Most newbies feel overwhelmed when it comes to researching a theme for their WordPress site. There are thousands of free and paid options. Each theme looks better than the other. How do you choose the best theme for WordPress? In this tutorial, I will introduce 9 things that you should take into consideration, so that you can choose the best WordPress theme for your site.

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Why should you be careful when choosing a WordPress theme?

WordPress is used to create all kinds of websites. That's why each theme responds to a different market.

Your WordPress theme should complement the content of your site. For example, if you are creating a blog on politics or social issues, then you want a theme that has better readability.

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Many WordPress themes offer tons of customization options. If not coded correctly, these options can make it harder for you to customize or use other plugins. You will be stuck with this theme and have to call in an expert every time.

On the other hand, some WordPress themes that look really great can actually make your site incredibly slow. No one likes slow sites, especially Google, which uses this criterion in ranking the results.

Your theme is the face of your WordPress site and plays an important role in how users as well as search engines perceive it.

You have probably heard the saying, "All that glitters is not gold".

That said, let's take a look at the steps you can take to make sure you select the best theme for your WordPress site.

1. Look for simplicity

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Many WordPress themes come with lots of colors, complex layouts, flashy animations, and so on. Sometimes you may need these things, but in most cases you do not really need all of this.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

~ Leonardo da Vinci

Look for a theme that has a layout that will help you achieve your goal. Of course it should look good, but without compromising on ease of use and simplicity.

Make sure that the style of the presentation of the theme is not too complicated. The purpose of web design is to help users find the information they need and to help site owners achieve their goals at the same time.

If a theme is beautiful but does not help you achieve your goals, then this is not a good theme. It's also not a good theme when your users can not really find their way to your website.

2. Responsive Design is not an option

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Responsive themes adjust their layout to different screen formats.

A significant amount of web traffic is generated by handheld and other mobile devices. According to several trends, this number could be even higher and constitute 50% of your traffic.

Google displays websites that have a mobile version above mobile search results. Regardless of all topics and demographics of your site, all sites must be responsive and compatible with mobile display.

Most WordPress themes are already responsive by default. But there are still authors who make themes with fixed widths. Make sure the theme you choose for your website is responsive.

How to test the responsive compatibility of a theme?

The best way to check if a theme is responsive or not can be done by resizing your browser screen. As you resize your browser screen, you will notice that the theme's layout adapts to the width of the screen.

For more in-depth testing, you can copy the URL of the theme's demo page and paste it into Google Mobile Test.

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Please note that this test will show some caveats, regardless of the quality of the theme. Pay attention to different remarks, for example when the text is too small, the content larger than the screen, etc.

3. Compatibility with browsers

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Your users will be using different browsers. Your theme may look perfect on the browser you are using, but there might be some error on other browsers.

This is where browser compatibility comes in. Most WordPress theme developers test their themes rigorously using the browser and sophisticated compatibility testing tools.

This compatibility is generally mentioned. But if it is not, then you can still do some basic tests to check the theme on different browsers like Google Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, etc.

Do not forget to test it on different browsers on mobiles too.

4. Supported Plugins

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The real power of WordPress is based on its different plugins. These plugins allow you to do a lot of things with him.

Although there are many WordPress plugins, some are “must-haves” for all sites. This is the case of Gravity Forms, Yoast SEO, W3 Total Cache, etc.

Make sure your WordPress theme is compatible with all popular plugins. If you are not sure, ask the developer what the theme compatibilities are.

5. Translation + Multilingual

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A large number of WordPress sites are not in English. You can create a website in a language other than English. Maybe you have plans to create a multilingual WordPress site in the future.

Make sure your WordPress theme is translatable and compatible with WordPress plugins multilingual.

6. Page builders

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Page builders are WordPress plugins which allow you to create layouts using a Drag and Drop interface.

Many premium WordPress themes come with a plugin to build various layouts.

Use such page builder to create landing pages can produce a lot of unwanted code. If you ever change the theme, then for these pages you will need to clean up a lot.

You should choose themes that use one of the most popular page builders. You can also buy these page builders separately and use them with your theme as well.

7. Assistance in case of problems

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The downside to using a free WordPress theme is that there is no guaranteed support. While some developers offer great support for their free themes, many free themes don't have any support options.

If you cause a problem on your WordPress theme, then you will have to discover it yourself. You can also end up paying a third-party developer to solve the most complex issues.

Make sure you select a WordPress theme that has good documentation and support option. Most premium WordPress themes offer detailed documentation with 1 an email support.

8. Compatible with SEO

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Your WordPress theme plays a crucial role in the SEO usability of your site. A good theme can still generate a badly coded HTML, this could affect the performance of your site on the search engines.

It might be difficult for newbies to parse the source code of a theme to examine it. This is why many premium WordPress developers will let know that the theme is indeed optimized for SEO.

You can also take a look to see if the page generates the appropriate HTML5 by checking with the service W3C Markup Validation. However, please note that the W3C tool will certainly generate a lot of alerts which are not always important.

9. Ratings and reviews

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Another solid indicator of the quality of a WordPress theme is the reviews provided by their users. If the theme is sold in a third market then you will see customer reviews.

For free WordPress themes, you'll find the notes section just below the download button. It will show the number of reviews and stars given by users. If you click on 5 stars then it will show you all the reviews which gave 5 stars to the theme.

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That's all there was to know about the theme search. I hope you will now know how to search for a good theme for your blog. Do not hesitate to contact us via the form below in case of misunderstanding or to share your experience.