Deciding what WordPress theme to start out with is important as changing themes usually comes with various challenges. Depending on what the priorities are for you, you’ll value certain parts of a theme more or less.
This article will give you all the information you need to make an informed decision on what theme to use for your WordPress website:
What is covered:
Free vs. Premium Themes
In general, for anything except personal blogs, premium themes should be the way to go. Let’s expand on that a little bit:
Free WordPress Themes
Free themes are a great way to get started. Given that most themes are fairly affordable, free themes should only be used for personal websites, blogs or to learn how to use WordPress.
The biggest problems with free themes are:
- Features: You’ll probably run into limitations very quickly. Then, if you want to customize something, you’ll either have to be able to code yourself or hire someone, which will turn out to be more expensive overall.
- Security: Not saying that free themes aren’t secure, however, there are always bad actors and it’s hard to tell which themes are safe to use and which aren’t
- Support: Free themes usually come with no or very limited support
- Future Updates: It’s not guaranteed to get future updates with premium themes either, but with free themes the incentives simply aren’t there to put a lot of work into adapting the theme to updated WordPress versions
Premium WordPress Themes
As a result, I do suggest you pick a premium WordPress theme that you pay for, either a one-time fee or on an ongoing basis. The next question then is, where to purchase a theme. My take on that might not be the standard take you’ll hear out there, but hear me out:
WordPress Theme Marketplaces
There are multiple marketplaces out there offering themes for purchase. I don’t list the ones offering free themes like WordPress, Godaddy, etc. as you do want to go for a paid one as discussed above. Here are the most popular WordPress theme marketplaces:
ThemeForest (Envato Market)
ThemeForest, part of the Envato Market, is renowned for its extensive collection of WordPress themes. ThemeForest operates on a single-purchase model, allowing you to buy individual themes with lifetime updates (mostly). Support usually is available for 6-12 months after purchase and can be re-purchased for another 12 months after it expires usually at a reduced rate.
When you purchase a theme from this or any other market, make sure there are plenty of reviews and downloads. Don’t use new themes, themes with less than 100 reviews or hardly any downloads. Also make sure that there has been an update of the theme within the last 3 months and look at the Comments section to see how quick the company is responding to comments/requests from buyers.
Another good indicator is to click on the the seller’s name where it says By xxx and see what other themes they have published. If they do have a healthy range of themes that all sell well, then that is a good sign. In that case, even newer themes might be worth a try.
ThemeForest (or any marketplace) is not my favourite place to purchase themes, but if you are looking for a very nieche theme, it might be the best place to find what you need.
TemplateMonster
Unfortunately, ThemeForest and Envato do pretty much have a monopoly on the WordPress theme market. If you can’t or don’t want to use them, TemplateMonster might be an alternative. I must admit I’ve never used them, so can’t say too much about it other than that ThemeForest is the clear number 1.
Direct via Website
By far my preferred wy of purchasing WordPress themes is directly via the company’s website. This usually means that the theme developer is successful enough to implement the infrastructure needed to sell a theme via their own website. Furthermore, there are often lifetime deals available where you pay once and you can use the theme forever (+ support in most cases).
Again, as above, do your research and make sure the theme you are looking at is popular enough that the developer is incentiviced to deliver updates and new features on an ongoing basis. The theme will be the main base of your website, so you want to make sure you make a good pick.
Best WordPress Themes For You
Here we go with the endless lists of themes where you finish and probably have less of a clue on what to pick compared to before you started reading. I’ll try to make it short and give actionable tips and suggestions to maybe hopefully have you finish reading with a different outcome:
Best Free WordPress Themes
For me, it’s GeneratePress. I use it for this website (the premium version), it is very fast and, if needed, you can turn it into a premium theme without actually changing the theme. So you get the joy of getting something for free without most of the downsides + with the option to upgrade, almost feels like cheating.
Fastest WordPress Themes (SEO)
You want to have a well performing WordPress theme to make Google happy and have your website load fast for your users.
My favourite hosting platform Kinsta has done all the testing for me, so I don’t have to do it. According to them, here are the 5 quickest WordPress themes:
- Hello Elementor is a free plugin created by the makers of the popular page builder Elementor. If you want to work with Elementor, this theme might be a good pick.
- The Neve Theme from ThemeIsle is second on the list. Never heard or worked with that theme, but looks to be a good option with a big team behind it.
- Third place for one of the most popular themes in the WordPress world, Astra. A great choice, especially if you intend to use WooCommerce.
- My personal favourite, GeneratePress, lands on 4. The free and premium version means you can start out and try for free and upgrade later.
- With a slight drop-off in performance (according to Kinsta), OceanWP comes in in fifth place. I must admit I’ve never used this theme before, so don’t have too much to say about it.
