Lollipops and Rose, Wordpress and Themes

byBillyGE

1.2K followers

8 years ago

OK! So I am not good at naming posts. But that song, "These are a few of my favorite things", got stuck in my head while I was thinking about Wordpress and Themes. Thus the title. Hi everyone. I want to talk to you about themes.

Have you notice that not all Wordpress themes seem to have the same capabilities? I have. So I decided to take a quick look at a few of them, and I developed some guidelines to help me select a theme for my website. I then realized that this maybe useful to others. So here we go.

To begin with, a theme is created by an author looking to generate some revenue. To attract users to their theme, the author creates a minimum of two versions of the theme. The first version is a simplistic version of the theme, while the second version is the PRO version and is what the author of the theme is hoping you will buy.

The simplistic version purpose, is to give people a taste of what the theme can do. Since it is a simplistic version of their theme, a number of options are removed from the simplified version. However, some authors, in their eagerness to attract buyers, may remove to much from the theme for the theme to be useful to you.

Case in point: The Cleanr theme is a very nice theme. I like the sharp clean lines, the format of the date it displays by the post name, and its overall layout to me is very appealing. But the author remove the comment section from the simplified version of the theme. Now, if you are creating a website and you do not want comments, then the Cleanr theme is a very good theme to use. But if you want comments, do not use the Cleanr theme.

Also, I see no way of determining if the theme is useful other than installing it and looking for the components that you need in it. This is easy to do. Just install the theme you are interested in, then go to your website and click the various links to see what they look like. If you like what you see, and it display the things you want to use (ie, like a comment form at the bottom of a post or page), then use it. Otherwise, select a new theme and test it as you just did the old one.

Now, I could list some things that you should look for in a theme (and I will list some simple things to look for), but that will vary greatly and is dependent upon what each individual's website hopes to achieve.

My only advice to you is this … upon installing any theme on your website, check to make sure that the theme has all the basic components/widgets in it, for what you want your website to do.

As for guide lines, here are some things to look for, but by no means is a complete list of all you may want or need:

• comments,
• login (if a membership site),
• social media links,
• number of columns (for example Cleanr is a two column theme. Do you need more, or less?),
• the ability to add or remove a header image,
• the ability to add a background
• the ability to modify the Sidebar

Take a moment to sit down and make of list of the things you would like to see in your website theme. Then check to see if your selected theme has them.

The easiest way to determine what you have available in a theme is to go to your dashboard, then select appearance, then select customize and look at the list of things available within your chosen theme. Also, from the dashboard, select appearance, customize, then widgets. Take a look at the widgets that are available to the side-bar. Add or remove widgets as needed. This should help make your website more appealing, if that is what you are after.

Lastly, if a theme is just not working for you, then change it. Find one that suits your needs. If you are a premium member, you have access to thousands of themes. And if you really like the theme you are using, consider buying the PRO version of that theme because it will open up more options for you to customize your website.

I hope this is useful.

Best Wishes To You!