wpbloggertools-blog - Tumblr blog

wpbloggertools-blog · 4 years

Text

Why You Should Skip Cheap Wordpress Themes

Price is important but it isn't everything. If you were building a house and you had very expensive furniture would you put it in the cheapest house you could find? Probably not. You'd look for a sturdy but affordable house that was within your budget. I doubt the house would be free and I would hope it wasn't cheap. Because long term cheap houses tend to have problems. Your Wordpress theme is the infrastructure of your website. Building it requires a few skills and Wordpress is easier to use than ever. With a good theme that has versatility and support, you can create an amazing website. Affordable (not cheap) themes provide a wealth of features, have fantastic support and play nice with other plugins. Finding a good them makes managing and building a blog much easier than in the past. But I won't recommend cheap, because cheap implies that any low-cost theme will do and that's definitely not been my experience. I've bought cheap Wordpress themes and walked away frustrated with trying to use them and integrate other services with them. Affordable low-cost themes with easy intuitive drop-down menus, sliders and configurable features are available; most of them have excellent support. I'm about to tell you about 2 options I think even the most non-technical person could use.

My favorite is Astra's Theme and I've written a fairly in-depth article about why I think it is the best Wordpress theme for the money. It costs about $60 and I now use it on every site I build. If you'd like to know more about why Astra is my number 1 choice and why I think it is the most affordable Wordpress theme for the money then just click here. Unfortunately, a few of you will stop reading now because you think that you can find a free theme that does it all. Sorry, I was there and it's a huge mistake if you ask me. Sixty bucks over the course of 1 year is $5/mo or about 15 cents /day. How much money do you think you'll make on your blog or business. Is $5/mo for a theme that is intuitive and easy to use worth it? How about $5/mo for a theme where the support actually responds and answers your questions? Free is great and cheap might save a few bucks in the short term at least until there's a problem. So skip cheap Wordpress themes and invest in a low-cost affordable one that makes building your small online business easier. Because at some point you'll have a question and if you're building a blog or website to create an online business then $5/mo isn't really that bad for a theme that makes that blog or website possible. If you still think that $60 /year is too expensive then I recommend you look at GeneratePress. It costs around $39/year, is super easy to use and has very good support. Frankly, I'd still be using GeneratePress except I found Astra; it's a good solid 2nd choice. Like Astra if you use GeneratePress, you can start with the free version and switch to the paid version in the future. You won't get customization with the free unless you know CSS. The paid version allows for customization of typical stuff like font size, style, colors, navigation and sidebar configuration. Like Studiopress, GeneratePress supports both parent and child theme configuration. GeneratePress documentation and how-to videos are also quite helpful; Support is and very responsive support is provided thru a user forum. GeneratePress websites are optimized, built as lightweight themes. Thus it remains speedy once configured. The versatility of changing the way the final site looks is highly customizable with the affordably priced GP premium version. The paid version is super easy to use.No additional drag n drop builder is required because GeneratePress is amazingly flexible through the use of it’s own built-in “customizable options”. It integrates a couple of really nice features (like individual per page banner, backgrounds, and overlays) into pages and posts not normally available in some themes. Changing color, font size and type with GeneratePress is the easiest I’ve used. GeneratePress is a solid candidate as choice amongst the many Wordpress themes available. One con may be that some plugin buttons are not always viewable in the Wordpress page editor when using GeneratePress sections. However, the plugin shortcodes are still quite useable within the page sections. So getting the button to show requires additional configuration. This slight inconvenience is overcome by documentation and support. Here's is one of the easiest themes for beginners and non-coders alike. In fact, it's my theme of choice because of the flexibility built-in. While getting good responsive Wordpress themes seems easy, there’s a ton of themes to choose from. Importantly, the key is finding an easy to use, eye-catching and versatile theme and that's where Generatepress excels. GeneratePress is one of those really nice, stylish customizable themes that provides great features, solid support, and optimal performance. There’s always debate about themes that come with drag 'n drop builders. These builders are popular because many bloggers aren’t interested in coding. Here are just 5 awesome reasons to love the GeneratePress WP theme.

#1 Lightweight themes are faster.

No surprise. It takes a lot of time to get good at coding from scratch. More importantly, blogger and web owners focus on content, not coding. Still, everyone wants a great looking website. A drag n drop builder is seen as a way to create a stylish site without coding. Some themes have that the builder built-in. The problem arises when the theme becomes so loaded supporting code for the builder and features that the resulting website loads at the speed of growing grass. GeneratePress has avoided that pitfall. While GP doesn’t have a drag n drop builder, it's super easy to configure and that is an understatement. GP maintains a lightweight framework which allows this theme to perform well for both blogger and end-user.

#2 Intuitive themes are easy to configure and maintain.

Understanding where and how to configure a theme should be intuitive. Let’s face it. Most prefer a short how-to video or an easy to understand "checkbox- dropdown- fill-in-the-blank" menu versus reading dry documentation. The theme configuration settings of GP are really intuitive, and the customizer menus are easy to understand. Simple dropdown, sliders, and selections make using the theme a snap. Plus, the short video’s available showing each feature are available on GP’s site. (Documentation is available for those so inclined.) The main theme customization is broken into standard sections. Clicking on each slide open a new menu of choices. It’s simple to go thru each adding, color, font, sizes and details. Plus, how the site looks can be viewed simply by clicking on the small icons at the bottom of each menu. These icons represent desktop versus mobile devices. Just from what little is shown, it’s clear to see how easy with color options it is to change settings on the fly. And the color is just one of the many, easy to change features that GP offers. Navigational menu, backgrounds, header, footer, and widget are all configured in a similar manner.

#3 Themes with solid support mean less headaches.

Most free support forums are just that. Post a question, wait a while and hope someone provides an answer. Some paid sites do the same. GP support is responsive and actively involved in user support. Post a question and expect a response within less than 8 hours. That’s on the top end of the support performance bell curve. Search the user ticket forum for others that might have had the same issue is available. Good support makes using this theme that much better.

#4 Themes that have how-to guides are easier to understand.

One of my favorite reasons that GP makes using their theme much easier is the how-to video’s that show the customizing the color, fonts, background, and images. However many other helpful links to tips like optimization, documentation and the help form are available. Plus, GP offers tips on CSS and PHP for hearty souls wanting to go the extra mile in configuring their site.

#5 Themes with extra features make creating a blog easier.

GP has some cool features in addition to the easy changes all the standard areas (font, header, navigation, layout, and color, etc). One of the coolest features is the built-in page sections that come with the premium paid version. Each section not only can contain normal content (images, links, text, video’s, etc); each section can be configured individually within the page to have different backgrounds, parallax effects, overlays, color, and font. Having that really supports styling custom pages for whatever need might arise. Enabling Sections in GP allows changing other features for that page; features like page container width, enabling/disabling certain elements, footer widget, and sidebars. This flexibility thru a couple of checkbox and radio buttons make GP truly user-friendly. If you found this useful, please consider sharing it.

Read the full article

#wordpresstips #smallbusinesstips

0 notes