To find the best WordPress theme for your niche (topic or interest), it is crucial to know How To Pick WordPress Theme. We have been working with WP for nine years and have tried many themes. It takes time and effort. We want our website visitors to be able to access our sites in lightning speed, navigate easily and find our information easy to read with presentation variety and like us so much they want to share us with their friends. We also want a theme that is easy for us to user for designing our sites.
Because we choose to use Free WordPress themes, the selection process takes even longer. To save you time we documented the fourteen key features a WP -theme we pick must have. We hope our list will help you find a Great Pick WordPress Theme.
Fourteen Key Features
We use the following check list to make the “How To Pick WordPress Theme” activity less laborious. We hope the fourteen features will help you learn how to pick WordPress Theme more quickly and successfully. Since we use a theme both to blog and support e-commerce, the following fourteen features are extremely important to give our website visitors a pleasant experience. After reading let us know if you have additional features that are important to you.
1) Responsive
Today more than ever consumers are using their mobile devices rather than the usual desktop or laptop. It is extremely irritating when half the blog is cut off because the theme is not responsive. In fact Google will bypass websites that are not responsive.
Since the introduction of responsive websites, WordPress-theme developers have changed from making a laptop theme responsive to designing a theme for mobile first. Actually since the introduction of this approach, we will not consider a theme that is not first designed for mobile because the source code is much cleaner and the view of websites content is much better.
2) Sticky Navigation
It is very irritating to us after completing the reading of a long blog and we do not have an easy way of navigating to the main navigation menu, especially from a mobile device. In fact our frustration level gets so high we leave the site. The introduction of sticky menus have fixed the issue.
A sticky navigation menu is one that stays at the top of the blog even when one scrolls down the page. In other words the menu is always in sight and accessible wherever we are on a site without having to scroll. The sticky menu is certainly even more necessary from a mobile phone.
3) Back To Top Button
The back to top bottom is crucial for those using a mobile device. Scrolling is eliminated to go directly back to the top of the page or post. Even when viewing on a laptop the back to top button speeds navigation.
4) Three Navigation Menus
The very top menu is useful for such information as contact us, primary policy and affiliate disclaimers. Obviously the primary menu acts as the main menu for navigational maneuvering around the site. The footer menu is useful for highlight key blog and pages. Most themes have only two menus; however three is wonderful.
5) Page and Post Layout Options
So many themes today are built for blogging only which means the theme provides limited page layout options. Those who like to write content that is timeless need multiple page layout options. Multiple page and blog layouts provide site variety and easy customization. This concept also coincides with the objective of the new WordPress Gutenberg editor. Most themes have not provided multiple page layout options.
6) Copyright and Credits
Including a copyright is a very important content and image ownership feature. Many site owners want to use customized credits statement rather than those from the theme owner.
7) Header Customization
The site niche may dictate the design of the header. It is beneficial for the designer to have options such as choice of header height, usage of images, slideshow or video, usage of a call to action button, display of the website domain name, a tag line, and a logo and icon to gain brand identify.
8) Additional CSS Option
Being able to add CSS without using a child theme is marvelous. This feature has now become a part of WordPress. Gone are the days of having to wrestle with trying to get the right Enrique statements in a child theme.
9) Translation & RTL Ready
Since internet usage is global, a theme must be translation ready. To further support a global community it is important for a site to be RTL ready. In case you are unfamiliar with the term, RTL means text direction flows from right to left such as Japanese. Over a billion people need RTL; therefore such support in the theme gives potential for many more readers.
10) SEO Friendly
To be SEO friendly a theme must use good structure plus clean and optimized source code. Some themes are definitely more structured than others. Those with SEO-friendly structure get more attention from Google.
11) Speed Optimization
A fast loading theme is crucial to capturing mobile readers. Of course caching and minification plugins can be installed, but the ideal is to use a theme that is already highly optimized without the need of additional plugins. One less load time second on mobile devices can result in an increase of twenty percent traffic volume. It is obvious that Google emphasizes the need for quick site speed because it provides many helpful tools to test site speed. If a designer likes specific theme, but the theme runs slow, the website designer must speed a lot of time trying different caching and minification plugins. We have done that to several themes and finally picked a completely different theme because of site speed load time.
12) Developed By Leading WordPress Theme Market Places
If a WordPress theme has been developed by one of the leading theme market places, it is almost certain the theme will continue to be updated to include latest WP features. These businesses want to be sure they maintain a good reputation. Here are the eight leading WordPress theme Market places: WPMU Dev, Elegant Themes, My Theme Shop, Obox Themes, Studio Press, Theme Fuse, Themify and Theme Isle. Several years ago we found a very flexible WP-theme that was very popular; however it was not developed by one of the above companies and due to funding, the theme disappeared into the sunset. Thousands contacted the developer and even offered pay for expenses to upgrade, but it was never upgraded and eventually it was dropped from the WP-Theme recommendation list.
13) Extensive Setup Documentation, Videos And Support
With so many avenues of presenting setup documentation, we look only for those themes that have extensive written instructions as well as videos. We check WordPress.org (theme name) to see if the developer responsibly handles and resolves issues. New themes are especially prone to issues until they have been used in designing several hundred sites.
14) Popularity
Number of downloads for a specific theme tells us how popular it is. The more popular a theme, the more likelihood more new features will be added to it in the future. Chances are it will not disappear into the sunset quickly.
Conclusion
The fourteen key features we have identified above are key elements for picking a WordPress-theme. We believe the above features will provide our website visitors with a pleasant experience finding what they are looking for easily in lighting speed. They will also guide us to be sure we have picked a theme that we can easily design to our business liking.
Our Favorite WordPress Theme For 2019
Follow the link which reveals OUR FAVORITE WP-Theme For 2019. We think you will be pleasantly surprised and happy to find a GREAT Free WordPress theme that is feature rich. We call it our Perfect Theme. Our design implementation is included in case you wish to use this theme.
Let us know if you have additional features you consider important when performing the “How To Pick WordPress Theme” activity..
0 Comments