Now there are many themes out there to choose from when creating your site with WordPress, how do I choose the right one?
( You can speed past the first section about content and find the 5 best free WordPress themes by clicking here “Quit your jibba jabba” )
The trick is to not over complicate matters with your design, unless you are going for some high concept visually-centric piece, you want to keep your visuals fairly simple.
Overall choose a theme that is related to your content.
If your text related content is key to how you want to get your message across then it should easy to see and easily digestible, and separated into bite size chunks.
You also want your main hook or opening lines to be above the fold (upper visual half of the screen) having a large image may look good visually when someone first lands on your site, but if by doing so it knocks you first 2 paragraphs off and below the fold then its pretty pointless.
Most of the time people generally want to find information fast and be able to consume it quickly, think about your own habits when you are searching online and you will know this to be true, most of the time.
It is often misconceived that people want newer and better visually designed websites, but these over-the-top so called visual stunning sites can just simply confuse and distract people from the actual content of the site.
Keeping you design easy and simple can most times be a benefit to you and the user, making it easy for you visitor to get the information they want from you is key to getting your message across, whether that be a product or latest blog post.
Also mobile devices struggle with these over complicated themes as a lot of the elements wont display on the smaller phones aspect ratio.
There has been a massive sea change the last few years with mobile browsing vs desktop browsing, mobile phones are now pretty even with around 50% of all searches being from mobile devices.
This was as expected and makes complete sense because our mobiles are always with us, and in turn, this matches up with why most of the traffic and transactions are though our mobile.
Finding the Right WordPress Theme
Now with all this in mind, let have a look at some simple responsive WordPress themes
( If you find a theme you like and need help setting up your web page then download the free How to create a website with wordpress PDF guide
This guide takes you from choosing the right domain name and linking it to you hosting account, it also shows you how to quickly set up your settings and your first page ).
Twenty Sixteen
This is the modern version of a popular series of themes, it is simple by design and is great for blog style layouts. The theme I use for this site is actually just a customised version of a twenty sixteen theme.
Twenty Sixteen is a free theme that you can fully customise to meet you own requirements, it doesn’t have to be used for blogging either, by simply changing a few of the settings you could create a decent business page as well as a plethora of other different structured sites .
You can take out the side bar widget and create a great single column site or keep the extra column for blog links or pictures if you need to add further navigation or branding.
Kubera
Kubera is a great free GPL licensed WordPress theme that has a pleasing warm orange and grey colour scheme. It has a great de-saturated style and nice block elements, it is also fully customisable too!
You can use is for blogs, designs, portfolios, even for your own e-shop
This theme has a very “low-fi” indie feel to it and would be great for artists or developers wanting a stylish grungy style website.
Asura
Asura is another great GPL theme that is again stylistic but not overly complicated, it has an interesting default colour scheme, but is also fully changeable.
Asura has lots of customisable functions and layouts that allow you a lot of freedom when designing the websites structure and tweaking it style settings.
This also has quite an indie feel to it and is much more image orientated than some of the other more text based themes.
Its style and layout are dynamic and so are designed to scale, this will ensure it looks impressive on all devices and aspect ratios.
Wordstar
Wordstar is very text centric WordPress theme that would be great a for blog orientated website. This is a theme that is built for clarity and post elements are clearly defined and separated well.
The design is simple and eye catching in a modular way, each of the posts are separated into simple block forms that are designed to grab your attention.
Quick headline style posts, good white space and uncomplicated navigation make for a very sleek and minimalist design.
Lark
Lark is another great text orientated GPL licenced theme that looks great and is easy to use. It has a clean structured design that is perfect for bloggers.
It has simple fluid typography that scales well for readability on all types of devices and has a good amount of white space.
This again is very modular and each post stacks in a visually pleasing way, the interface isn’t too complicated and works well with its two column layout design.
So these are my top 5 free themes that I would suggest if you are looking to get a site built quickly without having to worry about buying a WordPress theme.
The themes I chose are very good for scaling, so should support most devices. Having good scale-ability for your websites is essential in today’s world as your web page could be viewed on a multiple of devices by a multitude of people.
I personally use a customised version and predecessor to the twenty sixteen theme and this works great for me!
If you have found a theme that you like, whether its one I suggested or not, and need help to set it up or connect it with a domain name, then download my free guide:
This will help you find a related keyword domain, which is an underrated and very important step, and then connect it to your site by pointing it to your hosts name servers .