Choosing the best WordPress theme for your blog can be overwhelming.
There are literally thousands of  WordPress themes to choose from, so how do you select the one that is best for you?
Focus on Customization
I've started a number of sites and helped other people get started as bloggers/webmasters as well. Â One common mistake (that I sometimes make too) is to pick a theme based on the demo.
Theme demos are great because you can explore the site and see exactly how it will look on yours.
Or will it?
The critical part to selecting a theme is not to judge it by it's current design, but by it's potential. Â Most themes, even free ones, have a huge amount of options for customization which means it may look entirely different once you're done with it.
A blogger might look at that and think it would never be a good theme for a blog because straight out of the box, it isn't. Â However, take a look at my site and how I use it. Â As you can see, the layout is entirely different and it's now fit for a blog.
This is why it's so critical that you look at a theme not as-is, but rather as it could be.
The More WordPress Theme Customization the Better
So if customization is king when it comes to themes, how should this affect your decision?
Choose the theme that has the most options for customization, so you know you'll be able to tweak it to be the blog of your dreams.
Of course, you might love a theme the way it comes, and that's great too because it's less time you need to spend fixing it up to match your needs/wants.
The other factor to consider is that you will want to make changes in the future. Â As you learn more about site design, blogging, and conversion rate optimization, you will likely want to change some aspects of your blog and move some parts around. Â Not to mention, your personal taste may change too.
A site with more options for customization will allow your blog to grow with you.
Do I have to Pay for a great WordPress Theme?
No, you don't have to pay for a theme. Â That being said, the paid options usually offer many more options for changing the look of your site, and offer easier ways to do it.
In my opinion, the best four providers of premium WordPress themes are Elegant Themes, StudioPress (which is the theme Ms. Ileane uses here on BBT), and Woo Themes.
There are many exceptional free themes as well, but you need to be careful when downloading them.
I would recommend only downloading free themes that you find internally through WordPress. Â If you conduct a Google search to find a free WordPress theme and download one off the web, there is a chance that it may have malicious code in it which can result in a lot of problems for you and your site.
Take my advice, don't go down that route!
You may want a premium theme, but just not right away. Â A customizable and easy to use free theme is PageLines. Â I use the free version on a site of mine right now and it's doing the job just fine. Â I may upgrade or switch to another theme in the future when the site starts to bring in some income.
When it comes to choosing a great WordPress theme, don't judge a book by the cover.
Hi Ben,
In the beginning I just used free themes, but you realise that your blog just looks “tacky” and the only way to get that FRESH look is by purchasing a premium theme. The more functionality the better but, even though It’s hard to find now, I don’t like themes that use child themes. They restrict my freedom to tweak.
Yup, I try to avoid touching the code because I honestly don’t know what I’m doing lol. Eventually every blogger just needs to pick up a premium theme.
Truly said, a premium theme gives you the premium look, if you can’t buy one then it might be tough for you to get a professional design.
YeaH!
It overwhelmed me, I found Genesis Framework + streamline child theme is better for me.
It has all those feature what I really want. However in my opinion Genesis is better than Thesis.
Good points! If you pay for a WP theme you also have access to support and there’s big differences in how good the support actually is. Eventually you get into some smaller issues with WP, normally something like plugin conflicts and a good support would be able to solve these problems for you.
Everyone will have problems – support is a must for me.
Thank you providing these tips. Finding themes is quite overwhelming and time-consuming. And we have some many cool designs which makes it even more worse. But end the end, when you find the theme that has a look and feel you like, it’s worth the effort.
Absolutely, and hey it’s not all that stressful – it’s shopping!
Ben, when you put it that way, I see it differently. You used one of the words that is near and dear to most women’s hearts: SHOP!
It’s most important thing to know. Always select your WordPress theme according to your blog niche, If your blog is about Blogging tips, Seo or technology then i am recommended you to choose a professional WordPress theme. If you have personal or funky blog go for funky themes.
Hi Ben!
Well in my opinion it is better to start with the premium themes because that’s how from the beginning you learnt quite few new things regarding customization and experimenting with free themes can waist your most of the time doing customization of your own if you get any error. On the other hand premium themes are very help full and there support forums available can help you get rid of the issue sooner.
