Or, maybe even your first! What you are reading right now is representative of my fourth WordPress theme for this particular site. Along the way I have learned many lessons and most of them have been painful. I’m no WordPress expert and I’m guessing that many of you might share this status. If blogging is new to you, you will likely be wondering just how does all of this work so I’m going to make this article very “Blogging 101”. Let’s start with a couple of quick definitions …
WordPress – There are actually two basic versions of WordPress that you need to be aware of. WordPress.com is totally free and your site will be hosted (kept) on one of WordPress’s servers. WordPress will provide you with a good amount of functionality and flexibility but, you will be limited to whatever features they directly decide to allow you to choose from. Since your files will be hosted on one of their servers, along with other users, the last thing that they want is for somebody to come along and install some bad code that will negatively affect everyone else. Therefore, they don’t allow that to happen. There are two trade-offs with WordPress.com …
- If you want to be able to do whatever you want with your site, you will not be able to do that.
- Most people will end up with a WordPress.com address for their site (you can purchase the right to use your own name) and it will read something like adaptive-buisness.wordpress.com. I would not call this preferable to using your own domain name.
WordPress.org, on the other hand, is also a free application but, you will need to buy your own domain name and pay somebody to host the files for your site. You might pay something like $10/year for a domain name and $5-$15 per month for hosting so we are certainly not talking about a lot of money here. I buy my domains at GoDaddy and my sites happen to be hosted at HostGator. For the record, you have other good choices for these services. In addition to being able to use your own domain name, WordPress.org gives you …
- The flexibility to customize your site however you might like.
- The ability to go to the open marketplace for 3rd party add-ons which are normally called plugins which will give your site increased functionality.
- The right to choose your own theme from whoever you may wish to get that from.
Themes – Themes are the skins that give your website whatever look you want it to have. There are literally 1,000’s of these available and that allows folks like you and me to set up a website without having a web designer code one from scratch. There are both free and paid themes. Free means free and paid themes are generally a one-time fee that can range from $10 to probably $100’s. Most paid themes are well under $100.
My Journey – I started out blogging all on my own by signing up for a site at WordPress.com. It was a great learning experience! One of the most beautiful things about WordPress is that just about everything you learn at WordPress.com will transfer over to WordPress.org should you wish to ever make that move. After a year or two, I decided that I wanted more flexibility and did just that … made the move to .org.
Tip #1 – Get a geek! – Find yourself somebody who understands WordPress well (particularly from a technical standpoint) and make them your geek because you will at some point need them! I don’t write code (HTML, CSS, or PHP) and I sure as hell can’t troubleshoot most things. This also means that if I want to change the color of my default font, I can’t figure out how to do that either if it is not one of the theme’s built-in options. Therefore, moving all my content from WordPress.com to a new site at WordPress.org, and setting all of that up to work properly, was definitely above my pay grade. I do pride myself as a do-it-yourselfer but, I also know my limitations. I use Scott Prock over at ProckStar Creative.
The first theme that I chose was based on a recommendation of a friend and you can still see it in use at my other site at NetWorks! Boise Valley. This is a free theme and, in retrospect, I got lucky. It has quite a bit of flexibility built-in and has, for the most part, been trouble-free. Whatever edits my geek needed to make have been minor. When I started this site my natural inclination was to use the same theme. I knew it worked and I was also thinking about branding (people would recognize that both sites came from the same company).
Tip #2 – Think hard about your look – What looks and works great for one business will not necessarily transfer over to the next. I hated that theme at this site! So, off I want to find another free theme. After all, my experience with free, at least up until this point, had actually been quite rewarding.
Tip #3 – Free is free – You generally get what you pay for. If you paid nothing for a theme, it’s not really reasonable to expect support from the guy who developed it. And, what if the theme’s coding is crap? Are you going to demand your money back? My first choice was crap and we gave up on trying to make it work after about 6 months. God only knows how much time and money had been sent straight down the drain.
Tip #4 – Paid does not mean good – Just because you pay for a theme, there is no guarantee you that you are buying quality code or will receive any satisfactory level of support from the developer. I paid $25 for what was now my third theme, bought it from a reputable broker (ThemeForest) and it never did work right and we were constantly having to edit it. Support from the developer sucked and I am going to name that theme … Inspiration. The only inspiration I got from that experience was the inspiration to change themes once again.
Tip #5 – Define your needs – I already knew the basic look of the theme that I wanted and I also wanted to make sure that this look would transfer from the home page to both pages and posts. From there I drew up a simple spreadsheet and listed my “must have” and “nice to have” features. Mind you, from experience I knew that many of these features could be coded by my web geek if needed but, I was going to avoid that at all costs and would suggest that you do so also. In many cases, you would be able to find plugins to fill the gaps but, once again, having a theme that is configured to do those things already is a huge plus. And, if you do custom code for your needs, be aware that unless your theme supports a custom CSS file and/or a child-theme, your edits are at risk of being wiped out in any theme update that may become available and that you choose to accept. Particularly if you are just starting out, Google around and look at other websites for ideas.
Tip #6 – Do your homework – I do like ThemeForest. They have a huge assortment of themes to choose from, most have live previews, and they also have rating systems. I had fallen down terribly before in terms of evaluating developers but, not this time. You will want to …
- Look for 5 stars and there is one hell of a lot of difference between 4 and 5!
- Choose an author with the “Elite” badge.
- Check to see when the theme was last updated. Recent updates are a good indication that they are consistently improving their product.
- How many folks have actually bought this theme? This is another good indication of quality.
- Look at the comments section!! You will find most of what you really need to know there. Are they good or bad? Does the developer respond and how quickly do they do that and how complete are their answers? And, don’t you be afraid to ask questions before you buy the theme. I did. I din’t always like the answers (theme would not do “x”) but, I loved the responsiveness and that responsiveness far outweighed the feature!
- How much do they want for it? I paid $25 for my other theme and I already know what that got me. I paid $55 for this one.
Tip #7 – Choose support over “good looks” – The theme I chose was Karma which is from a company called TrueThemes. Karma met all of my “must-haves” and some, not all, of my “would be nice to haves”. What I saw in comments from others was outstanding. My questions prior to purchase were happily answered in a timely fashion. My support after purchase has been nothing short of awesome including responses on Sundays. Hell, I even worked with them on Christmas day!! There were a couple of other themes that I might have even liked the looks of a bit better but, I am thrilled that I chose the obvious support over those superficial areas!
Tip #8 – Try to conform to your theme instead of the other way around – My final tip is, wherever possible, try to find out ways to make your work-flow correspond with your theme’s capabilities. If you have an unlimited budget, by all means, pay for whatever you want! My budget is not unlimited nor is my time. I’m a one-man show and the less time and money that I need to spend with programmers, the better I like it. In the final analysis, all the little things here and there are probably only even noticed by me and I’m borderline OCD 🙂
Have fun and good luck!
Craig M. Jamieson
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