How to select a free WordPress theme

August 31st, 2010 | Add a Comment

Imagine getting set up with a 40 page website costing just R720, including your unique website address (your own domain name) and hosting! We can help you.

Have a look at some free WordPress themes.
This second link to free WordPress themes is the one to choose for a more detailed selection process. We give you details here below on how to use the search filter there – and this is very important for if you get your WordPress blog hosted with us

This is the one to use, with the more detailed selection filter. (click here)

Understand that these free WordPress themes are wordpress.org ones – the type of free WordPress themes to use for sites that will have a unique domain name, (needing hosting and domain registration) and not the totally free WordPress sites, where your domain name would end in wordpress.com

Also, there are less free WordPress themes to choose from for a totally free wordpress.com site, than there are for a free-theme self-hosted WordPress site.

How to use the filter:

Check off one colour choice under the colours heading, and don’t check off anything else, for starters.
Then you need to click the “find themes” box, and scroll down to free theme results that show up. (do some more searches like this, unchecking the colour box you chose before, and checking a new colour – don’t forget to always then click “find themes” and scroll down after each search you do, to see the options that come up in the results.)

Now do another search too, where you check off other boxes for your preferences as well:

There are five headings for different boxes to check off: Colours, Columns, Width, Features, Subject.

We recommend:

Under the Colours heading, check off any one colour you’d like to see in the free themes.

Under the Columns heading, check off right-sidebar – don’t worry about the amount of columns, clicking those often gives you hardly any results – we recommend the right-sidebar over the left-sidebar, as, although not 100% certain, believe search engines are happier reading the sidebar on the right, rather than the left – you want to keep your main content (your information, main keywords, your blog posts, or articles) toward the left.

Under the Width heading, don’t worry to tick off anything, but if needing help from us down the line, we prefer to work with the fixed-width and most results show the fixed-width themes anyway (if not checking off any box), but if you do decide on checking off a box, rather check off the fixed-width one.

Under the Features heading, check off any boxes that you think might apply to you. If wanting to really try and do everything without any help, and just by using free online WordPress lessons, and you think you may want to try your hand at a little extra customisation yourself, then check off the boxes that might apply. If quite happy with the themes without checking any of these boxes in the Features list, then there’s no need to check off any boxes in the Features list – you will probably get more results of themes to look through if leaving this blank. Also, remember, that you can change your theme at any time, even after your blog is live on the Internet (and check off any new boxes you might decide on when using the free WordPress theme filter again.) Changing your WordPress free theme does not delete your actual text content if done properly. You may just have to save and adjust your widgets a bit.

What is a widget? It’s an area on the sides of your main text that appears on every page of your blog.

The Subjects heading can just be left blank too.

Quick summary for basic settings when using the theme filter:

Colours: choose one
Columns: choose right sidebar
Width: leave blank, or choose fixed width
Features: leave blank
Subject: leave blank

Click: find themes

Scroll down and view the choices.

Also see Getting a Website or Blog: Where do I start? to get some more information about choosing to get either a website or a WordPress blog. Which one is best for your purposes?