What is a WordPress theme or template ?
A WordPress template is a series of files that will modify and customize the global appearance of your website, as well as the layout of the content. Thus, a WordPress theme has an impact on the entire visual aspect of your website. Nevertheless, a WordPres themes will not change the generated content such as posts, titles, and descriptions of the site. It is essential to separate the visual appearance of a site from its content.
A WordPress theme consists of a set of files: PHP templates, CSS stylesheets, default images, JS scripts, and functions, etc. They are all resources allowing the WordPress engine to present your website to Internet users. A theme’s optimization is determined by the quality of its code files. The better a theme is optimized, the more efficiently it will load, for example.
Since the purpose of a theme is to allow you to easily customize your website’s design, this asset is known by different names: skin, template, style, or of course WordPress theme. A template is available in the form of an archive to be uploaded through the administration panel of your blog or WP site.
The different criteria to consider before buying a WordPress
Before going online to search for WordPress themes, we strongly recommend that you define the vision and goals of your website, blog, etc. Defining clearly in advance, what you need is indispensable to prevent a potential failure. There are then several criteria to consider before deciding on your WordPress theme in order to make a theme choice that will not only suit your preferences but will also appeal to users.
- The appearance of the theme
The appearance of the theme is significant. There are thousands of WordPress templates available on the Internet. Many of them are free, while others require investment. Make sure the theme you choose, looks good and works well on different desktop browsers, tablets, and mobile phones. The layout should be responsive, which means that it will automatically adapt to the size of the screen on which it is displayed.
- The features
WordPress powers almost half the web, and it’s growing every day. From simple sites to blogs, complex portals to corporate sites, and even applications, everything can be done with WordPress.
WordPress combines simplicity for users and functionality for developers. This makes it flexible yet easy to use. Here is a list of some of the 10 features that come natively in WordPress. Beyond that, however, there are thousands of extensions that can be used to extend the capabilities of WordPress or to modify its features endlessly.
That is the beauty of free software, free referring not only to the price but also to the freedom to have complete control over it.
Here are 10 features we think you will love.
- Simplicity
Simplicity allows you to get online and publish, and quickly. Nothing should stop you from having your website online and your content published. WordPress is designed to do just that.
- Flexibility
With WordPress, you can create any kind of site: a personal blog, a website, a photography blog, a business site, a professional portfolio, a government site, a magazine or news site, an online community and even a network of sites. You can make your site beautiful with themes and extend its functionality with extensions. You can even build your own application.
Easy publishing
[…] You can create posts and pages, easily format them, insert media, and with the click of a button your content is published.
- Publishing Tools
WordPress makes it easy to manage your content. Create drafts, schedule publishing, and use revisions to your posts. Make your content public or private, and secure access to posts and pages with a password.
- Account management
Not everyone needs the same access to your site. Administrators manage the site, and editors work with the content, authors and contributors write the content, and subscribers have a profile they can manage. This allows you to have a variety of contributors to your site and to let others take part in your community.
- Media management
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so it’s important for you to be able to quickly and easily upload images and any type of media to your WordPress site. Drag and drop your media into the upload tool and add it to your site. Then add alt text, a caption, a title and insert those images and image galleries into your content. We’ve even added some image editors for you to play with.
- Fully Standards-Compliant
Every bit of code generated by WordPress is fully compliant with the standards set by the W3C. This means that your site works in today’s browser while being compatible with the next generation of browsers.
- An easy theme system
WordPress comes with two default themes, but if they don’t suit you, there are thousands of themes available in the theme directory for you to create a beautiful site. None of them to your liking? Upload your own theme with the click of a button. It only takes a few seconds for you to give your site a complete makeover.
- Extend with extensions
WordPress comes with a multitude of features for all purposes. For every feature not in the core of WP, there is an extensive directory with thousands of extensions. Add intricate galleries, social networks, forums, social network widgets, spam protection, calendars, precise controls for search engine optimization, and forms.
- Integrated comments
Your blog is your home, and comments provide a space to interact with your content to your friends and followers. WordPress comments tools provide everything you need to have a discussion space and moderate it.
- Ratings and reviews
It is essential to read the notes and reviews about the themes you choose. Sometimes you will find that a theme has been downloaded hundreds of times but still has no reviews or ratings. In this case, you should be wary of the effectiveness of the theme. And it would be better not to choose it. Ratings and reviews allow you to evaluate the efficiency of themes that have already been used by others and to judge whether the latter is efficient or whether it is suitable for what you are looking for.
- The theme must be SEO-friendly
To have an eco-friendly SEO theme:
Lightweight
As a WordPress package, the theme you choose to install should be lightweight. A good theme that is fully SEO optimized is always small.
If the theme is heavy in size then it will add extra size which can affect the loading time of your page, overall. So, you need to be aware of this size.
Limit JS and CSS codes
JS stands for JavaScript. JS and CSS are the pillars of design that are also responsible for certain functionalities. They are always part of an elegant and properly functioning website. But that does not mean that the weight of these two has to be heavy because we all look for a theme that allows us to get to the point without having to write much code.
A secure code
Theme Authenticity Checker (TAC) is a recommended plugin that will help you find out if a theme has secure code or not. This “secure code” is an important thing in the choice because if a theme is not written correctly, then it is open to all malware. Apart from the security, this software can send a lot of data to the person responsible for this malicious content, which clearly adds an extra load on the server. In conclusion, this is not good for the health and performance of your site, blog…
No Sliders
Using a slider on a homepage can have two serious effects on the SEO of your site, blog… In addition, it increases the page load time. You are already aware of the serious effects caused by even a slight increase in page load time. It also adds several H1 headings to a single web page. Every article or page title uses the H1 tag as a title and when a Slider is used, the number of H1 headings in a single page increases by a certain number, which is not a good practice in SEO.
In conclusion, using a slider is not the best choice to make.
A Responsive site
Every site must be compatible with all display formats, knowing that users no longer use a PC, they have tablets, smartphones and don’t forget the flagship mobile phones with smaller screens. A responsive layout provides a fluid-structure on the site and makes it compatible with different display sizes. If users have no problem surfing your site, then the user experience will not be impacted and will only be better. So, you need to make sure that the theme you are about to use is responsive. Keep this in mind as an essential feature.
- Customer support for installation, para-metering and technical questions.
If you ever have a problem, don’t worry, just contact WordPress.com, which offers several ways to get helpful, personalized support.
We have outlined the different types of support offered by WordPress.com and related services. This will help you find the right source so that you can get the fastest and most accurate answer to your question. Keep in mind, however, that contact information may vary depending on whether you have a free or paid subscription.
You can find help at:
- Documentation
- Forums
- Support response time
- Live chat support
- Localized support
- Quick start support
What you need to know before installing your theme ?
You will always be able to change your theme as much as you want. So, in that case, if you decide to change your theme, it’s important to save your files. We can’t stress this enough, having a backup system is MUST for any site. A problem can happen at any time, and a backup of your site is essential.
Whether you change your theme or not, install a backup system for your files and database. Frequency of Updates, as a developer you should always update the theme regularly so that it is compatible with the latest version of WordPress, as well as fixing various bugs and security holes. The recency of updates determines whether the template developer is still involved in improving the template over time. It is important to have a good team to be more efficient and react quickly in case of problems with your WordPress themes.
