Choosing WordPress Themes: Mistakes Committed while Choosing One

How difficult is it to select a multipurpose WordPress theme from the multifarious choices that we have? As per reports, the highly interactive CMS is a repository of more than a thousand themes (both free and premium) out there. While for a few developers, choosing a theme itself remains an uphill assignment, there are others who actually find it a breeze. Both these approaches entail substantial room to commit mistakes while making a choice at the first place. Neither should you be confounded nor should you take it too easy. Adopt a systematic approach instead.

At the heart of your choice of a WordPress theme is the type of website or app you want to build. The internet is brimming with information about the free and premium WordPress themes that are compatible with business, ecommerce, home décor and a plethora of niche websites. You can choose one which suits the nature of business at the first place. With laser-like focus on the “domain” businesses often unwittingly dismiss the importance of paying equal attention to the theme license, the availability of plug-in support and other such functionalities.

Today, we will be jotting down a few grievous mistakes often committed by businesses while selecting WordPress themes for their websites. Have a look and make an informed choice when it comes to WordPress themes.

Mistakes committed while choosing WordPress themes

The eagerness with which you are approaching the creation of your online face is often marred by a poor selection of the website theme. Right at the onset, one needs to comprehend the immense significance of the themes at the first place. For instance, many may not believe but it’s true that there are several businesses that don’t even take mobile-friendliness into account while they are choosing themes.

Having said that, let us tell you that there is no WordPress developer here who is not employing a responsive layout today. However, it simply doesn’t mean that you can actually go on to take “responsiveness” for granted. You know your developer is making a responsive website. As such, you start using it without even testing it! Steer clear from this erroneous practice.

Testing the responsiveness of a particular theme before buying it is clearly your responsibility. Do look out for features like large fonts that are easily readable on mobile devices, mobile-friendly speed and touch-friendly menus. As far as responsiveness is concerned, these are just but the tip of the iceberg. Documented below are other mistakes.

You are not paying attention to the license of the theme

Needless to say, a prebuilt WordPress theme is a more cost-effective proposition than a custom one. However, there are many who do not even think about considering the ongoing cost of the theme once it is purchased. What you need to know is that every theme is accompanied by some type of license. Lifetime support and updates, premium paid support as and when you need it and recurring payments on an annual or monthly basis are just a few of the integral preconditions of theme license.

Do make sure that you are paying due attention to the same.

You are not backing your site up before you are updating plugins or themes

Your WordPress dashboard will tell you about the latest theme and plugin updates. WordPress itself gets updated very often. Now, what most of the site owners do not do is take a backup of the site contents before pushing that update button. What they do not realize is that there is every chance of a fancy update not complying with their existing website at all.

Not every update will go on to disrupt your site. But not every site will act too friendly with it as well! Why expose your site to the risk? Look out for hosting providers that let you create nightly backups for the site automatically. Then there are others that allow you to have database backups with the help of just one click.

How eager are you to select a theme and create a WordPress based website? Make sure that you are educating yourself about the backup responsibilities at first--- this should happen before you are investing in the site itself!

You are selecting a WordPress theme which is downright outdated

First things first. Do know for a fact that when you are looking up the collection of WordPress themes on the internet you are likely to come across themes that are only meant for designing older versions of WordPress based websites. Do not commit the mistake of taking the “novelty” of the themes for granted.

Since the theme still features in the collection there is no way it is old—if this is what you’re thinking then it’s clearly time to change your perspective. It is necessary to select themes that are compatible with the current version of WordPress otherwise they will not be displayed properly or function as the way you would want them to do!