You’ve learned about your virtual real estate (domain and hosting), and your website’s foundation which is WordPress itself.
The next step in the building process is to frame it. This is done using a theme.
Do you have two or three columns? A fancy graphic header? A blog? A footer? What colors do you use on your site?? Those are all handled by your theme.
You can find thousands of free themes, and hundreds of premium or paid themes.
Free WordPress Themes
There are thousands of them out there. For a professional website, I recommmend Twenty Sixteen, which comes installed with WordPress or Atahualpa.
Atahualpa’s made by a company called Bytes for All, and it’s got a lot to offer. More than 40,000 sites are currently using it. You can take a look at it here.
I like it because it’s stable, it’s got lots of options, and it’s easy to make it uniquely your own.
You can find free WordPress themes from within WordPress itself. But here’s a word of caution: don’t go searching on Google for free WordPress themes. Oh, you’ll find them. But a lot of them are a whole lot of trouble.
Premium WordPress Themes
“Premium” is another word for “paid.”
Why would you pay for a theme when there are so many free ones out there? Here are a few reasons:
- Technical support
- Stability
- Easier to customize
- Frequent updates
- Easier to work with, meaning it will save you time
In the overall scheme of things, a good premium theme doesn’t cost that much. Most are under $100. If you’re building a business, that’s a pretty small price to pay for something that will help you in your marketing and save you time.
There are two theme designers I work with a lmost exclusively. They are Studio Press and Elegant Themes.
Why these two in particular?
- They’re all rock solid, meaning you don’t need to worry about the code.
- They have many attractive choices of different types of themes for different types of businesses.
- They’re very secure
- They have excellent technical support.
- In an independent study of a dozen top theme designers, they were rated the two best overall!
There are lots of terrific theme designers out there, but these are my three favorites.
Learn how to install a WordPress theme here.
Next up — Security!