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What do you look for in a GREAT Wordpress theme?

by Toby Lewis
18 replies
Free or paid, what are the best features you see in wordpress themes? Obviously design is a big factor, but even if it looks good, are there any annoying things that will put you off a theme?
#great #theme #wordpress
  • Profile picture of the author Watchman220
    Totally ANNOYING THINGS ABOUT WORDPRESS THEMES.

    1. Looks awesome (has no options) for the unskilled.
    If you are building a website for someone...and you want them to be able to "work a little" at changing colors and sizes of widgets etc...it does not work out well when the "AWESOME" looking template comes with zero options.

    2. MENUS...or lack therof. I personally like the themes that auto build menus from the pages created...not just the default categories. Submenus are important too...I do not like a theme that makes you go build every menu with the menu builder...call me lazy.

    3. Themes that support the basic switcharoo of static page and blog page...are essential. Unless someone is just blogging...and that's it...it sucks when you end up with a cool looking template that will not let you use it as a Static Content Management system. It's possible to tweak it...but who wants to do that? Not me.

    That's about all for me.

    The Watchman
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  • Profile picture of the author Dimian
    having an all in one editor is pretty crucial for me as i'm not too familiar with HTML or programming in general
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  • Profile picture of the author Kecia
    I love themes that have lots of customization options. I know nothing about CSS, so I can't even change the font type or size for themes without a section of settings dedicated specifically to those types of changes. I also like those that come with a few different color schemes.
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    KeciaHambrick.com - Blogger. Content Creator. Social Media Enthusiast.
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  • Profile picture of the author stoogefest
    A theme gravitating around the red, black and white colors is great. Just like the Warrior Forum theme, I like the contrast and sweetness that these colors create when mixed together.

    A big chunk of white for the content, surrounded by a red frame and separators, and stressed by a layer of black for basic outlining. Other than that - a simple theme that would comfort the viewer's eyes and direct them to the juicy parts of the content, which would be easily adjusted to contrast from the theme :S

    I hope that wasn't too complicated.
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    Like this single-shot sales page? It's yours!
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  • Profile picture of the author magiclouie
    Originally Posted by Toby Lewis View Post

    Free or paid, what are the best features you see in wordpress themes? Obviously design is a big factor, but even if it looks good, are there any annoying things that will put you off a theme?
    Sorry if I can't answer your questions directly but I thought of sharing you my other thread, http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post4982709

    I am talking about the headway theme here that might be of help in answering your questions.

    Thanks,
    Louie Tugas
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  • Profile picture of the author martyJames
    I like elegant themes - look great and relatively easy to put together
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  • Profile picture of the author AmandaT
    I like themes with a lot of options. My favorite theme has color options so I can pick a color theme from a menu rather than needing to change it all on my own. This means I can quickly and easily customize my theme for each website.

    I'm not good with CSS so anything that is set up so I can easily edit it works great for me!
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  • Profile picture of the author UMS
    It really depends on the nature of the site. I use a variety of themes for my sites. Some suit a particular purpose (eg: blog, sales page, auto-blog, static site, adsense etc) better than others.

    I prefer to use a theme that has good support and is actively developed. There's a lot of really good looking themes that get abandoned and then you discover they have problems with Wordpress upgrades or that they have security vulnerabilities.
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  • Profile picture of the author Big Al
    I want simplicity so I can focus on content.

    I like to be able to choose between one and two sidebars and the ability to customize it (ie. the colours, headers and menus) easily.
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  • Profile picture of the author riysoft
    Well i look for good header and slider.
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  • Profile picture of the author macknox
    No theme or design is perfect... it natural to try to tweak it to fit it to what you think it should be.

    I use Genesis framework and the child themes... lots of options... fairly easy to tweak.
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  • Profile picture of the author MattStrange
    Themes that are well coded and commented.

    For example many themes include jQuery in the header.php file like this:

    PHP Code:
    <script type="text/javascript" src="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/js/jquery-1.4.2.min.js"></script>
    This is bad practice and the wp enqueue script function should be used instead.

    Matt
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  • Profile picture of the author sakthiganesh
    I prefer to have the theme which is SEO friendly,minimal,Typography and fast loading
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  • Profile picture of the author Anang Andriana
    I would like the theme that actively developed, the theme which has good support; I got it from the forum. I use bluesense by dosh dosh, it's very good for adsense and FREE!!!
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  • Profile picture of the author Michael Gibson
    A featured posts slider is almost a must for me as well as the ability to add "spotlight" posts. It must also be highly widgetized and allow for a ton of customization.
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  • Profile picture of the author tlrix
    For quick and easy sites I use default themes but for more heavy projects I order a custom theme ..
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  • Profile picture of the author RyanJohnson
    What do you look for in a GREAT Wordpress theme?
    Clean code. Don't want someone who writes crappy php. Everything else is easily customizable for myself because I know my way around the themes well and a fairly decent knowledge of html, php, and css.

    For someone without those skills, I would simply recommend staying with one of the more popular themes with a lot of options. More expensive, but that's the price you pay until you have that knowledge/skill. Plus, those popular themes didn't get popular for no reason.
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  • Profile picture of the author BabyMama
    I think widget support is pretty crucial and menus as another warrior mentioned
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