When it comes to WordPress themes, there are many themes to choose from, available at prices ranging from free to up to thousands of dollars. Experience being a great teacher, albeit a tough one, here are some things I’ve learned you want to stay away from, and want to have when it comes to picking your WordPress theme (WP theme) and ultimately any plug-ins:
AVOID
WordPress themes that have little or no ratings, from someone with no known history, with support that is only available 8 time zones away from you.
Do your due diligence in researching the reviews of the theme you are selecting, and just as important, research the developer and what their past Theme ratings have been. If your searches on the Web don’t lend enough confidence that the theme you are considering is well-supported, move on to another theme with a better pedigree. There are so many themes available that you are sure to find another with similar features but from a more established source. Even if the theme is free, your time isn’t, so don’t be someone’s guinea pig.
A stripped-down or highly-specialized base theme that doesn’t play nice with plug-ins
Few things are worse than time lost working with WordPress themes that fall short of expectations. Unless you are an advanced developer, don’t use a WP theme with 60-70% of features you need, but won’t let you add on plug-ins you need. Before you purchase a theme, research the FAQ page and forums on the developers site. Also do a Web search using the Theme Name, Developer/Source Name, and “Problem”. Both these methods of research allow you to become aware of issues other theme users have been having, and how the theme developer has responded. It’s a valuable glimpse at trouble spots and customer service. Time and money wasted using bad tools (themes) is hard to regain.
A theme that you love for the wrong reasons
Before you even start looking at WP theme demos, go away from your computer, grab a pencil and paper, and list the 7-10 important things you need your site to do when someone visits it. Why? So you can identify what’s relevant to your site needs. Why so long a list? Because the first three should always include understand who the site belongs to, what they do, and what the best way to contact them is. So that leaves you with 4-7 more things unique to your needs that your site must do. Any WP theme you are considering must pass the test of being able to meet that list of needs. If you don’t see one or two in the demo, contact the developer and ask what plugins have successfully worked with their WP theme to provide those functions. If you don’t get the right theme from the start, you’ll be looking for patch-fixes later, and working harder.
MUST-HAVES
SEO = Search Engine Optimization.
No one wants to find out their site isn’t coming up on search engines. And there are many services who will take your money to do the work of getting your pages to score higher on search engines. Guess what? They are going to accomplish this takk using many steps you could have done from the start if you would have installed an SEO Plug-in for your WP site, and followed its guidance to write and build your pages. Instead of paying someone else to fix things, start with better. My favorite is WordPress SEO by Yoast.
Spam-protection
Ugh! Spam coming in as comments to your blog post or site pages just sucks. The first time you get an email saying “I really loved your post and would like to share it with others…blah blah” you might get fooled into thinking the commenter was complementing your site, until you re-read the post and realize they did not say a single specific thing about your page or post. These trolls and their spam overwhelm sites, and if unchecked, create havoc in terms of maintaining and addresssing comments to your site. My current favorite is Askimet.
Site Analytics
Who is coming to your site, how long do they stay, and where do they go? These are important questions, and to get the answers, you need to have analytics tools that work behind the scenes and allow you to see site traffic and respond to it with changes. Many people are aware of Google Analytics, and there are several plug-ins such as Google Analyticator that allow you to track right from your WP dashboard.
Automatic Site Backup
Picture this: Your site is running smoothly for weeks, and one morning, you come in and something has gone horribly wrong. Did you remember to back up the site? Do you know how to back up the site? Do you know in addition to site files, you also have a WP database you needed to back up?
Instead of going through the pain, learn from the pain of others, and install a backup plugin. These run in the background, on a schedule you set, and can backup, and can download and email (size allowing), site files and database. There are even some that allow you to save to a DropBox account. There are several free and premium WP plugins such as BackUpWordPress for automatically backing up your WP website. Premium plugins come with extra features.
In the WordPress (WP) world, there are so many themes to choose from, available at prices ranging from free to up to thousands of dollars. Experience being a great teacher, albeit a tough one, here are some things I’ve learned you want to stay away from, and want to have when it comes to picking your WP theme and ultimately any plug-ins:
You may have noticed I didn’t include lists of ‘cool’ plug ins that allow for slide shows, effects, social media feeds, calendars or fancy forms? All those are icing on the cake. Focusing on them would be wasted energy if the foundation of your site is not working well, optimized and protected. As you design and launch your WP site, you can have a much more productive and positive experience by avoiding the trap of selecting ill-suited WordPress themes, and by adding plug-ins that help you reach more people, avoid the spammers, and provide recovery when things go wrong.
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