Once you have registered your domain and WordPress Hosting , one of the most important decisions is to choose a free WordPress theme for your website . There are thousands of themes or templates , as many as 10,000+, that’s a lot. In this post we will teach you some tricks to be able to choose your theme in a short time, depending on the needs of your project.

Choose a theme that supports the latest version of WordPress

My main advice is closely related to the functionality and security of your website. The theme you choose must work with the most recent version of WordPress, for three main reasons:

• If your theme is not compatible with the latest version of WordPress, you may be missing out on many essential features of your website.
• It represents a major security breach that may lead to data loss.
• Updating your website plugins depends on the theme you have chosen. If plugins are not updated, functionality issues will increase.

Keep up to date with the latest WordPress versions and make sure that the theme you install supports higher versions. You can find this information in the box on the right side.

Don’t choose a theme that hasn’t been updated in a while

Closely related to the previous point, also look at the date of the last update . A theme that works with the current version of WordPress, but has not been updated in the last year, might not receive any more updates, and that means that sooner or later it will stop working with the most recent version of WordPress.

Use the filters to select the right topic

The most effective way to do this is to use the filters to select a theme that is appropriate for your line of business or the structure you have planned for your website.

You have layout filters : one or more columns, left or right sidebar or grid layout. In features you can check options such as custom menu, flexible header, footer widgets or header image. And finally, in theme , you have categories such as entertainment, blog, photography or news.

Keep in mind that your template must be responsive

In general, almost all themes created in recent years are responsive and adapt perfectly to different screens. But even so, not all themes work equally well.

Before choosing your theme, click on More information and Preview . If you are using a mobile or tablet, you will be able to view it adapted to each screen.

Why is responsiveness so important on mobile? Mobile is where most website traffic comes. How your website looks on desktop is still just as important, but the user experience on phones matters a lot more now, and is sure to increase in the coming years.

Look at the positive reviews

Once you’ve checked that your theme looks good on mobile or tablet devices, check out other users’ reviews before downloading it . The principle of social validity is a very useful heuristic in all kinds of situations. Who hasn’t checked a restaurant’s reviews before making a reservation?

Under Reviews, located on the right-hand side, click on View All. You can filter reviews by keyword and click on each title for more information. The Reviews page also links to support threads, active topics, and unresolved topics. This is very useful for seeing what the most common issues are with the topic (if any) and how responsive the editor is.

Don’t trust unknown authors

Before choosing a free WordPress theme, check who the author is and see if they have other themes uploaded to the repository. Read the reviews and check the general opinions they usually have. Another good indicator of the quality of the theme is the evolution in the number of downloads and the total number of active downloads. You can see this on the main page of each template.

 Don’t download a theme that is too heavy

Choose a theme that is not too heavy (ideally less than 10 MB). To test the speed of any theme, use a speed checker and make sure that the loading times are less than 3 seconds. We have several suggestions for you at this link .

If you are an advanced user or feel like experimenting, you can also edit the theme by reading this post, and reduce some of the code you don’t need.

Consider that your theme should help you with SEO

Using a well-oriented SEO theme can save you a lot of time in optimizing your website, and thus save you a lot of time. How do you know if a theme is good for SEO? At this point, I recommend that you check the opinions of other users and check the features indicated by the editor on the home page: make sure that the design is user-friendly , that it has a URL structure that is easy to track, and that the loading times are fast.

Look at the quality

When you’re just starting out with WordPress, the best option is to go for a free theme that’s scalable. What does this mean? Well, you can start without paying anything, but if you want extra features, you can expand them without having to change themes. Quality and flexibility in the web world are essential.

I hope these tips on how to choose a free WordPress theme have been useful to you. Remember that at WebyTechy we are absolute fans of WordPress, and we have created a fully optimized WordPress to save you time on initial installations. Take a look and install it for free!