Choosing your WordPress Theme

You should think very carefully when choosing your WordPress theme.  There are many WordPress Theme considerations to think about from functionality to usability.  There are many themes providers you can go to choose your ideal WordPress theme WordPress.org Themes, Woo Themes, Template Monster, WpmuDev, Theme Forest, Elegant Themes and Nexus Themes. 

WordPress Theme Considerations

• Clean Simple Design – You should focus your theme choice on Simplicity and Usability.  A lot of people are tempted by flashy graphics which is a bad thing because visitors to your website are only interested in getting the information they require so waiting for animations to complete will not be appreciated.  It is imperative to make sure your content is easy to read and clear so Body Text font should be at least 14pt in size preferably with a black forecolor on a white background.
• Lightweight – Make sure you the requests your WordPress theme makes are to a minimum.  There are tools like Pingdom that will identify all the requests your website makes.  I would sort the items by file size to give you an idea of what requests are taking up the highest resource footprint.  Watch out for how many images and the file-sizes the images take.  Also look at removing any unwanted or dead links that you are not being used.  I would avoid using any heavy animation flash themes as this will make the website bloated. All though it looks pretty it is unnecessary and Google Web crawlers will only look at text, nothing else.
• Support – Check that the WordPress Developer or the WordPress theme company has good support and has a google reputable online presence.

Before you install your WordPress theme

I would recommend taking a backup of your website, database and file-system so you can revert back to you in case it all goes wrong.  If you are in any doubt seek a professional.

Categories: Web, WordPress