Choosing a WordPress Theme for Your Website

February 10, 2009 | Posted by Carma | Filed Under Learning Center, themes

A WordPress theme is the template used to create the look, feel and navigation of your website. So choosing one is pretty darn important. Here are some tips for choosing the one that is right for you and your business.

1. How many columns do you want?

Most themes come with two or three — a main content column and one or two sidebars. Will you need more than one sidebar? You should have an idea of this before you go looking for a theme. Also, if you do want two sidebars, do you want them on the left, right or on either side of the main content column? If you know what you’re doing in CSS, this can be changed. But it’s easier if the theme has the sidebars where you want them.

2. What do you want the navigation to look like?

Themes place the primary navigation in several standard locations: Across the top above the header, across the top below the header, and along the side in a sidebar. Choosing a theme that has your navigation in the general location that you want it to be makes it easier to modify the theme to match your branding later. Again, if you know your way around CSS, HTML and PHP, this can be changed.

3. Do you want the home page to be different in layout from the rest of the website?

Some themes already have a specific home page, others treat all pages the same. And others treat pages differently from posts. What format best suits what you want your website to do?

4. Will you be using the theme pretty much as is? Or will you be modifying it to suite your branding?

Depending on how savvy you are with CSS, HTML and PHP, your ability to modify a template to suite your branding can be limited. If you’ll be doing this yourself and are not comfortable messing around with the theme code, then choose a theme that pretty much looks the way you want it to, colors included. If, however, you will be hiring a designer, such as WordPress ReVamp, to do the modifications for you, coloring is not an issue. That can be changed in the CSS style.

Now that you have an idea of what you want the theme to look like in broad strokes, you need to go out and find one that has these elements in place. The best resource for finding themes that are clean and free of malicious code is to look in the official WordPress Theme Directory at wordpress.org/extend/themes.

Another place to look is at individual designer’s websites or magazine sites. Here are some of my favorite:

Milo Web Designs: wp.3oneseven.com
Brian Gardner: www.briangardner.com/themes
Smashing Magazine’s Top 100 List: www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/08/100-excellent-free-high-quality-wordpress-themes/


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