Premium WordPress themes ,What To Consider When Choosing A WordPress Themes Put another way, how much easier is buying a bottle of wine when you know that you prefer reds and that your favorite red is Australian Shiraz? This small amount of knowledge cuts a choice between 500 bottles in a store down to 10.

In this post, I’ll share what I believe are the most important factors to consider, so that you know exactly what to bear in mind the next time you’re on the hunt for a good theme.

To start off, let’s answer one of the most common questions asked: Is it worth paying for a WordPress theme, or can you get away with a free one?

1. Price: Free Vs. Premium Themes

Several years ago, the price of a theme was a good indicator of its quality. Free themes were often poorly coded at best, and were used to capture sensitive user data at worst. But times have changed, and developers in the WordPress community have created thousands of great free themes to choose from.

As such, there is no conclusive winner. Both free and premium themes have their pros and cons, which are detailed below.

PROS OF PREMIUM THEMES

• More updates
  Perhaps the most compelling reason to choose a premium theme is that such themes are typically updated more often. Given the rapid evolution of the WordPress content management system (CMS), having a theme that is regularly updated to patch new security issues is critical.
• Less recognizable design
  Because free WordPress themes are so popular, it’s not uncommon for tens of thousands of websites to use the same free one. Premium themes are less common, which set them apart a bit more.
• Better documentation
  Most premium themes include a detailed PDF explaining how to get the most out of them. Such documentation is less common with free themes.
• Ongoing support
  Premium theme developers certainly offer the best support, usually through a combination of a public forum, live chat and an email ticketing system. Free themes usually just have a public forum for support.
• No attribution links
  Many free themes often require a link to appear in the footer crediting the theme’s author. While this is becoming less common in free themes, you can be sure that no links are required in premium themes.

CONS OF PREMIUM THEMES

• The price
  You’ll have to invest anywhere between $50 to $200 in a premium theme.
• More configuration
  Most premium themes have their own custom administration panel, with a variety of customization settings, which can take a while to learn and set up.
• Unwanted features
  Premium themes tend to include a lot of bells and whistles, such as multiple slider plugins, a portfolio manager and extra skins. While these do make a theme very versatile, a lot of unwanted features will bloat the theme.

In general, the most important aspect to look for in a theme, whether free or paid, is the quality and care that’s gone into making it. The quality of the code will influence everything we discuss in this article, from security to page speed.

The easiest way to gauge quality is to read what customers are saying. If a theme has a public support forum, read what kinds of issues people are having, and how responsive the developers are in resolving them.

2. Speed: Lightweight Vs. Feature-Heavy Themes

In my last post here on Smashing Magazine, I emphasized the importance of optimizing website speed. Fast page-loading speed does not just improve the general user experience of a website, but has also been confirmed to improve search engine rankings, conversion rates and, thus, online revenue.

It should come as no surprise that I recommended avoiding sluggish themes like the plague.

Understanding a problem is the first step to avoiding it. So, what causes a theme to drag a website’s page speed into the gutter?

In general, it comes down to three things:

• Too feature-heavy
  Be wary of themes that boast 10 different sliders, 20 preinstalled plugins and a lot of JavaScript animation. While this might sound like a good deal, no website that makes HTTP requests to 50 JavaScript files will run optimally.
• Overuse of large file formats
  The keyword here is “overuse,” which admittedly is a bit subjective. Try to steer clear of themes that use a lot of full-width images, background videos, etc. Less is more.
• Poor coding
  From wildly scaled images to inline CSS injection, poor coding has a significant impact on website performance. As mentioned, poor code usually means that a theme hasn’t been updated in a long time, so always check a theme’s update history.

Here’s a litmus test you can use to figure out how bloated a theme is. Go to the Pingdom Website Speed Test, enter the URL of a theme’s demo and see how long the page takes to load and how many HTTP requests are made.

Let me give you a quick comparison as a benchmark. Earlier this year, I built two websites with very different theme frameworks. The first website, BrokerNotes, was built with theFrank theme (a very lightweight theme designed for speed). According to Pingdom, the home page makes 38 HTTP requests and loads in under 1 second. 3.9 Mb in bandwidth is way too heavy though.

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Have you ever needed a website that should be built with WordPress Themes, but also should push the boundaries of this beautiful content management system? Ever needed to create a WordPress Themeswebsite to share code snippets, or set up an online course to sell your knowledge, or build a support system for your agency?

Sometimes, a theme and a bunch of plugins won’t work for our project. Sometimes, we need a complete system with a decent design and solid functionality. That’s where specialty themes come into play.

What Is a Specialty WordPress Themes?

A WordPress theme must be developed to change the look of a website and avoid offering functionality embedded in its core. That’s called “invading the plugin territory” and considered as a bad practice since you basically chain the user to your theme with the functionality you offer. Luckily, there is a solution: You can provide functionality through plugins that you require your users to install. To do so, you can use a PHP library like TGM Plugin Activation.

But sometimes, a project requires that design and functionality work together. In this case, we have an exception, and the exception’s name, used throughout the WordPress market, is “specialty themes.”

How Should We Make Specialty WordPress Themes?

If you decide to make a specialty theme for WordPress, you might want to consider a few things:

Have a Very Specific Purpose

You must offer a unique approach in order to present your theme as a “specialty theme”. Go bananas if you like (if you’re certain that somebody will make use of your theme) and make the most eccentric theme the community has ever seen. Seriously, the community could use some variety in themes.

Utilize Actions and Filters to Make Your Theme Extendable

Actions and filters are part of the WordPress Plugin API, but that doesn’t necessarily mean themes can’t benefit from them. In fact, all of the most popular WordPress theme frameworks utilize actions and filters (mainly actions) so other developers can extend the frameworks. Follow their lead and make your theme extendable with WordPress action and filter hooks.

Make Your Theme Ready for Child WordPress Themes

Here’s your “A-ha!” moment if you want to make more of your theme by diversifying design options—make your theme ready for child themes! Build your base theme (like a theme framework) and create child themes to offer different designs.

You Can Use TGM Plugin Activation

If you feel that other themes can benefit from a part of your functionality, go ahead and offer it as a plugin and require it by using the TGM Plugin Activation library. But in most cases, specialty themes’ functionalities can’t be used with other themes; so it would seem like a vain effort to convert the functionality.

But keep in mind that developers might create themes after you release your specialty theme, so it’s still a good idea to separate functionality from design.

Ideas to Create Specialty WordPress Themes

There are so many types of specialty themes which can be made that it would be pointless to try to list all of them. But to get the idea, let’s write a few:

• a job board
• a question and answer system
• a help desk
• a learning management system
• a crowdfunding website
• a domain sale page
• a “coming soon” page
• a simple online wedding invitation
• a knowledge base
• a directory website
• a contact manager
• …and more

As I said earlier, any good idea could be—and should be—turned into a specialty theme. If you think you have a good idea to make an original specialty theme, go for it.

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