Posted on Mar 31, 2014

The Top WordPress Themes

The Top WordPress Themes

 

Just as there are tons of WordPress plugins, thousands of different WordPress themes exist today. And when you’re building a new website, lots of options are a good (and bad) thing. Lots of choice can be overwhelming, so how do you choose? You can spend days looking at themes and still not be sure which one is right. So to help, here are the top WordPress themes:

 

There are two main categories of WordPress themes to choose from: paid and free. Paid themes often have more features but that does not necessarily mean they are the best choice. A great free theme will always be better than a buggy-paid-theme that does not always work like it should.

 

Your choice should depend on the website that you are building. A free theme may do everything you need if your website is small or is a personal blog. But if you are building a business website or an online store you’ll probably need a paid theme.

 

Free WordPress Themes

 

So let’s start with free WordPress themes. They often come with a powerful support community. They’re also usually robust and bug-free. Here are three of the best:

 

·         Responsive – Responsive has been downloaded over one million times and it gets an average user rating of 4.7 out of 5. As far as statistics go, it does not get much better than that. As its name suggests it looks good on all devices including mobile devices and tablets. There are nine page templates, six template layouts, social media tools, and more. It is also WooCommerce compatible.

·         Twenty Ten, Twenty Eleven, Twenty Twelve, and Twenty Thirteen – This is actually four different themes all created by WordPress.Org. They are basic but they work well. Plus they are tried and tested on millions of different websites. Each is also lightweight and they are easy to customize. The latest, Twenty Thirteen, goes for flexibility, vibrant colors, and attractive typography.

·         Sixteen – Sixteen comes with several features that are usually only available with paid themes. This includes good multilingual support and a responsive slider. It is also stylish and attractive.

 

Paid WordPress Themes

 

The extra features that you get with a paid WordPress theme can often make the difference between a nice website and an outstanding website. Usually paid themes also come with better documentation and support, and they are easier to configure and customize. Here are three great choices:

 

·         Avada – Avada is one of the best selling WordPress themes available and has been around since 2012. The developers regularly update it as necessary and there is good support documentation. It is responsive and retina ready and comes with unlimited colors and fonts. There is a megamenu, premium sliders, one page parallax, WooCommerce integration, and more. The cost is around $55.

·         U-Design – U-Design is a theme packed full of features but it also comes with great support. For example in the support forum there are more than 20,000 questions and all of them have been answered. Other themes at the same price (about $55) struggle to respond to handfuls of questions, but not the team behind U-Design. In terms of features it is responsive and comes with seven sliders and 600+ fonts. It is WooCommerce compatible and it comes with some excellent SEO features to make your site more attractive to search engines. And it is flexible so it suits those who want a website out-of-the-box as well as those who want to get under the hood to do some tinkering and customization.

·         Enfold – Enfold is an ultra-flexible theme that is responsive and retina ready. Multiple slideshows are supported and you can even create 3D versions. And there are loads of layouts making this suitable for everything from a business website to an ecommerce website to a portfolio website. It costs around $55.

 

Selecting a WordPress theme is a big decision. To make the process easier choose a theme that has good support, is well tested, conforms to latest technical standards (responsive, retina ready etc.), and that is flexible and customizable.

 

Editor's Note: Looking for more themes? A collection of Premium WordPress Themes is available for download through Mojo Marketplace in your control panel.

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