Looking For A Suitable WordPress Theme For Your Blog

All those who has just started their first WordPress Blog or those who has just migrated to WordPress from another blogging platform, the most difficult decision to make is your WordPress Theme. This is even made more complex with the availability of thousands of free themes which you can choose from. Some tips here to help you make your decision based entirely from my own experience.

Contrary to believes, the topic or niche of your blog need not be taken into account when you are choosing a Theme. All WordPress Themes can be customized to suit any niche or blog topics. The criteria that you should take into consideration is how you want to present your blog. Whether you want a magazine style layout or just a normal blog layout.

Magazine style layouts are suitable for blogs that has lots of contents and lots of specified categories. If you are just having fun with a personal blog, these kind of Themes will not suit you. Most magazine style themes have a certain complexity in them and it has a learning curve which new users will find hard to understand in the initial stages of blogging with WordPress. However, when you become adept with WordPress, a magazine style them can really bring out the professionalism of the blog. Unfortunately, it involves twice the work as compared to a normal blog layout to maintain it looking that way.

The other factor to consider is the ease of customizations. It is almost inevitable that some customizations must be done in order to have the Theme suit you and your blog. Even if you decide to keep everything else intact, the Header cannot be left with it’s default look. Even though all WordPress Themes can be customized, some makes it rather difficult for new users.

Next comes the “cleanliness” of the Theme. For newbies, do take note that there are lots of sites out there offering free premium themes that looks really beautiful. Be real careful when downloading these Themes as many unscrupulous people sells “dirty” links with those themes. What they do is they make or mod beautiful Themes and offers them to link brokers. These brokers will then pay them a certain amount of fees to have their client’s links embedded in those themes. All unsuspecting users who download these themes will unknowingly be peddling illegal links. It is advisable to download Themes from trusted sites like WordPress or WeblogTools. All themes there are scanned for malicious codes before being put up for public download.

There are also many Themes that claims to be Adsense Optimized. Do not confuse these claims to believe that by using these Themes, you will make more with Adsense. In reality, these Themes are called so is because they comes with options for you to easily insert your Adsense codes. It is a useful feature for those who do not have the knowledge or lazy to open their Theme Editor to paste in those codes.

SEO or Search Engine Optimised Themes are Themes that have proper taggings to get the most visibility from Search Engines, particularly from Googles. Their codes have been properly validated and corruption free. Some big coporations pay thousands to professionals to have their Themes or sites optimized for Search Traffic. It is believe that if a Theme is optimized for Search Traffic, the site can see a 100% increase in traffic as compared to before the optimization. Whether this claim if true, it does no harm for us to use a Theme that has been optimized properly for Search Traffic.

Of course there will come a time when your blog becomes established and you decide it’s time to get serious. Then it will be advisable to get an affordable premium themes. Many who has some blogging experience and knows how to make a successful blog will want to start off on a right footing by getting a good Theme the minute they start a new blog because once the blog takes off, it will not be advisable to keep changing Themes. Those who can afford it will pay designers to custom make one for them according to their personal preferences. For those who are not so well off, these are my personal recommendations. I have used or am still using Themes from these developers. Click on each link to visit their home page and decide for yourself.

Elegant Themes –

Very professional looking and customizable. Themes are free for download as long as you remain a member. Membership is affordable at less than $20 per year and there are more than 25 themes available for download at any one time. New Themes are also added regularly and existing ones are updated in tandem with any major WordPress upgrades. Suitable for newbies and pros.

Studiopress Themes

Themes here are strictly for established WordPress users only. I would not recommend these Themes for new users as it would be too daunting. If the features available are not fully utilized, it will do unjustise to the user as well as the developers. However, if you are already very comfortable with WordPress, Studipress Themes will bring your blog to the next level.

FlexSqueeze Theme

Dubbed, “The Ultimate WordPress Theme For Making Money Online” this them is indeed fexible. It can be a professional looking blog Theme, yet it can also be a kick ass Marketing Template. It comes with tons of beautiful Marketing graphics and headers. Most suitable for Bloggers who has intention of foraying into Internet Marketing.

Thesis Theme

This Theme get my highest recommendation. Not only is this Theme so clean and optimized for Search Engines, it also offers unlimited customizations. You can practically modify the Theme into an entirely unique one that no one will recognize it is the Thesis. Coupled with that , the developers offers highly efficient support and life time upgrades.