I am new to WP and am trying to select a theme. There must be many thousands of themes.
Hasn’t someone started a business to help people pick a theme?
I would be happy to show someone my homepage design and wireframes and what I would like the site to do, then have them recommend a theme that works for me.
There are sooo many people on here trying to pick themes, and very few are being responded to or they are being given the same theme suggestions.
Since I am a cynic, I assume that many of the theme authors are giving recommendations.
I love free advice as much as anyone, but if nothing else I have learned that I should make the right theme selection the first time, and since I have no idea how large this “Theme Forest” is or how to find all of the “Foundries”, I need and would be, as i’m sure others would also, happy to pay someone to help me.
Yes, there may be themes which perhaps resemble what you are after or have some features/functionality to get you started, but…
There are many other considerations e.g. how experienced are you editing themes? Do you need a page builder? Do you need custom functionality? If so how would anyone know for certain if a theme is compatible with that? How/where is the theme being hosted? etc. etc.
Perhaps more complicated - what if what you want is really simple. Then there will be hundreds of options. What would you want? Someone to just pick a small number of them.
What happens if someone advises you and then you don’t end up liking the item? What if then the author soon removed the item from the marketplace? Are you going to be ok with that? Would you hold the person who suggested that theme responsible?
I do understand your position but you are asking people to advise free/paid for on items that ultimately they don’t own or control so it will always be subjective and be mora bout the person advising’s experience or preference.
Thanks, those are all really great points. Maybe my situation is a little different because I am looking to build out a more sophisticated site (multivendor marketplace) that can handle hundreds of vendors and 10,000+ items. This is combined with the fact that my site will be B2B and needs to be very usable (clean/simple), with sophisticated filtering/product taxonomy requirements.
The other thing that makes my site different is that it’s not really a ‘shopping’ site. Visitors coming to my site will be looking for something very specific. This whole idea of ‘popular’ items and ‘popular’ stores is not relevant to my site.
All of this combined with the fact that I am not a developer, yet I am a perfectionist. I have reviewed countless blogs/videos on how to make sure you pick the right theme. Much of it boils down to making lists of what you want and don’t want, which I have done, but I don’t have anywhere near the time to review all of the themes to find out what each theme has or doesn’t have what I need.
Sorry, That was a verbose way of saying that I still think there is room in this space for someone to ask me all of the questions that you just did and learn about what I am looking for, then with their knowledge of themes that exist in the market make 2-3 recommendations.
If I didn’t like them later, well then I guess I didn’t do enough research into the recommendations.
Thank you for your thoughts, it does help me understand the issues better.
The point we didn’t make before is that there are thousands of items (on envato alone) and unfortunately, it’s impossible for anyone to be properly aware of all the options. We’ve bought 1000+ yet we’d still not be able to give trusted advice beyond a fairly narrow (maybe 20-30 items) selection.
Based on your description above - this really doesn’t sound like something that you should be basing on a stock theme.
With respect, the above sounds like you are expecting/looking for the ideal solution that ticks all the boxes to some extent, straight out of the box? Stock themes don’t work that way.
Given the fractional price being paid for something which should easily be 10’s of thousands of $, you have to be willing to compromise and adapt. As such they do not suit perfectionists!
it sounds like a lot going on, which almost certainly won’t be covered by one stock theme
more things going on = more to break. Dedicated build = less that can go wrong.
stock themes are by default bloated with numerous features to make them more versatile (this is probably a reason why you haven’t found the ideal one yet as it probably clouds your judgment??).
You are going to be handling a lot of quite serious data so need to be 100% confident in the security (not to mention invest in some decent and therefore more costly hosting).
If you use a stock theme and the author stops supporting it - then what? A freelancer/agency will charge a lot more to work on someone else’s code, and there’s greater room for error.
If you are serious about doing a site (esp. one like this) properly then you have to invest properly in the build, support, hosting, legal, security etc. No one will come and use your site if it looks amateur, hacked together or unreliable.
I did mention I had never done this before. I guess after all of my reading, I assumed that selecting a theme was one of the steps in the process. I had not realized that custom (no theme) was even an option.
Unfortunately, it does come down to $. Your #4 is why I already selected a higher end hosting service with a dedicated server.
At least now I understand that it is likely “my perfect theme” doesn’t exist, which is probably why I haven’t found it yet. That’s a big deal for me because now I can stop searching and just pick one that is close and accept the fact that a limited budget forces some compromise.
I guess I should be glad that I am not in the ‘wild-west’ of the theme writing business.
None of the above withstanding, I still maintain that there is a business model out there for someone to do Wordpress consulting that helps new users make the right decisions to start their websites, especially more complicated ones. Probably a good way to find new customers for custom development.
kriszta - thanks for the suggestion. I just looked at the WooCOmmerce B2B and those definitely are some great B2B features. We do need some of them. I will look at adding it once the site is more complete.
