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Choosing and Selecting a Wordpress Theme

Choosing a WordPress theme is very much like decorating your physical store in a mall. On the Internet, there are 3 types of themes - free, paid (often referred to as premium). and custom themes. Let''s discuss the pros and cons of each:

Free Themes

Pros:

  • There''s no cost. (Duh)

Cons:

  • There are usually advertisements. (mostly text links)
  • Accessible by everyone. Not unique at all.
  • Mostly poor quality, made by amateurs. Poor on-page SEO for most of them.
  • Poor or no support for installation and customization.
  • You usually have limited permission to modify this kind of themes.
  • The code structure could be vulnerable to hackers. Some free themes even contain hacks within themselves.

Paid Themes

Pros:

  • Accessible to people who are serious about blogging. Therefore, the level of uniqueness increases. However, there are also a lot of serious bloggers out there.
  • Good in quality. (Well, depends on how much you pay, really) Most of them have good on-page SEO.
  • Good support for installation and customization.
  • You usually have full permission to use and modify the themes. However, they do still require you to give them credits for the theme, usually in the footer.

Cons:

  • Most of the time, there''s still a text link to the designer of the template. (e.g. Thesis theme used on this website, there is a text link in the footer)

Custom Themes

Pros:

  • Your theme is unique to yourself. Assuming the designer did not copy from others.
  • Good in quality. Good in SEO. (depends on who you hire to customize your blog design)
  • Good support for installation and customization.
  • You are the owner of the theme and you have full right to use and modify the theme however and wherever you wish.

Cons:

  • Sometimes it can be costly.

So for a starter, getting a premium theme would be highly recommended. You want to show your audience that you are serious about your blog. Also, when it comes to selecting a theme, consider the following:

  1. How comfortable would the visitors feel when navigating and reading on your blog?
  2. Is the theme fast on loading?
  3. Is the theme Search Engine Optimized?
  4. How is the support?

The most important thing about a blog is user experience. It doesn''t matter how good the quality of your content is, if the viewers do not feel comfortable reading on your blog, they won''t come back. Think of it as if you are applying to an university, it doesn''t matter how good the teachers are, if the university itself has poor facilities and is located in a place with high crime rate, your desire to attend will be highly affected, degraded, by the environmental factors.

Everyone is unique. Every blog is unique. There is no right or wrong in which WordPress theme you decide to use. The only thing you have to keep in mind is to look at it from visitor''s perspective.

As for where to start on obtaining the themes, simply do a search on WordPress themes. I''m sure you will find plenty of them, as themes are being created every day.

Additional Reading