True, it would be best for most people to pay for a theme right off the bat.
But it is an investment. Most people don’t like to pay if they don’t yet generate money with their blog. I would recommend the free themes from the premium providers. So you can upgrade easily.
For time being, I’m using a free theme on my blog. But will’ve go for a premium one soon..thanks for the tips..
I love surfing for new themes and I’ll be doing another check with my provider in a couple months. When I purchased my first theme, I never went back to free. I don’t know enough to customize a theme and the premium ones make it so that I don’t have to know and working with a company gives me access to a forum that can help with questions quickly (I have a lot).
Great post!
Kimberly
hello Ben Sibley
some days ago i was thinking that i should buy new premium class theme for my blog, this is the great post. all tips are very informative for me. thank you for sharing with as
No prob Hira, I hope it helps you find the right theme.
Hi Ben,
Thanks for the explanation. I also use a free theme named Suffusion for my site and I have customized it to a large extent and I think no one can guess it now.
I agree that premium themes play vital role to attract the visitors and are more SEO friendly than free themes but cost factor is the main issue because of this factor novice bloggers used to use free themes.
As Ayaz said above, it’s definitely more cost-effective to start with a paid theme, but for some people should start with free. Personally, with my first blog I was still testing the waters and didn’t want to put down the cash for paid themes yet. Now I see the benefit and tend to always use paid themes.
Hello Ben,
I was using a Vibrant WordPress that I customized myself for long time.
But there were some problem with that theme and I wasn’t able to fix it because I was just newbie and it was hard for me to do.
I went ahead and found a great and popular theme which is SmartBlog from Junkie themes, so I started using it because it has a lot of great features.
You’ve just mentioned four Theme providers, but I would like to add one more which is Junkie Themes.
Thanks Ehsan, I hadn’t heard of Junkie Themes before.
Hi Ben,
I also use one “Junkie” theme – it’s great (and cheaper than Thesis or Woo themes 😉 )
Chris
Themes are super important but not an excuse to not create content.
Sometimes, it can be easy to get so wrapped up in the appearance of the site that no posts are made. I literally have spent a full 4 hours messing with Thesis before it looked acceptable to me.
However, 2 FREE themes that have worked well for me on previous blogs are: Flexibility 3 (you have to go to their site to download it) and Twenty Eleven (if you learn how to make the sidebar show up in posts).
Thanks for the great post,
-Gabe
Hi,
This really a great discussion, I am starting a new website and was looking for the prefect WordPress theme and your advice will help me a lot to decide on theme, much appreciated.
Do you think you should use the same theme for all your sites if you have multiple sites? I have been using a theme that really sucks but I use it for all my sites, so I know how to use a lot of the features. What do you suggest?
Lol no don’t settle – if it sucks drop it! Trust me, you’ll learn how to use new themes faster now, and they may be easier to work with too.
Theme is very important. I think all bloggers should have a custom developed theme when they reach a certain level. It helps to make your blog unique.
Great post.
I Also choose such theme which is highly customizable so that I have freedom of changing things in it 🙂
Good article Ben, as you said Elegant themes and Thesis are wonderful to future customization. Thesis rocks on SEO side too but not affordable to buy in beginning stage. Using a free theme will be a better idea to new bloggers until started to get decent income.
Thanks for the post. I think Genesis theme by Copyblogger media is one of the most Powerful, SEO friendly and cost effective theme in the market. Its my personal thought.
I have used thesis, but since my blog also showcase few of the Photoshop and css tutorials, so my blog design needs to be good. Thesis is customizable, but I feel difficulty in handling them. ( Specially seo, since I already use wordpress seo by yoast )
I have been using a free one for now and once I get good traffic, will get a custom theme designed by any professional. Thanks for the tips.
Hi,
I start using WordPress a few days ago and I don’t understand a lot of things or how to use. Can you contact me and give me more details? Thanks a lot!
Nick
Hey Nick, you can contact me here http://www.seodiscovery.org/contact.
Hello Ben,
Identifying the best WordPress theme for your blog is a bit difficult. Some don’t agree with paid themes but they do take care of the things when you are clueless regarding gaining ranking for your blog. Experienced bloggers may not need paid themes. Before deciding upon the theme, it is better we take advice from veterans in this arena. That will help a lot.
