WordPress is one of the most popular platforms available when it comes to building a website in web development industry worldwide. WordPress is a free CMS for content management and includes various components such as domain name, web hosting, themes, plugins and templates. Explore more on what is WordPress and what are different types of WordPress? Also, If you are interested to know more about the difference between wordpress.com and wordpress.org, we have a separate article here.
What makes WordPress so flexible and attractive is the use of themes. Understanding WordPress themes is crucial when any individual or business organization looks for an online presence as a business owner or shares his/her thoughts with the world as a blogger, or brand information. In this article, we will explain all the necessary information and understand why they matter and ways we can make use of them.
In this article we will learn what is WordPress and what are different types of WordPress. Also, we will learn “How to choose the right WordPress Theme?” reflecting you the right decision on creating a website.
A WordPress theme is essentially a collection of files that work together to create the design and functionality of a WordPress website. These files include template files, style sheets, images, and possibly JavaScript files. They dictate the visual appearance of your site, including layout, typography, color schemes, and other design elements.
Your site will be set with a default theme when you download WordPress. Nonetheless, you can alter it to a more advanced one depending on your requirements and tastes. It is this ability to alter one’s theme that is considered being among the most important features in WordPress since one is able makes use of this platform without being a programmer.
Why Use WordPress Theme?
There are various benefits using WordPress Themes. It is important to consider these ideas and use WordPress Themes for better online presence of your website and represent your brand.
Visual Appealing
Design is the first thing a visitor sees when they come to your site. WordPress provides thousands of free and paid themes to their users based on niche and functionality. As a user, you need to understand what theme can fit your website so you can able to build your business represent your brand. It is important to understand if it is good and properly made it can help the site attract more users.
Functionality or Customization
Another important factor for selecting theme is users look for how the theme functions. In short, WordPress themes do more than just look good—they also improve your website’s performance. Most of these themes have inbuilt extras like sliders, custom widgets or other design choices to choose from. When all this is combined, it may mean an immense improvement on the represent of content and hence users would be highly impressed or attracted the platform.
User Experience
A web that is good is able to assist users in locating desired information more easily, by improving navigation and usability. Browsing inside a website, buttons are clear, while signs are well shown so as to draw attention of the reader hence enabling people to remain for long hours before eventually deciding what to look at next.
Consistency
As theme represent your business and brand through website. As users selecting a right theme will help you get a consistent look with available appearance and functionality on your entire website. What this does is ensure branding as well as making the whole experience user-friendly.
Integration Capabilities
WordPress themes can be easily integrated with various available third party services and tools increasing your website’s functionality and growth. Various tools such as email marketing, Payment gateway, social media network, and other services can be easily integrated to WordPress theme
Types of WordPress Themes
We have categorized WordPress themes in to four types based on their features. The four types of WordPress themes are Free Themes, Premium Themes, Custom Themes, and Child Themes.
Free WordPress Themes
As name suggest, free themes are those types of themes available in the market for free of cost for WordPress users. These types of themes are free and available for all users. This type of WordPress themes provides attractive visual design and basic functionality for website users, allowing users to create and customize their website instead of having design from scratch.
Features of Free WordPress Theme
- WordPress themes can be downloaded and used by any WordPress users without any financial investment.
- Free themes are easily available through their official website wordpress.org theme directory and other third party web designers.
- Free themes come with limited functionality or features and for their advanced functionality and customization options; you can get their premium plans as well.
- Free themes listed on wordpress.org are reviewed and approved by WordPress theme review team to ensure these themes meet certain level of quality and security standard. Choosing free theme from third party should be properly analyzed by self.
- Free themes are benefited from large WordPress community for any kind of support through forums, tutorials, and documentations. Support from theme developers may be limited compared to premium themes.
- Free themes are regularly updated to ensure they are compatible with latest version of WordPress.
- Free theme is a best source for beginners to learn about WordPress and Website design.
- Most of WordPress free themes are designed to be compatible with popular plugins.
Advantages of Free Themes
- Free Themes are free and can easily use by user to create a website based on their niche.
- The Free themes need to follow WordPress Standard based on security and design; therefore, you do not need to worry about getting hacked.
- Best for beginners so they can easily learn about WordPress and Website Design.
- Free Themes are designed with simpler code-base compared to Premium theme resulting faster to load.
Limitation of Free Themes
- Free themes come with limited features and customization options so as the website grows, they feel the requirement of advanced features and buy their premium plans.
- Free Themes may not provide support or regular updates. So choosing free themes should be properly analyzed based on their active users, popularity, reviews, and ratings.
- Some free themes available may have risk of poor coding practices.
WordPress Premium Themes
Premium Themes are those types of available WordPress themes that have certain cost when you use it for your website. These types of themes offer more advanced features and customization options than free themes in the market. Premium Themes are mainly provided by third party companies such as Themeforest, Neuron Theme, Creative Market, Envato, Codester, Codecanyon, and many more available companies.
Features of WordPress Premium Themes
- Premium Themes provides powerful customization option allowing users to customize the website according their business brand and service they are providing without touching a single code.
- These types of themes provide multiple pre-designed templates and layouts according to your requirement; available for different pages and purposes.
- Premium themes are designed well-structured with clean code for your website’s better search engine optimization. Also, the theme is compatible with popular SEO plugins like Yoast SEO and All in One SEO.
- Premium theme provides regular updates to ensure the themes are compatible with latest version of WordPress and to introduce new features. The theme also provides dedicated customer support through their email and support forum.
