There are more than 11,000 WordPress website templates available today. The possibilities for customization are almost endless! But with all of those choices, how can you possibly select the right theme for your business?
It can really be daunting, right?
Creating an amazing website for your business is obviously important. You want it to be industry-appropriate, but also unique. Your website should reflect your brand identity and highlight your one-of-a-kind values and personality.
It can be hard to know what to do when you’re overwhelmed by choice.
In this article, we’ll walk you through choosing the best theme for your business, and how to install it once you’ve decided!
Choosing Your Theme
WordPress website templates can provide a ton of inspiration, but the number of choices can be intimidating. Here are some tips for deciding which one is best for you:
- Make a list. Make a list of features you want ahead of time, and then look for a theme that helps support your ideas and goals. The best themes offer a whole suite of features – from page and post builders, SEO optimization, to image galleries.
- Go for responsiveness. With a significant amount of website traffic coming from mobile devices, it should be safe to assume that all themes are designed to be responsive – but that’s just not the case. To be safe, paste the link for the theme’s demo page in Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test page.
- Review supported plugins. The best part about WordPress is all the plugins! They make it possible for you to do literally anything with your site. Before you choose a theme, take a look at the plugins it can support. If you plan on using one that isn’t listed, ask the developer if it will work just to be sure.
- Check for updates. Most themes will provide a “last updated” date along with a set of notes. You want to stick with themes that are updated often and have a history of bug fixes. While a lot of bug fixes might seem like a bad thing, it’s actually not. All themes will encounter bugs at some point – you want to use one where the developer actively fixes them.
Installing a Theme in WordPress
Now that you’ve selected the perfect theme, it’s time to install it. Here’s how:
- Download the theme’s zip file to your computer
- Login to your WordPress admin area and go to Appearance » Themes page
- On top of the themes page, you need to click on the Add New link.
- This will take you to the Add New Theme page. You can use this page to look for free themes to install. But since we have already downloaded the theme, you simply need to click on Upload theme link at the top.
- When you see the theme upload box, click on the “choose file” button to select the theme zip file you downloaded to your computer earlier and then click on the Install Now button.
- WordPress will now upload the theme from your computer to your website and install it for you. Once it is done, you will see a success message with links to preview or activate the theme.
- If you do not want to use a theme right away, then you can click on the live preview button to test out the theme without activating it.
Note that you will have to activate a theme in order to use it on your website.
We hope these instructions will help you feel more comfortable choosing among the thousands of WordPress website templates and installing a new theme. Need web hosting for your website? Get the power of WordPress Hosting from InMotion Hosting.