How to choose a WordPress theme without getting it wrong?

Do you want to change the design of your blog or choose the best one among WordPress templates for business? At first glance, it’s easy, right? You just have to find a nice theme according to your tastes. But it’s good to go a little further and also ask yourself some technical and practical questions.

In this article, I therefore offer tips and practical tools to choose your WordPress theme and avoid unpleasant surprises.

Choose a free or paid WordPress theme?

Most blogging platforms offer you totally free default themes. For a long time, these free themes have been pretty catastrophic from a technical point of view: free meant “low end”. Today, fortunately, we can find free quality themes. There are nevertheless some differences to know between free and paid!

The Advantages of a Paid Theme

Technical support

When you decide to choose a paid WordPress theme, for example those provided by Template Monster, it almost always comes with free technical support. In other words, the creator of the design is committed to helping you if you notice errors, that you do not know how to modify such or such parameter. Some developers even agree to go and fix the problem directly on your own blog provided that you give them the access codes.

Conversely, with a free theme, there is no obligation of technical support. Designers who have the time and desire will be happy to answer your questions, but more often than not, you will just have to post them on a forum and wait for a charitable soul to respond.

Personalization Possibilities for Beginners

When you have a good command of computers, you can, whatever happens, create your own universe from a design, whether free or paid. But for a great beginner, who does not understand much about the code, it is important to have access to “easy” options to modify in one click the colors, the logo, the fonts, add the links to the social networks, etc. Choosing a paid WordPress theme is often having access to this type of option, where free themes have a simpler interface, where you will have to put your hands more dirty to change this or that setting.

Stand Out From the Crowd

One has the impression that there are many choices among the free themes but in reality, the “fashionable” and quality designs remain few and you quickly realize that you come across the same on a blog to the other. If you know how to customize them according to your universe, this is not a problem but for a beginner, you can quickly end up with a site very similar to that of the neighbor. Not easy to stand out! As for paid themes, we have a lot more choice and since not everyone takes the step of buying a design, we also have less risk of coming across a blog with a strictly identical look!

The Documentation

When you buy a paid theme, you often get at the same time a document explaining how to customize it. This document is more or less detailed but I have always seen it … whereas in the case of free themes, it is far from being systematic.

Updates
In IT, everything evolves all the time … and it is often the bane of beginners! A security breach can be detected, exposing your blog to the risk of hacking; a site that worked very well suddenly displays a blank page after an update of a plugin …

When you buy portfolio website themes, their creators generally undertake to provide you with the appropriate updates for a certain period of time (sometimes for life, over a year in other cases, etc.). Conversely, most free themes are created “once and for all” and will not be improved afterwards based on technical progress for example.