The ability to search, find and install themes for your new WordPress site makes building a graphically appealing and highly functioning website a cinch. There are hundreds upon thousands of themes with new ones being published each and every day by developers all around the world. The process of selecting a theme can be overwhelming because of the infinite number of choices that are available but you can help narrow down your choices by carefully considering your individual and business needs.

Each and every theme is unique; some are simple and easier to work with while others may be more complicated but provide much more functionality. As with WordPress plugins, there are many free themes as well as paid/premium themes that will give you more out of the box for a fixed price. Understanding what you are looking to do with your new website whether it be creating one from scratch or redesigning an existing one is important. Here are a couple of very important things to consider during the selection process:

What kind of features will your new site have?

When deciding upon a theme, knowing the basics of what your new site will do is vital. Perhaps you would like to have a full-width image slider on the home page with a nice two to three column layout below which pulls in recent blogs and other customizable widgets. Maybe you are looking to set up a portfolio which pulls in images of past projects in a nice fluid, grid-like format. There are tons of themes that have been designed with different industries in mind so the chances of being able to find one that is on par with what you have in mind are pretty good.

How much programming knowledge do you have?

More and more themes are being packaged with visual editors to help make it that much easier for someone who doesn’t have any coding or basic HTML or CSS knowledge to make standard changes and edits to their site. If you are not comfortable with making these types of changes, then finding a theme that has all the bells and whistles is strongly encouraged. Read the theme descriptions very carefully to get a full idea of what to expect. Most theme authors provide support and answers to general questions about their products – take full advantage of this.

We at Site Rockstar have the expertise to provide you with theme recommendations based on your needs. Once your new website is live, we will work with you to keep it running smoothly. Don’t let a new theme and a new site overwhelm you. Sprucing up your site and enhancing it visually is crucial to staying ahead of the times as more and more site owners are stepping it up.