may have a lot of professional experience, another may only produce themes as a hobby. Both themes may be equally good but you’ll get a different experience from each.

If you choose to buy a theme from a hobbyist you can’t expect the levels of support a pro-theme creator can offer. If you buy a theme from a company that offers premium themes as a second thought, you might get terrible or non-existant service. These are things you need to consider.

Bottom line, do your research, don’t let slick marketing fool you, and make your decision based on facts.

What Do You Need in a Website, what do you need it to do?

Before you start picking themes you need to make some decisions. If you don’t do your homework now, you may end up regretting it later. The most important thing to figure out is what you need your website to do.

• What type of content do you need to manage?
• Do you need blog capabilities (news, portfolio, press releases, catalog, etc.)?
• Does your site need a specific call to action (like an e-commerce component)?
• How many pages will your site need?
• Will those pages need a hierarchy?
• What do you want to show or feature on the homepage?

These are the sort of questions you need to answer. You’re trying to figure out what you need
from your website. Once you have that sorted out, it’s easier to find a theme that offers what you need.

What Kind of Theme Should You Buy?

One of the most common mistakes in choosing a theme is assuming it will fit your needs. Premium themes
come in all shapes and sizes and colors. Some focus on a specific need while others focus on generic blogging.

Some themes are designed to put the focus on the content. At the other extreme are the corporate themes. These tend to focus on static pages and relegate the blog content to a small news section. The key is to not make assumptions about what the theme will or won’t do.

Shown here is the iTheme eCommerce premium WordPress theme that can be used to sell your products through an internet storefront created with WordPress. This is a good example of a specialized premium WordPress theme, in this case the theme was designed to showcase an ecommerce web site.

Just because WordPress is a blogging platform doesn’t mean that any theme will be great for blogging. WordPress is extremely flexible and more and more themes are focusing on sites that don’t focus on blogging at all.

What Features Do You Need?

Before you start shopping for themes you should decide what features you need. Some features may appeal to you when you read about the theme and view the demo, but if you don’t really need them then you may be paying for something you’ll never use.

In some cases those fancy features could actually interfere with what you do actually need. Finding the right theme for your needs is much more practical than finding a cool looking theme and bending and sacrificing your needs to make it work.

Here are just a few examples of some features that are available on premium themes:

• Featured post on the home page instead of the latest post
• Featured photographs from Flickr
• Featured video(s) from YouTube
• Advertising integration (Adsense, etc)
• Advertising management features
• Optional color themes to choose from
• Control panels for easily adding tracking code or feed URLs
• Header image replacement, resizing, and cropping capabilities
• Contact form (so you don’t publicize your email address to spammers)
• Tabbed sidebars
• Tabbed featured posts
• Multiple positions for sidebars and widget capable sidebars
• Multiple page layouts
• Menus auto generated from WordPress pages
• Menus auto generated from categories
• Menus generated from the blogroll
• Manual menu control
• Drop down menus
• Built in asides / sideblog
• Advanced search functionality
• Niche specific templates; e.g. real estate, auto sales, photography, etc
• E-commerce integration if desired
• Image / banner rotation if desired
• Reordering the home page
• Alternative graphics packs
• And more…

There are so many choices that you have your work cut out for you in choosing that “just right” theme.

How Much Customization Are You Really Capable Of And Comfortable With?

If the thought of writing or changing code or installing plugins makes you nervous, you better pick a theme that has everything you need out of the box. On the other hand, if you’re fine with tweaking code, installing plugins or adjusting the CSS, then you can be a lot more flexible when you pick a theme.

A lot of the features shown above are built right into some premium themes, and many of them can
easily be added to themes with plugins. If you’re OK making some of those changes yourself, it might give you a little more leeway in choosing a theme you like for other reasons.

Next up in Choosing A WordPress Theme-Part 2, we’ll cover specific details on what to look for when choosing a premium theme.