Finding a suitable WordPress theme is not that easy these days. As you may have already seen for yourself, there are a variety of free and paid WordPress themes to choose from. To help you keep an overview and avoid any nasty surprises when choosing a WordPress theme, you will find some helpful tips and tricks in this article.

Spoilt for choice. In the Theme Directory of wordpress.org alone, you can choose from several thousand free themes. The filter offers you a first selection criterion. Under "Popular", WordPress' own themes "Twenty Twenty Four" and "Twenty Twenty Three" are in first place. Both themes offer an excellent start if you want to start with a simple blog, for example. To help you find the right WordPress theme for your own WordPress website or for a customer project, I would like to give you a few tips below.

Define the goals of your website

It will help you enormously when choosing the right WordPress theme if you think about the goal and purpose of your WordPress website right from the start. Do you want to start a blog with news and information or is your goal a more complex company website?

If you can already determine the goal of your WordPress website, focus your selection on relevant topics or industries.

Here is a small list of possible industries and applications:

• Blog or magazine
• Company website / Association website
• Artist portfolio, photographer, agency, designer
• Website directory (WiKi)
• Forums Website
• Online store
• Seminars
• Bookings or reservations
• Product presentation or landing page
• Recipe blog
• Travel blog or portal
• Restaurants
• Real estate agent
• Doctors
• Niche websites

What should the theme be able to do?

Since WordPress offers so many possible uses, limit the performance requirements for your future WordPress theme as precisely as possible. If you want to start an online store, for example, make sure that the theme is designed for WooCommerce.

I have also put together a list to help you with the requirements for a WordPress theme:

• Slider: Should a slider be used and already integrated in the theme?
• Blog or magazine: What is the blog functionality (meta tags) and in which design?
• Multilingualism: If a page is required in several languages, does the theme support the WPML? plugin, for example?
• Sidebar: How many sidebars are needed?
• Ads: Should advertising banners or ads be placed on the website, which widgets or shortcodes does the theme offer for this?
• Forms: Should special forms or filtering be used?
• Mobile: Is the theme optimized for mobile views, keyword Responsive Design?
• Navigation: Is an extended navigation (mega menu) with many navigation points needed?
• Formats: Are special post formats required, e.g. recipes, portfolio, reservation?
• Online store: Is the theme designed for WooCommerce?
• Customizer & options: How can the WordPress theme be styled?

Demo websites are often deceptive

All WordPress theme developers are naturally very careful to present their product in the best possible light. You should therefore not let thoroughly optimized demo websites influence your decision too much. Because demo themes are perfectly coordinated: Images, colors and typography usually work together perfectly. The loading time is also already optimized and may look completely different with your later setup.

So remember that you will be using your own images later. Demo websites often use high-quality and paid stock images to convey a coherent overall impression. Of course, theme developers are not allowed to deliver licensed images with the theme (topic: image licenses).

Test mobile view

Also test the mobile view of the WordPress theme. You can do this using your browser's developer tools, for example. I'll show you how this works using Chrome and the Raidboxes website as an example:

Step 1

Go to "View"→ "Developer" → "Developer Tools" (in Chrome). Alternatively, you can open the developer console with the key combination Cmd + Option + I (Mac) or Ctrl + Shift + I (Windows).

Step 2

Move the developer tools slightly down so that the website is visible and then click on the mobile icon on the left. The default setting is "Responsive". This allows you to move the view as you wish and directly check how it changes.

Step 3

Click on "Responsive" to display options for different devices and test the corresponding view.

You can also use your browser's developer console to see how many scripts (in the head area) the WordPress theme is loading. Many script files reduce the performance of the WordPress website.

If you can, test your chosen WordPress theme on your cell phone. This will give you a direct impression of the loading time and the responsive view of the theme.

YouTube is your friend

On YouTube, you will most likely find a review or comparison of one or more WordPress themes. Often in English, but this is usually a promising way to take a look behind the scenes of a theme.

Read reviews & search forums

Ratings or reviews give you further insight into how the selected theme performs with others. However, the ratings for the free themes on wordpress.org are usually not very informative.

Also pay attention to the "Last updated" display for free themes on wordpress.org. If an update is more than half a year old, it is better to leave it alone. This point is more important than it first appears, because many compatibilities can break over time or are already broken if the theme does not receive any updates.

You can find much more information on portals such as Themeforest for paid themes. Here you can often ask so-called "presale questions", i.e. questions before the purchase. The reviews of paid themes on Themeforest also give you information about how the theme developer responds to problems and queries. If the questions are not answered promptly, this indicates moderate support.

Good theme developers also have extra support forums for their themes. Here you will also find valuable information on common problems. If questions are answered promptly here too, this shows that the developers have a genuine interest in their theme.

For example, try to find a so-called "change log" for a WordPress theme via Google. Here you can view the update history of a theme.

Checklist for reviews, questions, forums and tutorials:

• Study reviews - Google search for experiences (note topicality)
• Ask questions to the developer (Presell Questions)
• Find YouTube videos with reviews & tutorials
• How up-to-date is the theme kept, is there a changelog?
• Is there a support forum? If so, where do common problems occur?
• Can you submit support tickets to the theme developers?

Free or Pro Themes?

When deciding whether to go for a free theme or a paid pro theme, you should bear in mind your goals for the WordPress website. Your existing knowledge of WordPress also plays an important role here, as Pro Themes usually offer a lot of setting options.

WordPress themes for a fee

If you are creating a business WordPress website for yourself or a client, for example, consider a Pro theme. Paid themes offer you more design options, a support guarantee, help and community forums and usually their own tutorials. If you want to create an online store with WordPress, pro themes such as "Flatsome" already offer some additional functions for WooCommerce.

Pro themes often offer many presets for the entire design of the WordPress website, including your own page builder. You should already have some experience with WordPress and allow for a training period. Many Pro Themes also offer complete demo content that you can import with just one click.

Free WordPress Themes

Nevertheless, there are now free themes such as the "Astra Theme" or the "OceanWP Theme", which even in the free version offer many great options for designing your WordPress website as well as support forums and tutorials. If the functions are not sufficient, there is also a Pro version to buy.

Create a playground for testing

From my own experience, I can say that you should definitely create a test environment for WordPress before you put your WordPress website live. Changing a theme is easy, but it can also leave a big mess if, for example, the theme creates its own page builder content with shortcodes. This is particularly annoying if your website is already online.

There are several ways to install a test environment for WordPress, e.g. locally on your computer. Programs such as WampServer or Laragon create a local web server environment on your computer with which you can install unlimited WordPress instances.

Raidboxes also allows you to create your own staging environment to test adjustments to your WordPress website at your leisure. If the changes (e.g. new plugin or theme) do not cause any problems in staging, you can make them live with one click and even set up a synchronization from the test environment to the live environment.

Conclusion on the WordPress theme choice

Finding the right WordPress theme is not necessarily easy, but it is definitely doable. Essentially, your decision on which WordPress theme to choose depends on your objectives and requirements. The more precisely you define the purpose of your future WordPress website, the better you can narrow down a suitable WordPress theme.

Always view theme demos with a certain amount of skepticism, as your own content will shape the design of your WordPress website. If you have also researched reviews, forum posts, videos and articles about your favorite theme, nothing stands in the way of your final decision. All of this is certainly a little time-consuming, but the effort will be worth it in the end.

What do you pay the most attention to when choosing a WordPress theme? Is there an aspect missing from the list? Feel free to leave your input and questions in the comments!