The document discusses evaluating and selecting WordPress themes. It recommends planning content and audience before choosing a theme to ensure it meets needs. Key factors to consider include layouts, customization options, compatibility with plugins like WooCommerce, and support. Themes may come with page builders that add functionality but also bloat. Testing themes is important before purchasing. Understanding a theme's structure and customization options helps ensure it is right.

1. EVALUATING & SELECTING
THEMES
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BeckyDavisDesign.com @beckyddesign

2. WORDPRESS THEMES
• Control the layout structure, look and feel
● Child themes allow for customization without
worrying about breaking things or updates
• Commercial themes often come packaged with
more
● Sliders
● Page builders* – be very careful here
● Other “must-have” plugins
• Thousands and thousands available

3. PLANNING
• The more you have planned ahead of time, the
better!
• Things you should know:
● Who are your customers or Audience?
● What do you want your customers to do?Call to
call to action
● How will this site solve your customers’
problem?
BeckyDavisDesign.com @beckyddesign

4. WHO IS YOUR AUDIENCE?

5. SITE TYPES
• Brochure - Basic static pages, simple form
● What kinds of layouts are available?
• Informational - Regularly Updated
● Do you need something different for Posts vs.
Pages?
• E-commerce
● Look for themes that are built for shopping and
have WooCommerce compatibility

6. PLANNING
• Things you should have an idea about:
● Branding
• Visual interface to ‘set tone/expectations’, based
on your audience and corporate culture
• Logo, Colors, Look and Feel
• Focus on good design, not clutter
● Content (Message or ‘Pitch’)
• Written copy (Optimized for Search Engines Humans
with keywords)
• Product photos or other images
• Video or Audio

7. PLANNING
• Structure
● Flow chart of content =
menus
• What links to what
• How pages are
categorized (Do you
sort by color or style?)

8. MORE PLANNING!
• Examples
● Competition
● What you love (functionality, color, style, etc.)
● What you hate
• What you NEED now, what would be nice later
● Sites can be built in stages, as long as it’s planned for
• Whew! I just wanted to pick a theme!
• Picking a theme without knowing your content is
like buying a house without knowing how much
room you need.

9. FINDING A THEME IS HARD
• Start here: wordpress.org/themes
● You can do this from the Appearance>Themes as well
● Pick a free one, add some content, take if for a test drive
• Many themes are designed around a business type
or a blog style
• IGNORE the images and content in the demo
• LOOK at the structure instead
• SEPARATE form from function – that’s what
plugins are for

11. BACK TO YOUR CONTENT
• Do you have giant images for the hero area or slider?
• Do you need separate areas to highlight different
things?
• Will your logo work in the space provided?
• Does the main menu work in space/structure
provided?
• Do you have the skills/software needed to edit photos
to fit?
• Do the colors work for you?
• Are the fonts easy to read?

12. FEATURES TO LOOK FOR
• Fully responsive
• Layout options that you need:
● Full width, with sidebar etc.
• Can you change colors or fonts? (Do you need to?)
• WooCommerce ready?
• Support?
• SOON - ‘Gutenberg ready’
• Beware of too much!

13. CUSTOMIZER
• A lot of themes use this to control your home
layout and many other aspects of your site

14. PAGE BUILDERS
• Divi, Visual Composer, WP Bakery, Beaver Builder,
Elementor
• Can you change the theme and keep the content?

15. PLUNGE IN AND TEST
• Test for free first if possible
• “Premium” is really about support and features.
● Hard to test, but asking “pre-sales” questions is a
good way to start.

16. THEME STRUCTURE
• Understand where the files are: ALL themes
(and plugins)live in wp-content.

17. POPULAR THEMES
Recommended to me by others, not an endorsement.
• Divi - by Elegant Themes, Visual page builder
• Avada - by Themefusion, Fusion page builder, many (too many?) options
• Astra - Choice of Elementor or Beaver Builder
• X-theme - by Themeco, Cornerstone page builder
• Beaver Builder - Beaver page builder
• StoreFront - The base WooCommerce theme with child options, no page
builder, ecommerce forward

18. FURTHER READING
• https://wpengine.com/blog/dos-donts-wordpress-theme/
• https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-themes/selecting-the-
perfect-theme-for-wordpress/
• https://themeisle.com/blog/test-a-wordpress-theme/
• https://pippinsplugins.com/wordpress-page-builder-plugins-
critical-review/ Read this before commiting to a page builder
theme
BeckyDavisDesign.com @beckyddesign