What is in a theme?

Hello friends,

Here we are again, mulling and moaning over what theme to use for the blog!!!

It’s not a small topic, you know. Choosing the way your blog should look is almost as important as the content you put on the blog. But the thing is, which theme really says … “This is ME!” … how can you convey that in a theme really?

Well, there are actually more ways than one to pick the best theme for your blog. I think I’ve found the best theme that suits me. I’ve tried (according to the assignment) to switch around and trying a few different themes. This one seem to feel ‘right’. If you know what I mean.

But … for educational’s sake. Here’s a few ways that you can pick and choose the best theme for your blog.

1. Objective

What is your site for? Is it to create leads for buyers? Is it to be used as a blog to share useful information with your readers? Is it to be your online shop? Your online e-commerce web site? Is it for business? Pleasure? Personal? Take everything into consideration will help you pick out the right theme.

2. Is your website for business or for personal usage?

You do have to do a bit of research. Does the theme have good support theme? Is the development team well-known? (You can search for all this on Google.) Sometimes the free themes will not offer a lot of extra features (since it’s free, of course). So it’s important to figure out what you want to do with your web site first, pick theme later.

3. Age factor

Don’t go for anything more than 6 months old. It might look cool but the features of the theme might not be useful for you anymore.

4. Featured theme

It’s useful to check for the featured themes of the month, or the latest themes to see what’s the new ‘look’ that’s popular right now. People love modern stuff. People love the stuff that’s ‘in’ and ‘new’.

5. SEO

Does the theme that you want to pick has SEO options? Is it simple enough for you to adjust if needed? Is your website going to be SEO oriented? Is it going to need heavy optimization?

6. Customization

Do you have the ability and knowledge to customize the theme yourself? Do you want to be able to customize the theme (paid or free) yourself? Do you have the necessary skills to do so? A lot of themes have their ‘framework’ built-in but no pre-sent styles so it’s very flexible if you want to tweak here and there, if you wanted to. But sometimes, if the theme is already giving you what you need … why waste your time on it? Wouldn’t it be better to invest your time elsewhere instead? You decide.

7. Desired Features

What do you want your theme to be able to do for you? It’s not all about design and how cool it looks but what do YOU want it to look like?

8. Navigation

How is the site navigation going to be? Consider the menu area, is it supposed to be pills? buttons? tabs? Will each menu have drop-down menus? What do you need to create in the menu? What’s important that will help visitors of your website to navigate your website better and easier?

9. White space

Layout, width, spacing, every little components matter to the objective. If you need to create ads sections on the sidebar, you might want to give a bit more room for the sidebar in order to make room for the ads. Don’t forget to consider the features that you will want for your web site because it will help you pick out the right theme for you.

10. Free theme or paid theme?

This part is straight forward, isn’t it? It’s up to you if you want the features from the paid theme that the free themes cannot give you, and you can afford it and if the web site will help bring income that you know willl be suffice to obtaining paid theme, then, by all means, go for it. Personally, at the moment, I’m happy with free themes. I haven’t found the paid themes that I really, really, really want yet. So I’m holding off on that. Just so you know that it’s not always necessary to get a paid theme if the free ones will do the job.

11. Say ‘Yes’ to responsive theme

People are using smart phones and tablets to surf the internet these days. They aren’t always on their computer or laptop. They’re mostly online from their smart phones and their tablets on the go, therefore, it is very important to get yourself themes that are labeled ‘responsive’ because that means they will adjust themselves to the screen resolution, no matter what kind of device they are surfing the internet from.

For my blog, I use the Hiero theme. It’s simple, you can change the color scheme, I can add more plugins if needed because I use the WordPress.org (took a bit of learning but once I get the hang of it, it works great!), and it is responsive so it works on all types of devices.

You can also check out more information about choosing the right themes here.