Regards,
Raj Kumar
I would say experienced bloggers don’t have an excuse to still be using free themes on an aged blog. I sometimes start a new site with a free theme, but usually switch it over to a sharper, paid version. It is absolutely worth the investment (people judge by the cover).
Hi,
I would love to give my opinion about paid wordpress themes. WordPress themes are best because you will not get those kinds of functions on free themes. Most of the paid themes are easy to customize and looks much better then free themes. Also never use any cracked themes on your website. it has more chances to get hacked.
I would suggest magzine3 themes.
Thank you
Alex
Premium themes are good but it’s optional and not compulsory. if you can manage your free theme very well, it can be very nice more than premium one. actually is good to go for the premium themes, if you are planning of making your blog look more professional. you article really help. thanks for sharing
I have been the free graphene theme for a while now and it is all good. It has great customization features and the support is also nice because it has a community base. I’m also looking into purchasing a premium theme soon to make the design of my site sleekier and more professional.
I have membership of Elegant themes, Thesis, and Studiopress. I love thesis and genesis themes a lot as they offer a lot of customization without the need to touch the codes.
I started free themes for some time on my blog but at last I always faced issue in supports and updates those…using thesis currently and really happy with the features…
Hey Ben!
For sure, Premium themes are good enough but I can’t even think to change my blog’s theme. It is very dear to me. lol
We all know that A good theme is key for the growth for blogging and every want a good theme for their niche but problem comes in finding a good theme . so i must say that the above article will short out the problms of many bloggers regarding this issue. Thanks to the author for sharing above article
Your customizations with SimplePress is awesome. The font is better and it loads faster. However, it may requires newbies a lot of time to get the same result. I would prefer pre-made Genesis child themes (I am a huge fan of Genesis). You can upload and use them right away. Moreover, their themes have clean, well-structured code which speed up your websites and create better users’ experiences
Thanks Robert. The switch only took a couple minutes total, and I know any newbie could figure it out quickly as well. If you can find a theme that’s perfect for you as-is that’s great, but there’s still hope for simple customization with most premium themes.
To be honest, I don’t use any of the premium themes you have mentioned but they are very good indeed. Although there are good free themes that can be used, with paid themes there are some good support to be had. Good advice about not downloading themes found on sites through the search engines.
I paid for a theme once and got lousy support and never even used it. I love Suffusion too- a lot you can do with it. I think it depends how creative you can get with the free themes. Nice topic!
hey Ben,
great article. It can be a challenge to pick a theme. I prefer to make my own but on my personal blog i use althualpa.
Keep up the great work.
Paul Butler
Hi Ben,
Great advices, I didn’t think of the code in themes, WordPress.com is great place to download themes. As you mentioned those 4 themes companies (Thesis, StudioPress, Elegant Themes and Woo Themes), they are really popular and a lot of people often talks about them as well.
Thanks – Ferb
Great tips to find wordpress theme. Graphene , hybrid and pagelines themes can also be used without paying money.
A premium WordPress theme, I have found, is the road to a successful blog. Customizing it is just another perk to make it better!
Hello, Thanks for the great overview on customizing WordPress themes! I’ve been building my blog the past 6 months and the information will be very helpful to take my blog to the next level.
Well, I haven’t used any premium WordPress theme till date!
But, I have seen people are highly recommending premium WP themes because they have better layout, amazing features, improved SEO and many more.!!
I think that blog should look simple and clear while a person is reading your post.
I really feel that one should go with Swift Themes. They have much faster loading speed, some brilliant features and better layout 🙂
Anyways, thanks for the points you shared here ! 🙂
I have used only free themes never used Paid theme. But I heard Paid theme more SEO friendly. But as paid theme is high price, so most new bloggers can’t use it. I think for a professional blogger one must choice paid theme. Thanks for basic information on how to get WP theme
No prob Ahsan, I think you should move to a paid theme as soon as you’re ready for the cost. I do use a free theme (Platform by Pagelines) right now for a blog of mine: http://www.startblognow.com. I am happy with the clean look right now, but would like something more professional eventually.
