If you’re blogging on the WordPress platform, the first factor you will, in all likelihood, do is to install a new WordPress topic. Even in case you’ve been blogging for years, you could nevertheless be a subject “addict,” losing a variety of time doing minor changes that, after being summed up, simply distracts you from blogging itself.
It’s clearly easy to see why this single factor of going for walks a blog demands a lot of interest. With the ideal topic, you may accommodate all of the nifty little widgets and codes and suggest better seek engine scores and heaps of clean visitors each day.
1) Theme Width and Columns
Typically, WordPress issues are available in 2-column or 3-column codecs, with widths starting from 500 pixels to 960 pixels huge. If you’re blogging for non-profit functions, a 2-column theme can appear extra compact and reader-pleasant. Since you’ve got much fewer photos of merchandise or links to other sites to display, you can see consciousness solely on the content material without main readers away from your website online.
On the opposite hand, in case you’re blogging for profit, you may need to consider a 3-column WordPress theme to be capable of accommodating your Google Adsense, Chitika, and Text Link Ads codes with no trouble without squeezing everything within the content material area. 3-column subject matters allow room for enlargement, but inside the event which you’ve stuffed up all to be had space with advertisements, then it’s time you eliminated the non-performers and used best the advertising and marketing offerings that work for that unique blog.
2) Use of Images and Icons
A subject matter with pictures and icons can make an appearance true; however, it not often will increase your net visitors or subscriber base. In reality, maximum “A-listing” bloggers have simple vanilla subject matters with a simple logo on the pinnacle. Reducing the number of images also method faster loading time and less pressure to your servers. This essential element of server load turns out to be apparent handiest if you have tens of heaps of traffic an afternoon, but it’s really worth designing for the destiny.
A picture-encumbered theme additionally distracts readers from the content itself. This is why blogs like Engadget and Tech Crunch use photos intensively inside the content material regions to add price to a post. Still, the subject itself is easy and alternatively minimalist. Ideally, a theme has to assist you in using your personal header photo for more potent branding purposes. Yet, update photographs and icons with hyperlinks and textual content, or now not use them at all until definitely important.
3) Compatibility with Plugins
Another time-sucking activity is putting in plugins that improve the functionality of your website online. There’s a plugin accessible for nearly the whole lot you want to do together with your blog; however, at the same time as most of them are free and without difficulty available, it’s now not always clean to put in the plugins and insert the codes into your WordPress subject matter. If your topic is too complicated, it may be a headache to insert one code line you want to make a plugin painting. This is regularly the case with superior AJAX-based WordPress themes, with too many documents and heavy coding. I’ve always preferred simpler themes that stick to the default WordPress subject matter as a whole lot as viable, so I can cut returned at the getting to know curve and get on with my life. Remember that the cause of your blog is to supply well-timed, relevant content for your readers. Any subject that preserves or improves the reader’s revel in is good; any subject that subtracts from the enjoy is awful.
4) Search Engine Optimization
A lot can be said approximately so; however, you’ll ultimately get the scores you deserve at the top of the day when you have content well worth analyzing. That doesn’t suggest that you do not want SEO; all it means is that what you really need to do is to make sure:
5) Plug-And-Play Ease of Use
Can the theme be hooked up easily on an existing weblog while not having to move matters around? Can the identical subject matter be used and custom-designed effortlessly for your other blogs? These are a few extra matters you can need to forget when subject matter-purchasing, particularly if every minute of downtime in your blog may also suggest misplaced sales.
While it’s tough to make comparisons due to the sheer amount of loose and paid themes out there, it is nevertheless a good concept to have a check blog website. Test any topic you propose on the usage of, and make sure you take a look at the weblog is also geared up with all the plugins and miscellaneous widgets used in your actual blog. The closing aspect you need is in your readers begin seeing weird error messages to your blog.