Advantages of Premium Themes
- The premium theme provides advanced customization option with best features required for your website.
- The themes are updated regularly and provided fast customer support through email or support forum.
- Well Structured designed with clean code for better SEO Optimization.
Limitation of Premium Themes
- Premium Themes sometime requires some basic level of design and customization options.
- We are bound with marketplace policies from where we purchase the theme that can sometime affect usage right, updates, and support.
- Many Premium themes may provide numerous features that may be never needed for your website. This adds unnecessary complexity and potential security risk.
Custom Themes
Custom Themes are other types of theme that are built from scratch to meet the requirement of website owner. These types of website theme are built for those you need a unique design or specific functionalities that are not available in free and premium theme. These types of themes help business and individual to meet their specific needs, branding, and functionality. To develop a Custom theme, they ask for WordPress developers to design their website and cost depends on the developers’ effort and the features you want to include into your website. You can find WordPress custom theme developers through their developer’s website, Freelancer, Upwork, Behance, 99designs, and may other websites.
Features of Custom Themes
- The main reason to create custom theme is for their website’s custom design that reflects their business’s brand, identity and gain their target audience.
- Custom theme provides their custom features and functionality required for their businesses that are not available on pre-designed free or premium themes.
- Custom themes are designed for future growth and changes in the business.
- Custom themes are more secure as they are less likely to include vulnerabilities.
Advantages of Custom Themes
- Custom themes are designed according to the need of your website that represents your brand. Custom themes helps website to design and increase functionality that align perfectly with the brand’s identity.
- Custom theme helps website owner and business organization to improve user experience and engagement.
- Custom themes loads faster and provide better overall performance as the theme is designed with only required functionality and features.
Limitation of Custom Themes
- Custom themes require professional or skilled developers who have knowledge in PHP, CSS, Javascripts, and WordPress specific functions.
- Custom themes require ongoing maintenance and updates which add to the overall cost.
- Custom themes might create problem with certain plugins when they are not tasted together during development phase.
- The initial investment in a custom theme is higher and there is risk that return on investment (ROI). If the theme does not perform well or meet your business goal, then your investment might go vain.
Child Themes
A child theme is a WordPress related theme that is inheriting design, functionality, and style from another theme i.e. parent theme. This allows website owner to make various modification without directly editing its core file. You are allowed to make different set of files that replace certain parts in the theme of a parent without necessarily changing the entire structure of the theme. The major purpose of child themes is to modify pre-designed or third-party themes in a way which is secure or safe such that any customization can be carried out without necessarily being lost during update process for the theme. Child themes help you in website customization but do not affect the main theme when updating customized elements.
Advantages of Child Theme
- Child Themes are inheriting of parent theme or original theme. This helps website to edit various design without editing its core file.
- You can customize various elements of the themes and can also add new features within child theme directory.
- Updates of parent theme can be performed and do not lose customizations, ensuring compatibility with future theme updates.
Limitation of Child Theme
- Designing and maintaining the child theme requires basic understanding of WordPress themes.
- Child theme totally depends on Parent theme for its functionality and styling. The limitation of Parent theme automatically limits your child themes.
- If the child theme is not properly coded they might have problem with different plugins.
How to Choose the Right WordPress Theme?
When Choosing the WordPress theme, There are various things you need to consider guiding you to make the right decision on creating a Website for your business online presence. Here are some points you can learn so you can choose the right WordPress Theme.
Website’s Purpose and Goals
When you choose theme for your website, it is important to understand the purpose of your website. In another word what is your business niche? Is it a blog, business website, or e-commerce website for physical product or digital product? Your business goal and purpose will help you to understand what theme to choose.
Considering Your Audience and Their Needs
Business is all about what targeted audiences required or expect from your website. Any business website targeting professionals will need the unique design to gain your large target audience.
Evaluating Design and Layout Options
WordPress provides wide ranges of customization options with advanced design which is one best advantage to WordPress users. When a website offers better design and layout option you need for your website such as number of columns, sidebar placement, header and footer designer, and other layout; there is higher chances for users to choose a certain theme.
Rating and Reviews
Rating and Review is the process of checking the quality of any website through their users. Any WordPress theme with better rating and reviews provides proper knowledge about the theme including quality and user satisfaction. When you choose the theme for your website, it is necessary to check ratings and positive feedback from users.
Compatibility with Plugins
When you choose any theme for your website, you should check if the theme is compatible with plugin you want to add into your website. Some plugins are important for your website to increase functionality, Optimization for Search Engine, and secure to your SEO.
Fast Loading, Performance, and SEO
Slow Loading theme can negatively impact your website resulting bad user experience and SEO. When selecting a fast loading theme, it provides better performance and positive user experience and also helps in better optimization for search engine. You can test the theme’s speed and performance using various available tools like GTmetrix, and Google Page Speed Insights.
Popular Free WordPress Themes
- Astra
- OceanWP
- Hestia
- NEVE Theme
- Hello Elementor
- Popular Premium Theme
- DIVI
- Flatsome
- Avacado Theme
Conclusion
WordPress is a popular platform to create websites and is a free CMS for content management. A WordPress Theme is a collection of various files designed for the visual appearance of the site including layout, typography, colour schemes, and other various design elements. There are various types of WordPress themes including free themes, premium themes, custom themes, and child themes. Also, anyone needs to select the selection of best WordPress themes understand the purpose of the website and understand the needs of the audience.
