WordPress (Photo credit: Huasonic)
- Blog purpose
- Paid or free?
- Other considerations
The following is a guest post by Kevin Paulsen. His bio is at the end of the article.
WordPress is one of the most popular blog platforms, with good reason. It offers a wide variety of themes for bloggers, an easy-to-use dashboard, and the option to post your blog for no charge. However, choosing the best WordPress theme can be a challenge, precisely because of the embarrassment of riches represented by available blog themes. Answering a few questions about your blog can make narrowing down the choices easier. And if you decide to change the focus or direction of your blog, WordPress makes it easy to change your blog’s theme.
Blog purpose
A major consideration in choosing a WordPress theme is the purpose of your blog. For example, if you are a writer, choose a theme that is clean and allows you to post type-heavy posts without cluttering the page. On the other hand, if you are a photographer, you will want to choose a theme that emphasizes visual elements to showcase your photographs.
For example, Modularity Lite is a free WordPress theme with a custom header and custom background. The theme is designed to display your photographs to their best advantage. You also have the option of one or two column layout and placing a slide show on the home page of your blog
Another free WordPress theme, Clean Home, has a sparse, open look that allows for a great deal of design flexibility. Clean Home is an ideal theme for a blog that incorporates both photos and type. It has four different backgrounds available, along with a custom header and several available widgets.
Paid or free?
WordPress offers both paid and free themes. If your budget is limited, a free theme is a real option, and you may be pleasantly surprised by the variety of choices available among free themes. For hobby bloggers or for blogs that will be incorporated into a larger website, a free blog may be just the ticket.
However, if you intend to monetize your blog, especially with in-line ads, a free theme may not represent the best choice. Paid themes are often constructed to incorporate ads without looking junky or crowded. You may also opt for a paid theme if you wish to make extensive customizations on your blog.
Another reason to opt for a paid blog theme is support. WordPress provides support for both free and paid themes. However, creators of paid themes often have dedicated support services for bloggers who purchase their themes, because it is in their interest to keep customers happy.
Other considerations
No matter what WordPress theme you choose, you have the option of adding a custom domain, social sharing with Facebook, Twitter and other social networking platforms and apps that allow you to add posts to your blog from your Smartphone or tablet. WordPress also allows you to choose themes that contain certain apps or widgets, custom colors, fonts and customizable backgrounds and headers. You can set search parameters for themes that include any or all of these features, along with specifying either paid or free themes. The Custom Design upgrade allows you to make changes to your blog’s theme on a granular level, using Cascading Stylesheets (CSS) as an editor.
Kevin Paulsen contributed this guest post on behalf of ThemeSquirrel.com – have a look at the cool WordPress themes for photographers. He is an avid photographer and freelance writer with extensive experience using WordPress.
