Choosing a WordPress Theme [video]

I’m guessing that many people -  when they choose a WordPress theme – start out by looking at the first and most obvious thing- which is the way the theme looks! While this is SUPER important (remember – I’m a total geek for anything visual! )- but the way the theme looks is easy enough to alter (or have someone alter for you if you don’t want to get into that).

What’s REALLY important is the functionality of the site! You really need to have a good idea as to what you’re going to be doing with your site/blog and what your business is about (who is your target audience?). I’m sure much of this might seem pretty obvious- but you’d be surprised how many customizations I’ve done for people where they’ve chosen a theme where the home page is dominated by blog categories but they don’t really want to use blog posts on the home page.

Keep in mind of course that the functionality of any theme can also be customized or tweaked – but if you don’t know how to do this you will have to hire someone to do this for you.

Some things to keep in mind when looking for your WordPress Theme:

• Will I be using this as a blog, cms or both?
• Does the theme require additional plugins to get the look I want? (ex: many of the StudioPress themes come with the featured content gallery code built into the home page- but you still need to add the plugin and configure the settings to get it work).
• Will I be advertising on the site? Are there widgets or ad block positions set into the theme?
• Will I want my social media profiles to show as widgets? Is any of that functionality built in?
• Does is have an rss subscription built into it?
• Does is come with any seo options?
• Do I like where the sidebar is for an opt-in box?

In this video I cover some of the things you might want to look for when choosing a premium WordPress theme. It’s a little long (sorry for the rambling!)- but hopefully it helps!