Best WordPress Themes For Blogging
WordPress was built for blogging, therefore, any theme should be able to provide the functionality you need to create a nice looking, functional blog.
Given that SEO is probably important to you, you should make sure your theme is fast. As a result, one of the five themes above are probably among the best choices you can find.
Best Business WordPress Themes
Similar to blogging, creating a simple business website is fairly straight forward with WordPress. Like with blogging, I would suggest you pick a fast theme, ideally with a content library where you can load pre-built websites. GeneratePress or Astra might be good choices that are fast and allow you to quickly built a functioning, nice looking website.
Best WordPress Restaurant Themes
Astra with its pre-built restaurant starter templates would my my number 1 pick here. You get a fast theme coupled with a quick way to put out a nice looking website for your restaurant. Not much more you can ask for.
Best WordPress Portfolio Themes
To get a portfolio up is often a chore, so you want a quick way to produce a nice looking yet fast website. Here are my top 3 picks:
- GeneratePress with the templates in their Site Library
- Astra with their 250+ site templates
- Neve with their dedicated portfolio templates
Best WordPress WooCommerce Themes
E-Commerce on WordPress is great as you can customize a lot more than e.g. on Shopify. However, with that ability unfortunately comes potential for a lot of chaos as well. Therefore, picking a good theme is paramount.
I would suggest you either go with Astra and their e-commerce starter templates or the Neve theme, which also puts an emphasis on e-commerce.
Best WordPress Themes For Churches
Astra has several great church starter templates that will make it easy to provide a nice WordPress website to your community with fast loading speed so Google will also approve.
Best WordPress Photography Themes
Design is important for you, yet you don’t want to spend too much time and money creating your website. Astra has you covered with a list of dedicated photography starter templates to start from.
Neve would be a nice alternative to that with their portfolio templates coupled with a very nice designed theme out of the box.
Best Real Estate WordPress Themes
For real estate it’s hard to give a general recommendation. Astra has nice real estate starter templates that come with their theme ready to be loaded. Together with the right plugin you should be able to do whatever you want with that.
If you are looking for certain features that come baked into the theme, you might want to check out the real estate section on Themeforest. Real estate has so many niche use cases, that picking a niche theme is actually the right choice.
Best Elementor WordPress Themes
It’s hard to look past the free Hello Elementor theme when it comes to themes that work well with Elementor. Given its made by the creators of Elementor, you can be sure that Elementor will be supported better than anywhere else.
The Pro version of Neve also provides a Elementor Booster, which should result in quick loading times and good support for the Elementor plugin overall (haven’t used that yet though).
Popular WordPress Themes
Let’s get to some popular themes. I must say that I haven’t worked with most of them, so I can’t provide a review from personal experience on most, but the themes listed below are all highly popular, which means that you won’t have to worry about the developers going out of business and ongoing support and updates are more or less certain.
GeneratePress Theme
GeneratePress is my favourite theme. It comes as free and premium version, which means you can start out for free and, if you like it, upgrade to premium later (or stay at free, also fine).
It’s very fast, so should cause no problems for SEO from a speed perspective. Their site library provides a nice starting point and shortcut to get a good looking site up in no time. It does not have the most features or customization options, but covers all basics – less is more in many cases.
Astra Theme
Astra is probably the best all-in-one theme you can get. It’s fast, covers blogs, business and e-commerce and has very popular, so finding help won’t be difficult. It also comes with more than 250 starter themes that you can simply load, change a bit and – just like that – you have a finished website.
Avada Theme
I remember, back in the day, Avada used to be a nice theme to start e-commerce websites with. Today, it’s far more than that. It comes coupled with hosting, an Elementor-like page builder and much more. If you are looking for an all-in-one solution, Avada might be a good choice.
Salient Theme
Salient is one of the most popular themes on Themeforest and comes with a distinct design that makes it stand out. It’s great for e-commerce websites and if you like the look, you can use it for any website you want really.
Flatsome Theme
Optimized for WooCommerce, Flatsome is a great choice if you want to create a design-focused online shop. The built-in UX builder provides many tools and blocks you might want to use as part of an e-commerce website, their focus on WooCommerce pays off in that aspect.
JNews Theme
JNews serves as a great solution for content-heavy sites. It’s focus on publishing websites makes it a great fit for anyone who wants to create a feature-rich blog, magazine or newspaper website.
ElegantThemes & Divi
I have a love-hate relationship with Divi. It was one of the first page builders that worked. However, with bigger websites, it got slower and slower on the backend, so I stopped using it a few years ago.
Having said that, Divi is still used by thousands of people out there. If you like their way of doing things, it’s definitely an ok choice to go with.
