A WordPress theme is basically your layout and appearance. Some WordPress themes are free and some are paid. If you’re looking for a theme solely on the basis of cost, I’d recommend searching the WordPress Free Themes Directory and browsing around.
The downside to using a free theme is that if there’s anything you want to change about your layout, you’ll be hard-pressed to find support to guide you through the process. And most free themes don’t have the impressive features that come standard with paid themes.
That’s where paid themes have the clear advantage.
There are thousands of paid themes out there – literally. Thousands. So how do you pick one that’s right for your blog? When you’re doing your Theme shopping, look for the following features:
It can get confusing trying to sort through all the themes out there, so I’ll list a few of my tried-and-true favorites.
Everyone has their own personal tastes, so I can’t make a blanket recommendation without hearing about your blogging goals, style and audience. But here are the ones I use the most:
Technically, Genesis only refers to the parent framework, while individual templates are available in the form of child themes. If you go to the StudioPress website, you’ll find dozens of child themes available – so you can give your blog a quick-and-easy makeover if it strikes your fancy…although admittedly, you should know some CSS coding if you want to get too fancy with it. Other third-party developers have also created skins for Genesis, so you have the amazing flexibility of the Genesis framework without having to hire a professional designer to customize it for you.
Genesis has a killer community support forum (over 101K sites to date) and tons of loyal users. That’s because they have SEO capabilities built right into the theme and gorgeous advanced features like sliders, image galleries, and seamless integration with premium plugins like Gravity Forms. …and when you buy a Genesis theme, you have automatic upgrades for life, so your blog’s design is as future-proof as it gets.
Of course, it depends on the audience you’re serving, but a few of the Genesis child themes really stand out in terms of minimalist design (which helps your readers find what they’re looking for) and a professional feel. Here are a few you might consider:
It’s no secret that one of the surefire ways to draw lots of traffic, especially from Pinterest, is to have gorgeous photos. Foodie Pro isn’t just for food bloggers – it’s great for anyone who wants to showcase images to draw more eyes to their site and get them to stay longer.
Strategically placed ad space is built into Foodie Pro, but one of its best features is the visual index – you can set up an index page to highlight any categories you wish, so readers love to browse your site. And it’s by far the most flexible Genesis theme: with built-in font and color tools, you don’t need a plugin or any knowledge of code to customize the look of your site. And the minimalist styling makes it ideal not just for food blogs, but for any blog that needs a clean, fresh feel.
Check out the Foodie Pro blog theme >>
If you have a lot of information to organize and want to make it easy for your readers to browse lots of material easily, Genesis Magazine Pro is a great option.
It features two navigation menus (so you can separate administrative stuff like Home, About, Contact from your actual content navigation and help readers find what they’re looking for. It also has plenty of ad space built in. And as with all “Pro” Genesis themes, it’s mobile responsive, so it looks great when viewed on any device. Another theme with a similar feel but slightly different styling is News Pro.
Check out the Magazine Pro blog theme >>
The Lifestyle Pro theme offers another magazine-style layout (with excerpts of your posts on a nicely organized home page), with the added feature of a framed-in content space so you can use a background on your design.
This one comes with six different color options built in (blue/green/mustard/purple/red/teal) and as with any Genesis theme, if you’d rather have a straight-up blog layout, you can just deactivate the home page template.
Check out the Lifestyle Pro theme >>
If gorgeous images are your thing (think: food blogs, DIY blogs, decor…), you need to feature them in a bold way. The Daily Dish theme allows you to feature nice photography so your readers experience the eye candy and stick around to explore.
Check out the Daily Dish theme >>
For a traditional but sleek, minimalist blogging theme, Beautiful Pro is a great choice. It’s amazing how different this theme can look, just based on which image you add to the header area. It’s also one of the themes you can use the Design Palette Pro plugin to customize, which makes it ideal if you want to easily change colors or fonts.
Check out the Beautiful Pro theme >>
Elegant Themes has good customer support and the cheapest prices anywhere.
Elegant Themes is a theme house with dozens of premium WordPress themes to choose from. They have dozens of blogging themes to choose from, as well as business themes, newspaper themes, and themes that will give your WordPress site an App feel. You can’t beat the price (Currently $69 for ALL their themes – combined!), so if you visit Elegant Themes and see something you like, it’s a total bargain.
Having worked with Elegant Themes, I’ll say that customizing these themes is somewhat more difficult than with other theme houses, but if there’s a theme you like out-of-the-box, Elegant Themes is a no-brainer. And they do have a fantastic support team that’s super attentive to any questions you post in their support forums.
Make sure to check out the rest of this series! I take you step by step through how to start a blog, with more tutorials added daily!
And if you’re struggling to grow your blog’s subscribers, make sure you sign up for my valuable emails – I’ll send you a free guide on 5 things you can do to increase your subscribers as a special thanks.
How to Start a Blog – the first steps, from buying hosting to installing WordPress
How to Configure WordPress in 5 Simple Steps
Best WordPress Plugins: 15 Essentials Every Blog Needs (Hint: 13 of them are FREE!)
The Best WordPress Themes for Blogs (you’re here)
How to Install a WordPress Theme
…and once you’ve made it all the way through, check out my favorite Blogging Resources.
