8 Things to Consider While Choosing Free WordPress Themes
For a blog, the two most important things are the theme and quality of the content. Along with the good quality and useful content, it is very important to have an attractive and appealing WordPress theme that could attract the attention of the readers to the blog. There are many WordPress themes available that are categorized as free themes and premium themes.
The selection of the themes for a blog could be a challenging task because now anyone can design a WordPress theme without a guaranteed high quality design. Therefore, it is important to consider certain factors and understand their significance while choosing the free WordPress themes.
Here are some useful things that you should keep in mind:
Theme
The first impression of the blog is based on its looks because the first noticeable thing for a visitor is the WordPress theme, even before he/she starts reading the blog. Therefore, it is important to choose a free theme that suits the niche of your blog. A professional theme is recommended for blogs about technology, making money online etc. On the other hand, a funky theme could be used for fun or personal blogs. The selected theme colors should not keep the reader away.
Layout
Layout is one of the important things you need to consider while choosing a free WordPress theme. Each theme comes with different options for layout. Check out each of the styles (theme design with sidebars, widget positions etc) and decide if the chosen theme has the right layout for your requirements.
Navigation
Good and easy navigation is another important aspect to keep in mind. Free WordPress themes are available with different number of columns and layouts. The visitors should be easily able to navigate through the blog, in order to reduce the bounce rate.
Code
The code of the theme should be nicely aligned and clean. Making small changes to a messy code and customizing it can be difficult.
Advanced Options
Many themes provide useful and advanced features, such as built-in plug-ins, commenting styles, advertisements management, customized error pages or options for promoting posts through social networking sites. Based on your requirements of advanced features, free themes could be selected.
Customization
A WordPress theme must be easy to customize. Select a free theme that offers easy customization options for you to modify it according to your needs.
Number of Files
The theme should not allow too many or too few files, as that can make editing difficult. Therefore, choose a theme allowing optimum number of files.
Support
Make sure the free theme is getting updated regularly and receives support from the provider. It must have proper documentation as well. In order to ensure the quality of the provider, you can check out the their testimonials, ratings, download statistics and the like, while making a choice.
If you have a commercial website that uses WordPress, it can be difficult to find a free theme that not only looks professional, but meets your business requirements too. While most of the themes can be customized, there are limitations as to what you can actually do. To develop custom WordPress themes, Contact us to get a free quote