Genesis Theme
The Genesis framework is an open-source approach to themes. It comes free with WP Engine or Flywheel plans. Having said that, if you are not a WordPress Pro or ready for some tinkering, better stay away from it and go with a theme that’s more targeted at the wider public.
Blocksy Theme
Blocksy has a free and premium version and is highly customizable. As with Genesis above, this isn’t necessarily a good thing if you are not a WordPress expert. As a result, if you want quick results, go with a theme that comes with a site library and is less customizable.
Godaddy Themes
GoDaddy’s WordPress themes are part of its hosting packages, which, to cut straight to the point, is the problem. I would advice to pick a theme independent from your hosting provider. If you pick a GoDaddy theme, you might save some money in the short term, but you’re locked in and moving hosting provider just got a lot more difficult.
If you really want to save money, pick one of the free themes listed above, but try to avoid going with any of the ones GoDaddy offers.
Custom WordPress Themes
Creating your custom WordPress theme allows you to tailor the design to your specific needs and brand identity. It also, theoretically, allows the developer to cut out all unneccessary CSS and Javascript to optimize loading speed. However, it’s not easy.
If this is your first website, don’t go with a custom theme. Go with one of the standard theme and adapt it to your brand. It’s so much cheaper, you can have a test run, learn as you go and improve step by step. If 1-2 years in, you still want to have a custom theme, then go for it leveraging all the things you’ve learned along the way. Then you likely know what you need and – even more important – you can be sure that you do actually need a websites and it delivers the value you thought it would.
If you want to create a custom theme, use it for your website and then sell it, in 99% of cases, don’t do it. Nowadays, creating a WordPress theme that sells is super hard. Competition is tough and after the sale you still have to provide support and updates on an ongoing basis. So in most cases, don’t do it.
How To Make Your Own Theme
Having said that, if you want to make your own theme, how can you do it?
If you want to start completely from scratch, you can go to the WordPress Codex and read through their section on WordPress Theme Development. If you are a developer, this will give you the information you need to get started.
If you are not a developer, you’ll have to look for one. You can search through our directory of local WordPress agencies and developers or go to Codable and look for a skilled developer there.
WordPress Theme Builder
This is a way to get a semi-custom built theme, as you still rely on a theme, but you build most of what you see on the website using a theme builder.
The most popular WordPress theme builders currently are:
Again, if you are looking for a quick way to build a working and good looking website, this is probably not the way to go. However, if you are into tinkering and don’t mind a longer development time in exchange for more flexibility, this might be a great compromise.
WordPress Child Themes
WordPress child themes allow you to modify and extend the design and functionality of your website without altering the original theme. This is important to keep those changes when the parent theme is update.
What Is a Child Theme
A child theme is a theme that inherits the core features and styles from an existing theme, known as the parent theme. You benefit from the safety of not modifying the parent theme directly, which allows you to receive updates for it without overwriting your custom changes.
You could, for example, use the Astra theme as parent theme and then build on top of that in your own child theme.
Post Gutenberg block editor, child themes are less common and developers usually use plugins to do what was usually done with child themes.
How To Create a Child Theme
If you know your way around WordPress files, creating a child theme is fairly straight forward. You can read a step-by-step guide in the WordPress Codex.
Customizing Your WordPress Theme
Once you have your theme installed, you want to customize it to make it your own. Here are the most accessible options to do so:
Utilizing Theme Options
Your WordPress theme likely includes a theme options panel, which allows you to make changes with a user-friendly interface. From the Appearance section in your admin dashboard, you can access these options to modify various aspects of your site, including fonts, colors, and possibly the layout.
Customization Using CSS
For more precise control over your theme’s appearance, you can add custom CSS through the WordPress Customizer. To access it, navigate to Appearance > Customize in your dashboard. Here you can insert your own CSS code to alter specific elements of your theme. If you’re familiar with CSS, this method offers a high level of detail in personalization.
Plugins and Page Builders
To extend customization further, consider using plugins or page builders. With that, you should be able to add almost any functionality you want. WordPress is widely popular, so if you have a need, you can almost be sure that someone has had that need before and built something for it.
WordPress Theme Detector
When you see a WordPress website and you want to know what theme is used, there are a couple of services out there that can help with that. Here’s a short list of some of the most popular ones:
Conclusion
This article should hopefully give you an idea what theme to pick for your website. If not, go with one of the 5 listed in the fastest WordPress themes section.
As mentioned above, picking a theme should not be taken lightly as you are often stuck with it or it requires some work to change it, especially if you use a custom page builder that comes with the theme (don’t do that if possible).
Having said that, also don’t ponder too long. Your first version of your website should be up and running within a few days, so think about it a bit but don’t overthink. 90% sure and quick decision is better than 100% sure and days of thinking.
