How to Evaluate and Choose WordPress Themes

Who should read this? And how?

I hope this post is useful for several types of WordPress users who are involved with choosing a theme. Each can read it with different purposes.

The Do-It-Yourselfer

Consider the long-term life of your site. That’s what this article is about.

This post doesn’t explain every factor in choosing your theme. You can find lots of articles that list considerations like branding, type of content you publish, your type of business, and budget. Read those posts, too. They have good information.

Some themes and plugins intrude on WordPress content in a way that locks you into that theme or plugin, especially when used by non experts. I suggest doing things the WordPress way for the best long-term flexibility in design and portability. These days that means Block Themes.

Web Designers and Developers

Consider the best ways to help clients. Consider the design and messaging, of course, but also consider the long-term use of a site and its content.

I suggest doing things the WordPress way because that leads to sites that can be redesigned and content that can be reused virtually forever. It helps to know how content is stored so you can avoid “stomping” on it. That means using design-only themes, and arguably Full Site Editing and the Block Editor, especially for post content. As developers, we should have the skills to add bells and whistles with select off-the-shelf plugins and with custom media, plugins, PHP, HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.

Designers and developers need to know how to add visual pizazz to a site, but I think that’s just part of the job. We should develop sites that are technically sound for the long term. We should create designs that meet client needs today, and that can be updated with other designs and themes well into the future.

Anybody Hiring a Web Designer or Developer

Consider more than the visual design. Some themes look great, offer lots of bells and whistles, and make for a lavish presentation. However, when those themes are used the wrong way, they can make your site slow and difficult to redesign or move in the future.

An advantage of core WordPress is that you can backup, move, redesign, and reuse site content for a very long time; you don’t need to start over again. See Get These Valuable Benefits of WordPress for more info. Block Themes that do things the WordPress way have these long-term advantages.

More specifically, insist that post content be stored the WordPress way, without obstructive code, so that switching to another theme is mostly routine. This is especially important if you have or will create lots of content like product pages, blog posts, or news.

The “Right Way” is Open for All to Decide For Themselves

WordPress is open source software. It’s designed to allow anybody to change how it works in virtually any way. The “right” way is what anybody wants to do. It depends on priorities and purposes. Nobody holds developers to any particular standard.

The Right Way: Design-Only Themes

For me, and indeed for the WordPress Theme Handbook, themes should change only the visual design of a site. They should not add critical functions. Critical functions should be in plugins because plugins usually remain active regardless of the theme. This is from the WordPress Theme Handbook:

It is common for there to be overlap between features found in themes and plugins. However, best practices are:

• Themes control the presentation of content.
• Plugins control the behaviors and features of your site.

Any theme that you create should not add site-critical functionality. Doing so means that a user loses access to that functionality when they change their theme.

WordPress Theme Handbook, https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/getting-started/what-is-a-theme/

Again, it’s open source software, so people can adapt it any way they choose, even if they don’t follow the Theme Handbook.

Where is Content?

Content is in posts and pages and can also be in custom post types. Critical, long-term custom post types can be created with themes, but they should be created with plugins.

Content is organized with the lists of pages and posts in the Dashboard.

What’s in a Design-Only Theme?

Themes should control only the appearance and layout of a site, and this often includes:

• page headers
• page footers
• colors, fonts, text sizes
• the placement and style of navigation menus
• any of the styles available with Cascading Style Sheets including some animations
• images and video used for visual design (This should not include media that is part of post content.)
• templates that control the layout and styles of different kinds of pages
  • post list pages
  • different types of pages and individual pages
  • search results page
  • custom page layouts

Notice this list is about visual appearance, and that’s about all you should expect of a theme. Post content and some repeated content should be left alone by themes.

The WordPress Way of Combining Content and Design

Since early in the history of WordPress, it’s been possible to create themes that leave content alone and affect only the design.

But wait, doesn’t design change content? No, when done properly.

A key principle of web development is that content (text, pictures, HyperText Markup Language code) is separated from design (Cascading Style Sheets, CSS). With CSS, design can change the appearance of content, but it doesn’t change content. (This is over simplified. Take this as a very important principle with some exceptions. Sometimes CSS should be included with HTML elements.)

WordPress has long used this principle. On the other hand, some themes and plugins do not, even when they seem like design-only themes or plugins. Remember, WordPress is open source. In the spirit of open source, it’s left open for anybody to adapt it in any way, prioritizing advantages and disadvantages to anyone’s preferences.

A general classification of themes and plugins that often violate the separation principle is “page builder”. Page builders can be implemented the right way leaving content alone, but they’re very often used to edit content. If page builders are used to edit content in a non-WordPress way, they can make it difficult to reuse content and switch to other themes.

Now with Full Site Editing (see the next section), there’s even more reason to do things the WordPress way.

