Picking A WordPress Theme

One of the things we do is training, and some of that training is related to WordPress, a popular web design software.

It happens that every time we train people, at least one in the group is going to ask me to help pick out a WordPress theme.

Now it’s not that I don’t want to help… but there are a couple things to know:

1. There are literally hundreds of thousands of themes and there is no way I can personally be familiar enough to comment offhand about most of them.
2. Part of what people pay a web designer to do is wade through these options.

So without getting super detailed (and spending about 30-60 minutes of my paid time researching), I couldn’t necessarily recommend (or disqualify) a specific theme. Besides knowing you can Google ‘best wordpress theme insert-your-profession-or-business-here’, here are a few other things to know about evaluating a theme:

Love Something? Stalk It

I will say if there is a website you like (assuming it runs WordPress), you can put the URL in this website: http://whatwpthemeisthat.com/ and it’ll tell you the name of the theme!

With one client, she sent me three or four websites she really liked and we found that two of them were running the same theme (with customizations of course). Problem solved!

Think General In Search

Basic Themes Will Give You Options… And Options Mean Decisions

Picking something basic, like Genesis or Canvas, will give you more options but more options also equal more decisions. Do you want your H1 font to be Helvetica 35 point? Do you want you blog page to be laid out with a left sidebar and the pages on your site not to have a sidebar? Now take these decisions and multiply them by 500 and you have a ‘basic’ custom premium theme. If you are someone decisive and cares that your hoverlink color is 2 shades lighter than your link color, you’ll love having a basic theme.

Some people love this and some hate it. And if you want to be a control freak without doing a ton of code, these ‘basic’ themes are for you. (By basic, I clearly mean minimalist versus uncomplicated.)

All Things Equal, Pick The Better Company

You also want to look at the name of the company making the theme. Do they have documentation? Do they seem fly by night? How are their reviews?

Support is a good thing to have so all things being equal, pick the company that seems better on the support side. If your theme provider has a support page like this, that not only has general information but also a way to get specific questions answered, you are on the right track:

(Fun Fact: If you get it narrowed down to a couple options, we are happy for you to pay us for an hour of time to look at them and come back to you with an opinion.)