Cautionary Points on Choosing a WordPress Theme
When I first started to learn about the WordPress blogging platform, it took me a while to work out that what most people would call elsewhere a template for a website or blog is known in WordPress Land as a theme.
WordPress explain the theme terminology this way:
Fundamentally, the WordPress Theme system is a way to “skin” your weblog. Yet, it is more than just a “skin.” Skinning your site implies that only the design is changed. WordPress Themes can provide much more control over the look and presentation of the material on your website.
I don’t want to even begin to calculate how many hours I’ve spent checking out WordPress themes over the past two or three years.
No doubt I could have taken the path of least resistance and had someone savvy come up with a design I would like. I know that the cost for what I had in mind would not need to be more than a few hundred dollars. The downside would have been that I would not have learned what I have leaned and I would have had to live with whatever design the contractor finally delivered.
There was also the option of buying templates, rather than using the free ones. And in fact we (our company) have started to do that. It’s not breaking the bank. The excellent NigaRila theme costs the princely sum of US$15 and is backed by the developer via email and a forum. For an example of what I’ve been able to do with NigaRila, using just my very limited configuring skills, see my colleague and mentor Richard Reardon’s R&R Business Development blog (work in progress - I have some more tweaking to do). For another example of the NigaRila theme where the default header has been swapped for a header of choice, see my partner Suzie Cheel’s Abundance Highway site.
Some of the lessons I’ve learned the hard (i.e. time-consuming, hair-tearing if I had enough to tear) way are:
- the fact that there are hundreds, probably thousands of free WordPress templates out there does not mean there are hundreds that for me would be excellent for business blogs
- not every WordPress theme hailed as the latest and greatest looks good for a business blog
- it is important to make sure the theme is compatible with the latest version of WordPress (assuming you will be wanting to upgrade, which can be essential for security reasons, quite apart from issues of improved look and functionality)
- “ease of use” is a term which must always be understood as relating directly and proportionately to the extent and level of prior knowledge and skill of the user, for example with HTML and CSS
- a good reason for finding a theme you are really happy with (and have good feedback about from knowledgeable and honest colleagues/clients - remember to ask them!) is that, every time you switch themes, any changes you have made to files within the theme’s structure - e.g. for sidebar content - will need to be replicated for the corresponding files in the new theme
- even when the developer’s site tells you that it is “easy” to change a header banner or picture and offers instructions on how to make the change, it can sometimes be simpler and less stress-inducing to choose a theme with a header you like as it is
- given the proliferation of WordPress widgets, it’s probably a good idea to choose a theme which is identifiable as “widget-ready”
- if the developer has not promised any support, whether by email or a forum, don’t expect any or much support (you got the theme for free, remember?)
- if the developer has provided a forum for questions and problem-solving and there has not been anything happening on the forum for more than a couple of weeks or at most a month, don’t expect any or much support
There are probably more such cautionary points to be made about choosing and installing a WordPress theme. If even the points I have included here make the prospect of installing a WordPress site and a theme of choice seem daunting, it’s not a bad idea to look for help from one of the many companies and individuals offering to take the pain out of the process, whether just to design and install your site, or to provide you with a fully hosted WordPress service.
One such service, to be launched in July by the same company which provides the excellent and very economical, fully supported BlogHarbor service on the Blogware platform, is PressHarbor. You can register interest at that site.
In a subsequent post or three I will provide some links to sites I’ve found helpful for finding WordPress themes.
Technorati Tags: WordPress, blog platform, WordPress themes, themes, howto, widget-ready, BlogHarbor, PressHarbor
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Free New WordPress Theme for Small Business
Jun 21, 2007 at 6:39 pm
[…] I mentioned yesterday in my post Cautionary Points on Choosing a WordPress Theme, having some arrangement for support is a big plus. So it is good to see that the theme’s […]
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