I would recommend a premium theme for a sharper look and easier customization, but not for SEO. For SEO, you should be more concerned with applying your settings smartly with WordPress SEO by Yoast and keeping a well-structured, tightly themed site.
That is what I exactly did Ben.
I took a theme and customized it the way I wanted it to look.
It helps to have some knowledge of Html and CSS.
Sanjay, I use Platform by Pagelines for a site which I downloaded through the wordpress dashboard. Yes – not all have malicious code.
Its very easy to find out wordpress theme ! You can easy find out relevant wordpress theme & if you’re not getting succes to find out wordpress theme than do not need to worry about this just simply look towards wordpress & there you can find out wordpress theme but you have also well explain to find out wordpress theme
I used free blog themes when i started blogging but soon shifted to Studiopress framework with Generate theme. Still i am not happy with it and want to create a custom theme for my blog.
I think the customization part is extremely important. Like many others, i too started with free themes, which are dull and boring. Forget about the visitor, even i was not attracted towards my blog. So i changed my theme, i opted for a paid theme.
It is very important to invest in our blogs and theme should be the first thing in the list.
I’m a big fan of thesis theme. I’m using it on couple of niche blogs that I own apart from Bloggers Passion. No doubt it is not that much easy to use thesis theme if you don;t know anything about coding. But you will get lots of tutorial for even small things that you may need to do on a thesis based blog like:
– How to remove dates from comments section
– How to remove dates from blog posts
– How to change your header image in thesis
– How to add Google Adsense into Thesis theme etc
Themes should always be chosen wisely.
Also i suggest everyone that they should never go for free themes, as more than 90% of them are injected with malicious codes.
Anyways, thanks for this wonderful article.
Ben Sibley thanks for great article..
im agree with your statement “Choose the theme that has the most options for customization, so you know you’ll be able to tweak it to be the blog of your dreams”…
In choosing theme, customization is king because it’s less time you need to spend fixing it up to match your needs/wants…
the next major factor select your WordPress theme according to your blog niche.. if your blog is bussiness blog you can choose wordpress professional theme.it will be different if your blog is about music. You can choose the funky ones.
so it’s depend on your niche or target market..
Thanks for share
Good to know about the responsive theme pagelines.
However,on can also find good paid themes at themeforest (dot) net.The collection there is huge and themes for almost anything can be found there.
Simplicity is the Key, I use simple customized themes which are fast loading and come with lot of features. Fast websites are good for SEO Purposes.
Thanks for sharing awesome list of apps. I’m particularly interested in Read it later aap, sound interesting
Exactly, paid options provide a lot extra features which inbuilt in the theme. I am currently using & loving the Genesis Framework and its child themes.
This is really good info as I am getting ready to do a MAJOR overhaul on my blog. It currently looks like another page on my website and not a traditional blog.
I will give some of the sites a try for a new theme.
Thanks!
Hi I think theme is the most actractive part for the site. So anyone have wordpress site who have select good theme reffer on the content.
This has to be one of the single biggest problem for me when setting up blogs for clients. I usually tend to stick with Thesis now, you can use its awesome hooks feature to have it look any way you possibly want and that is what I need with the blogs I set up – being able to customize it according to the theme of the blog.
I found that just tweaking tiny things can give your WP page a whole new look and feel. Reskinning my website a few months ago has resulted in enquiries starting for be big time again – it had been quiet for ages. Should have done it much sooner.
Theme is free or not is important thing, next thing is is there any support forum, nice tips shared thanks.
the only reason i buy premium themes is because of the support , i really love to tweak out premium themes and need a lot of help from the support so its worth paying them 60-80 bucks for a lifetime support.
Choosing a right theme is really important.Good looking themes are more effective than simple one.You have shared a great point.
My approach is to use the default Twenty Twelve theme for very basic websites that don’t need anything fancy.
If I want all the bells and whistles, I go for a premium theme. I consider ThemeForest to have some of the best collection of premium themes.
Also, if you ever see a WordPress theme you like, but are unsure as to what it is, you can check it with http://whatwpthemeisthat.com/
Thank for sharing with us. Really a good information what you add your blog. Yes i use WordPress and it’s nice use. There are more free WordPress themes are available but you need to download free themes that you find internally through WordPress.