Full Site Editing (FSE) Since 2021

The Block Editor was released in 2018 and was very well developed by mid 2021. That’s when Full Site Editing became native to WordPress. Before then, you needed to use a page builder or use code editing software to create a theme with custom HTML, CSS, and PHP (executable code). Now with FSE plus the plugin Create Block Theme, you can create, edit, duplicate, and export themes within the WordPress dashboard. You don’t need to write code anymore.

Furthermore, the flexibility of custom code and design is still possible just like it’s always been. Even better, the Block Editor has added cool, new ways to customize.

It’s perfect for many sites, especially for sites that are managed correctly: the theme controls design, plugins add functions, content is saved without obstructive code. It gives you or another admin the ability to edit the theme later. Even if you outsource web design, a Block Theme managed with the dashboard Site Editor has a very broad community for long-term service and support: companies, professionals, themes, plugins, and online learning.

For all these and other reasons, FSE has short- and long-term advantages.

The Code Isn’t Purely Perfect

For completeness I add that in the purest sense, WordPress doesn’t leave content alone. Since the introduction of the Gutenberg Block Editor in 2018, WordPress has been adding HTML comments (<--! --> elements) to content. I think it’s a minor breach of the separation principle because content is still portable. When published with WordPress, most or all of the comments are removed. When migrated to another Content Management System (CMS), the comments are fairly easy to remove manually or automatically.

And CSS isn’t compiled in a single file like it is with classic themes. Instead, only CSS that’s needed is included inline with HTML <style> elements. And there’s a new theme.json file that controls a lot of theme styles. (The theme.json file is beyond this article. Look it up to learn more.) This can seem a little strange for anybody accustomed to traditional ways. However, the traditional way in practice led to lots of unused CSS bloat.

I find that the loss of some “tradition” for the advantages of the Block Editor is a very good trade off. It’s not noticeable to site visitors and most WordPress users.

WordPress is Still a Very Good CMS

WordPress core remains lightweight and non-bloatful. Front-end performance is still very good. Content remains very portable. The Block Editor and FSE adds very useful functions with some departure from historic practices. WordPress remains a very good CMS for short- and long-term use.

Evaluating Types of Themes

Classic (Legacy) Themes

First, classic themes are more likely not to be updated again, so they might not keep up with security and bug fixes. If you have a classic theme, get its update schedule, and evaluate your need for security and updates.

If your site is working, you might not have to update now. Perhaps WordPress will end support for legacy themes some day, but that’s not the case now.

My guess, plan to switch to a Block Theme within…let’s say three years. But that’s just a guess.

Page Builder Themes

If your top priority is lots of point-and-click animations, graphics, and visual pizzazz, a page builder might be a good choice for you. Just be aware that if you’re a novice to web design, you can slow your site with lots of extra functions and lock yourself into the page builder. They offer point-and-click pizzazz, but they have trade offs.

The advantages of page builder themes and plugins include:

• usually have their own version of full site editing
• point-and-click advanced editing
• lots of bells and whistles
• point-and-click functions, no coding required
• some offer support and have a community for support and training

And the disadvantages of page builders include:

• can lock you into always using the page builder for the life of your site or until you rebuild it
• often used by non-experts to create a nice looking site that is implemented badly with bloated code and content that can’t be used with other themes
• often can’t be changed easily to other non-page builder themes
• To get the most of page builders and implement them correctly, you need to learn how your page builder works within the WordPress system. It helps to know HTML and CSS to evaluate the front-end results.

Block Themes

The advantages of block themes include:

• flexible point-and-click design and layout of site structure and content within the WordPress dashboard
• properly separate design from content
• some bells and whistles
• WordPress Full Site Editing
• theme creating, editing, and duplication with the Create Block Theme plugin
• publish good HTML and CSS code
• light-weight code out of the box
• the future of WordPress
• for developers and designers: some new, cool, useful ways of developing, coding, designing
• large community for support and training

And some disadvantages:

• don’t always come with lots of bells and whistles (But the Block Editor has some bells and whistles as is, and you can and often should use plugins for those extras and critical functions.)
• To get the most of Full Site Editing and implement it correctly, you need to learn how block editing and FSE work. It helps to know some basic HTML and CSS.

Conclusion: Choose Design-Only Block Themes if Possible

A Block Theme with the Block Editor and Full Site Editing is a very good foundation for web design and publishing. Add the Create Block Theme plugin, and this combination is very flexible, expandable, transferable, and re-designable. While page builders have some advantages for non-experts and do-it-yourselfers, WordPress has caught up in many ways. Improvements and new features are added with every major update.

The future of WordPress is the Block Editor with block themes, and it remains very good software for designing sites and publishing content. If at all possible, use design-only block themes.