How To Choose A Premium Wordpress Theme

Installing a premium Wordpress theme can be one of the fastest and easiest ways to really improve the looks of your Wordpress web site.

Because Wordpress is free you don't have to waste your money purchasing it,so with the money you'll save you can very well afford to purchase a great looking premium theme-and it'll still be at a lower cost than a custom-designed web site.

If you're not familiar with Wordpress, you can read all about it at www.wordpress.org.

When you purchase a premium theme you can sidestep the often times shoddy work that shows up in free themes. I'm not saying free themes aren't any good, because many of them are themes, but often a lot of the detail work that goes into a really good premium theme is missing. A lot of people can put together a free theme and offer it to the public, but it requires a lot more skill, care, and dedication on the part of the creator to design themes people are actually willing to pay money for.

One the other hand, just because you pay for a theme doesn't necessarily mean it's worth what you paid for it. There are some bad premium themes, some good premium themes, and some great premium themes. And even the good and great ones may not provide what you need to exactly fill your needs.

This article is geared towards helping you make informed and intelligent decisions when choosing premium themes.

Some items we will discuss:

1. Things you should consider and plan for before you even start looking at themes.

2. How can you best assess a theme's quality?

3. What you should be getting for your money when you purchase a premium Wordpress theme.

Section 1: Needs, Wants, and Expectations

The first thing you should do when selecting a premium theme is to gauge your own needs, wants, and expectations. You most certainly can't pick the right theme if you don't even know what's right for you and what you really need.

So, first step, before you jump in and start looking at all of the really cool themes and get all excited about the really fancy designs, you need to figure out exactly what it is that you really need and want. What do you want your site to look like, and what do you want it to do?

And even before you do that first step, you should probably understand exactly what you're getting when you purchase a premium theme.

What, exactly, makes a theme a premium theme?

No discussion on premium themes would be complete if it didn't answer a very basic question: What, exactly, is a premium theme?

There are a lot of different opinions out there on what a premium theme should provide, including but not limited to: customization, documentation, support, higher quality code, better "design" work, etc.

What it really amounts to though is that a premium theme is simply a theme you pay for, it's as simple as that. All the other potential extras and goodies that you may get with the theme that you purchase depend on what the creator of the theme actually delivers to you.

One of my favorite theme providers is Revolution and you can visit their site and see examples and demos of what's available in premium themes for your Wordpress web site.

A new and really neat looking feature that has just become available from iTheme is flash-like fading photos on the front page. These create a really great looking effect. Take a look at the demo of Titanium Premium Wordpress Theme to see this in action.

It's a fact, not all premium theme creators are equal, and so it follows that not all premium themes are equal. Everyone has a different opinion on what makes a theme outstanding and worthy of the "premium theme" title.For instance, one premium theme creator may have a ton of professional experience while another may only produce themes as a sideline or hobby. Both may produce themes that are equally good but you'll get a different experience from each.

If you elect to buy a theme from a hobbyist you shouldn't expect the levels of support a pro-theme creator can offer. If you buy a theme from a company that offers premium themes as a sideline, you might get terrible or non-existant service. These are things you need to consider before shelling out your money.

Bottom line, do your research, don't let slick marketing and hyped up sales jargon fool you, and make your decision based on facts.

What do you need in a website, what do you need it to do?

Before you start picking and buying themes you need to make some preliminary decisions. If you don't do your homework now, you will probably end up regretting it later. The most important thing to figure out right now is what you need your website to do.

What type of content do you need to manage?

• Do you need blog capabilities on your site (news, portfolio, press releases, catalog, etc.)? • Does your site need a specific call to action (such as an e-commerce component)? • How many pages will your site need? • Will those pages need a hierarchy as far as the menu system goes? • What do you want to show or feature on your homepage?

These are the sort of questions you need to answer now. You're trying to figure out exactly what you need from your website. Once you have that sorted out, it becomes much easier to find a theme that offers what you need.

What kind of theme should you buy?

One of the most common mistakes people make in choosing a theme is assuming it will fit their needs. Premium themes come in all shapes and sizes and colors and have a wide variety of features available. Some focus in on a very specific need while others focus on generic blogging.

Some themes are designed to put the focus on the content that is on the web site. At the other end of the spectrum are the corporate themes. These tend to focus on static pages and relegate the blog type content to a small news section . The key here is to not make assumptions about what the theme will or won't do, check it out and make sure.

And remember, just because Wordpress is a blogging platform doesn't mean that any theme will be great for blogging. Wordpress is extremely flexible and highly customizable and more and more themes are focusing on sites that don't focus on blogging at all.

What features do you need?

Before you start shopping for themes you need to decide what features you need from your theme. Some features may appeal to you when you read about the theme and view the site demo, but if you don't really need them then you may possibly be paying for something you'll never use.

In some cases those fancy features could actually interfere with or conflict with what you do actually need. Finding the right theme for your needs before purchasing it is much more practical than finding and purchasing a cool looking theme and having to bend and sacrifice your needs to make it work.

Here are just a few examples of some features that are available on premium themes:

• Option to have a featured post on the home page instead of the latest post

• Featured photographs from Flickr and others

• Featured video(s) from YouTube and others

• Advertising integration (Adsense, etc)

• Advertising management features available

• Optional color themes to choose from and implement

• Control panels for easily adding tracking code or feed URLs

• Header image replacement, resizing, and cropping capabilities

• Contact form (so you don't expose your email address to spammers)

• Tabbed sidebars

• Tabbed featured posts

• Multiple position choices for sidebars and widget capable sidebars

• Multiple page layouts

• Menus auto generated from Wordpress pages

• Menus auto generated from categories

• Menus generated from the blogroll if desired

• Manual menu control

• Drop down menus

• Built in asides / sideblog

• Advanced search functionality

• Niche specific templates; e.g. real estate, auto sales, photography, news, etc

• E-commerce integration if desired

• Image / banner rotation if desired

• Reordering the home page

• Alternative graphics packs

• And more...

Not all themes will include all of the features shown above, and you also won't need or use all of the above features. That's why you need to determine in advance what features you need.

How much customization are you really capable of and comfortable with?

If the very thought of writing or changing code or installing and activating plugins makes you nervous, you better make sure you pick a theme that has everything you need right out of the box. On the other hand, if you're OK with writing or tweaking code, installing plugins or adjusting the CSS, then you can be a lot more flexible when you choose a theme.

A lot of the features shown above are built right into a lot of premium themes, and many of them can easily be added to themes with plugins that are readily available. If you're at ease making changes and installing plugins yourself, it will give you a little more leeway in choosing a theme you like but which doesn't have each and every feature you wish to have.

Next up, in Part 2, we'll go over specific details on what to look for when choosing your premium theme.

If you're just getting started with Wordpress and need a little help getting it installed on your web site, I've provided a short video below that will help you out.