Wordpress themes-what do you look for when choosing?

Greetings all.

When you are setting up your blog and choosing your theme what exactly do you look for?

On another thread someone asked what themes they use for their blogs and the answer was, themes that " look nice and will keep the visitor on my site..."

Now I'm not criticising the reply but I just don't know what looks nice. I know a nice looking woman when I see one but when I look through Wordpress themes my brain seems to shut down because to me they all look pretty much the same.

I'm fairly concerned right now as I'm building an authority site to be monetised by adsense and I see my choice of theme as absolutely crucial given the amount of work I will be putting in over the coming years and so I don't want to screw up so early on.

I know some themes apparently lend themselves better than others for adsense but as I say, what looks good and keeps a visitor on my page I haven't the foggiest.

A attractive wordpress theme is one that looks appalling when you look at it all the content is organized perfectly everything looks neat and in place. All these things are important think of it as when you visit a blog what makes you want to stay on it and learn more. Content Creation is also a very big part so keep that mind as well! Hope i helped.

mvtron said:

A attractive wordpress theme is one that looks appalling when you look at it all the content is organized perfectly everything looks neat and in place. All these things are important think of it as when you visit a blog what makes you want to stay on it and learn more. Content Creation is also a very big part so keep that mind as well! Hope i helped.

Click to expand...

Hehe, may want it to look more appealing than appalling.

But if it doesn't really matter to you what it looks like then you may want to look at what other features the theme has. For example, does it have nice short codes? Is it well documented? Does it provide the features that you may need in the future like media embedding, maybe a gallery, sliders, etc?

That is usually what I go for more than the appearance is the administrative controls. It's always nice to have a good looking website, but if that website is a pain in the ass to manage... It doesn't help. Especially if you are not experienced with stuff like editing PHP and understanding WP functions.

Don't discount "looks nice." It creates stickiness, and stickiness raises your ranking and your sales. But in addition to that, I look for lean and mean SEO-wise: loads fast, good coding. It has the ability and structure of what I need that theme to do for that particular site, and that varies. Yours is Adsense. You don't need a big banner at the top, or a large header. You need something that handles content well, to attract the search engines and searchers. I would highly recommend two themes, both free, that would be good for Adsense. I don't think you can post links in posts on this forum, but do a search for themeatic by themeshaper and notesblog theme. Both are lean and mean and built for content. You can do some cosmetic work on them to pretty them up a little.

It depends on what you are using the blog for. If you are content locking and just need a large eye grabbing tabloid style article and pix in the background, then go for something that allows for all widget removal and one column. If you are going for a content style blog and intend to use Adense, then go for a template with a sidebar on the right. Most of the good ones are widget enabled and offer more than one column setup. You also want to check in the source code for the footer and make sure that it is not hard code encrypted, as this makes it easier for you to tell what is included (free of funny stuff) as well as allowing you to change the Copyright notice etc..

You might also plan on changing the header image, and if so, and you are planning on using the template as a standard for several blogs (like a blog farm), then make sure that it a convenient size for image swapping.

If you have specific uses, then you will easily be able to come up with more if you brainstorm.

When i choose a theme, i'm purely thinking seo benefits.

Mostly that comes down to plugins, plain themes work
well for higher click thru rates.

I look for a theme that is great for SEO and that is easy to code so I can monetize with opt in forms and offers. Thesis is the best in my opinion. You really do not need a web designer to design the site. You can make it rather nice your self and there is an open hook plugin that helps alot

If you're creating an authority site, focus on building your content and user experience. The design is important, but no where near as important as the user experience and the actual content of the site. imo.

Something with a clean and simple layout. Something that looks good with content and that will be easy to customize. Need it to be easy to customize so you can test different "layouts", ad placings etc to try and maximize ctr.

Thanks all for some useful replies and advice. Some of the tips, like a clean and simple layout, have taken some time to sink in with me but I think I'm getting it now.


I can't fiddle around with scripts and code so I need to work with whatever theme I go for on an as is basis. I'm not sure I'm goin to have a good eye for prettying up the site and may need help with that down the line.


If anyone has a suggestion for a free theme that would work well for a legal/professional site I'd be interested.

Thanks again.

WooThemes generally have nice customizable themes.. You could try those out see if they're to your liking!