What You Really Should Be Looking For In A WordPress Theme
Posted in Anatomy of a Blog, Starting Out on February 28th, 2008 by DB
Picking a theme for your blog is not as easy as it sounds. For one, there are literally hundreds thousands of wordpress themes that you can choose from, all completely free. So how does one go about picking the ideal theme especially if picking the best theme is very subjective. Obviously, there is no one theme that will fit all needs.
Before you even start looking at WordPress themes, you should be clear about the layout (One, Two or Three Column, Magazine) for your blog. Some questions that will help you decide your blog layout are listed below
- Content
- What are my main categories?
- Does it make sense to have a featured section?
- Are external media files (you tube, flickr etc) a big part of my blog?
- Advertisement
- Am I planning to show Ad’s on my blog?
- If yes, what sizes and how many?
- Where will I position my ads?
- Which layout will give me maximum exposure?
Once you’ve decided the layout that makes most sense for your blog, you should then turn your attention to picking a theme. Now as far as selecting a theme goes, what really should matter to you is the following, in order of preference
- Speed.
- Design.
- Functionality.
Pick a theme that is lightweight. Trust me!! you do NOT want to pick a theme that has way too many images, media files, css files and/or javascript files. Blog optimization starts from the minute you install your blog. If there are only two things that you should focus upon, everything else be damned, its “Content” and “Speed”, in that order. Become very aware and even fanatical about the size of your html pages, images, css files, external script files.
Looks matter, ofcourse they do. But not to the point of sacrificing speed which is why this is second in terms of priority. The blog design is what captures the attention of a reader and potential subcriber and keeps him long enough on your site for your content to hook him.
Finally we have the theme feature list. Many many people give this the highest priority when deciding on a theme. Remember folks, you can always add functionality to your theme. Yes it might entail some work or even expense. But you will end up with a blog that is much quicker and simply more resource friendly.
This is infinitely more preferable to having a blog that has all these features that you most likely will rarely use and is a complete resource hog. How many users do you think will come back to read your blog if your blog takes only 25 secs to load. Here is a tip, think all your readers have only a 56K connection. Design and build your blog with this in mind.
The same set of rules applies even if you are getting your theme custom built. Good luck is selecting a theme for your blog and lastly make sure you scan your theme for any potential vulnerabilities.
Table of contents for "Anatomy Of A Blog" Series.
- Anatomy Of A Blog - Why?
- Picking A Domain Name For My Blog?
- What You Really Should Be Looking For In A WordPress Theme
- Secure Your WordPress Blog. 10 Steps For A Complete Blog Lockdown.
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