When it comes to creating a website on WordPress you might be stuck with what theme to choose. Among the great variety of suggested samples, you don’t know how to opt for the right one and make an attractive website. Here we would like to put the record straight on choosing a theme and what to consider when installing a new theme from scratch.

Let’s define the needs first

It doesn’t matter either you or the developer will set the right theme, the first question before to apply it is for what do you need a new theme. How many pages will be on your website? What will the website be for? Do you have a special style or fonts for it? What type of content will be published? These and other questions are important to ask first. As soon as you’ve got the answers, it will be easier to move to the second step.

Who will help to support the WordPress theme?

As soon as the motivation clarified, the next question will be which theme to opt for. There are available both paid and free themes. Both have pros and cons, and a huge diversities to opt for. Among the free themes, you could find good looking samples. That’s why, if you anew one to WordPress, we suggest starting with the free one, try to set it, and apply to your website.

The range of themes is better to select on the official source such as WordPress.org. All samples there are safe and secured. The range of themes there is variable from different resellers, so be ready to spend hours searching the exact one. For those who are not common with the WordPress, we suggest having a developer at hand to help with setting up. Despite that WordPress tends to be a user-friendly source for everyone, without the previous experience in using CMS it could be hard to understand how it works.

How flexible is the theme?

A static theme won’t benefit when you need to change the page design in two or three months. Try to pick a theme that is adaptable in its appearance just as its usefulness. Try not to select a structure that shouts for full-width pictures when you just need an attractive spot to compose your verse. Check what happened when you resize images? Also, is it conceivable to change tints, text styles, and other visual components? Numerous themes bring various demo models that give you a thought of all the various styles it can deal with. Your WordPress theme should contain pictures and offer multi-language support, page builder, many themes.

Which pages are supported in a theme?

Another way to deal with the adaptivity of theme topics is to offer various page formats. That way, you could start using a basic format with a guideline content locale and a left sidebar. Change it to a full-width content area or one of the various other options. If there are only two alternatives, pick up the most appropriate.

Testing is a must

When you’ve picked your preferred new WordPress theme, it’s a good opportunity to see how it works. Start with an improvement arrangement to test your new subject totally. Run each kind of test you can consider. This may be a security check with the Sucuri module or a subject check with the Theme Check module. Try your site with fake information from wptest.io to check whether each component is working. Run page speed and versatile agreeableness tests to check whether issues emerge. Fix the issues, or locate another theme.

Checklist of what to check

That is simply to make you go. There’s a great deal of stuff you can check before you introduce your new theme. Start with these three checks:

Theme titles

You should check how your present theme is taking care of page titles in the document header.php. You can discover it inside the <title> HTML labels. In the case of the title label contrasts, you should look at why and what happens when you empower your new theme. Once in a while, it’s to improve things (for example, since it pivots blog portrayal and page/post title), however, you need to ensure in advance!

It will presumably look something like this:

<title><?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?> <?php wp_title(); ?></title>

In the event that it does, you’ll be significantly better to transform it to:

<title> <?php wp_title(); ?></title>

Hooks

WordPress modules use alleged “hooks” to have the option to play out their assigned errands. These snares take into consideration the case to include additional yield, following codes, and so forth. A lot of issues with modules will emerge for you when a theme creator neglects to include these hooks. Here are some steps to check it:

1. In header.php, it ought to have a little bit of PHP code that looks precisely like this wp_head(); or this do_action(‘wp_head’);, typically not long before a bit of HTML that resembles this: </head>.
2. In footer.php, it ought to have another little bit of PHP like this wp_footer();, or this do_action(‘wp_footer’);
3. In comments.php and additionally remarks popup.php, it ought to have a bit of code this way: <?php do_action(‘comment_form’, $post->ID); ?>, not long before the </form> HTML tag.

Template files

Another astute activity when you’re changing themes is to think about issues. When your present theme has an author.php document, which contains the format for your creator profiles, and your new one doesn’t have that, that may be disagreeable amazement when you apply the theme. The documents you ought to check for in your old and new theme:

• home.php: the landing page layout.
• category.php: the format for class files.
• page.php: the format for pages.
• single.php: the format for single posts.
• date.php: the date format, when somebody attempts to take a gander at for example a specific month of posts on your blog.
• archive.php: when either category.php, author.php, or date.php isn’t there.
• author.php: the creator format, when somebody needs to discover all posts by a specific creator.
• 404.php: when WordPress can’t locate a specific post or page, this is a significant layout document to have!
• search.php: when somebody looks on your blog, a significant layout to take a gander at in case you’re worried about ease of use, and whether individuals can discover posts on your blog.

What about the theme’s code?

Some theme creators are not professional developers who use unprotected side sources for creating a theme. You can check whether the code is legitimate by using the W3C’s validator.

Consider the theme bloat

Numerous themes are bloated, and this will slow the load speed. Your theme ought to be clear and fast. stacking time. Choose a theme that offers all that you need, rather than everything useless in one place. Don’t get puzzled with the numerous elements which just confuse you.

Review site speed and mobile-friendliness

In this day and age, mobile-friendliness is imperative. In addition to that, your site and its theme should load as fast as possible. Choosing a lean and mean theme will certainly help in this regard. Check the responsiveness of a theme and run a Google mobile-friendliness test. You could also enter the address of the theme’s demo site in Google’s PageSpeed tool to see if there are particular loading issues. However, this is just an indication, since you can only judge the real loading speed of your theme when it’s running on your server.

Check out how much time is needed to run load your website. Site speed has not to be higher than 5 seconds. According to the constant reviews, users are leaving your website after a long time waiting. Also, check the theme responsiveness by Google’s mobile-friendliness test. You could likewise enter the location of the demo site in Google’s PageSpeed to check whether there are specific stacking issues. In any case, this is only a sign, since you can possibly pass judgment on the speed rate of your theme when it’s running on your server.

SEO friendly theme is a must

WordPress themes are mostly SEO friendly, however, it’s better to check it. See whether the source code is quite clear and updated. What’s more, will it be maintained later on? What number of JavaScript libraries does the theme rely upon? Does it support Schema.org’s standardized data? In case you’re considering a free theme, ensure there are no hidden connections to the developer’s site, as this can hurt your SEO tries. As a rule, use Google’s Webmaster Guidelines when chasing for SEO adapted themes.

In conclusion

If you’ve checked everything above for a free theme and got zero issues, then you might use it with no worries. Both paid and free themes might have issues, which you should check. We hope our checklist helped you to decide which theme to choose and build a good working WordPress website.