Free WordPress Themes – 10 important things to look for in Free WordPress Themes

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There are a million articles on the internet today that will list out all Free WordPress Themes. I will also post a similar article on Free WordPress Themes that appealed to me. If you have been following my posts, you would have guessed that not all Free Themes are dependable. If your primary interest is not programming and coding PHP or CSS files (my sure isn’t!) then you would have to keep the following in mind while choosing a theme for your website & blog.

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The 10 very important features that you need to look out for (and they are in no particular order):

1. Simplicity – layout is clean and colors are soothing to the eye. Bright contrasting colors could seem attractive, but it also adds a visual weight to your site. A white or off-white background with black font writing is more pleasing to the eye. White fonts on black background look very attractive but hurts the eye if there is too much to read. Photo & Video blogs & websites do well with a dark background. Microsoft MSDN Library website has tons of papers on simple ways to improve readability. Here is one .

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2. 2 or 3 Column structure – this is extremely popular and fits right into the "obvious" pattern of readers. By default, one column has the main content while the other (or other 2) are used either for navigation or for sidebar information. If you plan to put up ads, choose a theme that has one of the sidebars as either 200 pixels or 250 pixels wide. The ads of these 2 sizes (200 x 200 or 250 x 250) have higher impression CPM & also a higher conversion rate. The other column should be at least 160 pixels wide. This is the minimum width for any skyscraper ad format (160 x 600 pixels). Another width is 180 pixels (for 180 x 400 pixel ad sizes).

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3. Wide Content Area – unless you have rich content in multiple categories, you would like to expose as much content as possible in the main reading area. If the main content area is too thin, it becomes difficult to read. Usually a width of about 500 pixels is comfortable to the eye to read. If you decide to go for a Magazine Theme (also called a Newspaper Theme or a Press Theme ), look for ones that have a wide area for the Latest Feature for all the categories.

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4. Tables-less structure – most of the themes are designed in CSS files (this is usually the style.css file in your themes folder). The entire layout is created and designed in the CSS file. There area few that still uses traditional HTML tables to form a layout. Tables make it hard for search engines to look through your content. Look for themes that are table-less. Most of them are anyways. But when you modify any of the files to suit your need, please do not introduce tables. That spoils the search engine friendliness of your website.

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5. SEO friendly – it is difficult to know upfront if a theme is Search Engine friendly. Unless the designer mentions it on the Themes download page, you have to read the PHP files to understand if the theme is prone to any unfriendliness to search engine robots. In case you are not sure, please read my post on how you could make some quick changes to make it friendly. Here is a quick list of all Optimization articles .

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6. Well Tested Themes – many themes are promoted as free while in fact they are not. Some themes contain code that the designer has purposely put in to promote themselves. Themes released under the Open Source Copyright should not contain such malicious codes. You are required to acknowledge the creativity of the designer in a manner they request (usually through a footer link). You can modify the theme but still have to retain copyright acknowledgment.

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7. View for Browser Compatibility – people use Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari & Netscape Navigator most frequently. There are differences in the way each of these browsers work. The main difference is in the way these browsers interpret CSS information. Since the themes are all based on CSS, test the theme in all the browsers before you install them. Look for the following, they are the most frequent problem areas across different browsers:

• all the sidebars can be seen
• images are not mis aligned
• borders appear correctly
• margins, padding and spacings appear correctly
• text, image & video are aligned properly
• fonts are not distorted
• links open correctly
• advertisements, pop-up & pop-under ads work correctly
• audio is played correctly

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8. Theme Support – as the blogging software is upgraded, the themes may need to be upgraded too. This is not always necessary, especially if your Theme is using the common functions of the blogging software. But if your theme has complex functions and uses custom fields, you may need to verify that your theme works with the upgraded blog. Downloading a free theme that has a good support from the designer is a big advantage.

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9. Quick Load time – Load time is the time it takes to type in the web site’s URL and the site to show up on your computer. Some CSS design could be erroneous or very complex which causes the website to take a long time to show up. Typically, if your website takes more than 3 seconds to show up on a broadband connection, it could take more than 10 – 15 seconds on a slower dial up connection.

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10. Theme Width – themes are created as either fixed width or fluid width. As the name indicates, the fluid width tries to adjust to the width of your computer screen (browser size) to a certain extent where as the fixed width will appear as a constant width in every computer screen & browser size. Though both work perfectly well, the fluid one has a slightly more advantage for smaller screens.

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Bonus Tips on a few important things to look out for while choosing Free Themes:

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1. Most of the themes are widgetized these days. It saves a lot of time if your theme is widget ready. WordPress now comes with the widget capability built in.

2. The Theme follows the standard naming conventions of the blog – that is, it has header.php, single.php, page.php, index.php, categories.php, search.php etc. Unconventional naming could become a problem if you are modifying any of the files.

3. Built in Plugins – Many developers & designers now create themes with extremely popular and essential plugins built in. A few like Related Posts, Post Sharing ability, JQuery Tabs, Most Popular Posts, Most Commented Posts, Most Emailed Posts etc. Having them built into the Theme saves you the time & the trouble of installing & making them work!
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Some of the most respected designers of Free WordPress Themes are:

Justin Tadlock – http://justintadlock.com/

Jai Nischal Verma – http://www.blogohblog.com/

Chris Pearson – http://www.pearsonified.com/

Steve Arun – http://www.va4business.com/

Ryan Caldwell , Raj Dash – http://performancing.com/

Mehmet – http://www.gabfire.com/

There are a lot more than I could name here. I shall update this list as & when I come across some brilliant work by new designers.