WordPress is the most popular publishing platform today – over 20% of all the websites on today’s internet are using this popular blog platform / CMS to deliver their content to the reader. Its popularity is due to its flexibility (it can be used for virtually anything with the right set of plugins), its stability (it’s not easy to completely ruin a WordPress installation) and its good looks, thanks to the thousands of themes available for it. But the large number of themes is exactly the reason why it is so hard to choose the perfect look for your website. Here are a few things that might help you do that.

1. Choose a theme to reflect your blog’s destination

When it comes to strictly personal blogs, the look is not the most important thing. Of course, even if you share your thoughts and life events with your readers, your blog should look clean, easy to use and as plain as possible. When it comes to niche blogs, though, things change a bit. You will want the looks of your blog to reflect its topic – nobody would like to read about fly fishing on a My Little Pony themed website, would they?

For niche blogs the best theme type is usually the so-called “magazine“. These themes are similar in nature to how online newspapers look and feel – with many images to reflect the content of the articles you publish and easy to read headlines.

2. Free vs. Paid

Free themes are good, but think twice before choosing a free theme for your blog – especially when you’re planning to attack a niche, and even more especially (is this a thing?) if you plan to make money off your blog. Free themes are available to anyone, meaning that even your competitors could go for the same look as you, which is never a good thing. Besides, you could find yourself linking to websites you haven’t even heard of – links like “download Platinum Play online slots now! could show up in your blog’s footer without you knowing. And that can be bad.

Paid themes – so-called “premium” themes – are a much better choice, but they are not perfect either. As above, the competition could go with the same look. At least this time there is no risk of linking to third parties that would ruin your reputation…

3. Build your own

The best choice for most blogs – especially niche publications with the goal of generating profit – is to hire a web design team to build your own blog theme for you. This is also the most expensive way, but it is the only one that can assure you that your website will look, feel and behave exactly the way you want it to. This is a must if you are really serious about publishing your content – it denotes professionalism and dedication, and it is well received by the audience.

Republished by Imagincreation