Are you thinking about creating a business or personal website? One of the major decisions you will have to make when creating a website is choosing a theme.
That said, a WordPress theme is a group of files that work together to help you change the layout and design of your site. The theme you choose allows you to customize your site’s layout, color, typology, and other design elements, ultimately defining your website’s overall look and feel.
With the right WordPress theme, you can customize your site to your exact specification; therefore, creating your dream website. The only challenge is picking the best for you from thousands of free WordPress themes and an assortment of premium options.
If you’re a new WordPress user looking to create a website that genuinely helps you present your message to the world, this post is for you. The article will provide a WordPress themes overview to help you make an informed decision and choose the best.
Table of Contents
What is a WordPress theme
In a nutshell, a WordPress theme is a group of files that work together to produce the front-end styling of a WordPress site. Whatever WordPress theme is to your liking, all it does is determine the look and basics function of your site.
As a complete content management system (CMS), WordPress has an official themes directory, where you can browse, download, and install your favorite theme.
The most exciting thing is that you’re more likely to get exactly what you envisaged. All you need is to tweak and customize the templates to fit your site needs.
If you are starting out, free WordPress themes are an excellent starting point – they are complete with all the standard features you can expect from a theme.
Why you need a simple WordPress theme
A website can do a lot for any business. In today’s fast-paced world, blogging has been ranked among the best ways to boost credibility, attract an audience, and ultimately increase sales.
If you are passionate about blogging and are figuring out the best WordPress theme for blogs, take it from me: simple WordPress themes are the best. So, why should you utilize simple WordPress themes?
Fast loading time
This is undoubtedly the main reason many bloggers utilize simple WordPress themes – they load incredibly faster. If a theme is simple, it means fewer elements, scripts, and optimized imagery, and the result is faster loading speed.
SEO-Friendly
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is pretty essential when it comes to the success of a blog. Thankfully, simple WordPress themes follow the latest and best practices of SEO standards.
Simple themes are easy to update
Another significant benefit of utilizing a simple theme is having a headache-free website. First off, you don’t necessarily need a lot of technical skills to customize the theme, and, again, when it is time to update, you won’t have a weighty task.
Adaptability
Simple WordPress themes are fully responsive and adapt easily to modern screen sizes and pixel density. This can be a great benefit considering that people use devices with varying screen specifications.
A simple WP theme can and, of course, does lend professionalism to your site. Wondering how this is possible? It ensures that your blog doesn’t look too bloated or over-designed and, again, fancy colors may not appeal to everyone.
Simple WordPress themes focus on things that matter. So it should be no surprise that they are the best.
Free vs. Premium WordPress themes
Choosing the right WP theme for your blog can be overwhelming. You have to decide whether you’re choosing free or premium themes, where each category has hundreds of options.
Before spending your money on premium themes, it is imperative to beware of the presence of high-quality free WordPress themes. These free themes are most likely to be simple with standard features. Interestingly, they pass a rigorous scrutinization process before being included in the theme directory, which promises quality.
So, what is the difference between free and premium WordPress themes?
Free themes are precisely what they sound like – totally free themes with no strings attached. On the flip side, premium themes are available for purchase and for a good reason. In most cases, free WordPress themes have basic features you would expect from a theme, while premium options are highly customizable and well supported by the vendor’s support staff. Although premium themes may suffer from theme bloat, the overall quality is far superior.
Parent themes vs child themes for WordPress Builds
WordPress was born to democratize publishing. With basic knowledge of PHP, HTML, CSS, and so on, you can put together a basic site in a couple of hours utilizing WordPress themes. A theme has all the functionality already built into the website, meaning you don’t need to code.
When creating your blog, you can use a child theme or parent theme, depending on your experience. So what exactly is a parent theme? How does it differ from the child theme?
Parent Theme
Essentially, a parent theme is a stand-alone theme that is fully functional on its own, meaning it doesn’t depend on other themes. The opposite is true for a child theme – a child theme inherits its functionality from another WordPress theme, typically the parent theme. The appeal of a child theme is that you can add styling or functionality without changing the actual parent theme.
Child Theme
It is advisable for new WP users to use a child theme for their builds because any changes in child themes do not alter the core theme files. Mistakes made on a child WP theme can be easily corrected by reverting to the parent theme.
Conclusion
One of the inherent parts of using WordPress is the ability to modify the look and feel of your WordPress site without necessarily coding. WordPress offers quality themes built for all devices, which makes it one of the go-to platforms. There are thousands of options covering multiple niches. Considering that most blogs are created for business purposes, you will find more than enough themes that perfectly integrate with woo commerce and make it easier to open an online shop.