This is a guest post by Nannie Nova. If you’d like to contribute to our blog, feel free to get in touch with us.
Do you want to create a blog? WordPress, undoubtedly the best choice for creating a blog, powering 27% of the Internet, is the perfect platform to help you get started. However, making the blog popular is a whole different ballgame.
If you want your WordPress blog to be successful, you need an excellent WordPress blog template, which will be the basis for creating a blog. Even if you create incredibly exciting content and process each post for hours perfectly, a poorly crafted website can harm the chances of creating a good impression.
Is a theme that important?
The look and feel of your site have more impact than you think. If your site is distracting or you are using an unreadable font, your users will not stop reading what you have written. Therefore, you need to pick the perfect WordPress themes for your blog that’ll help you grow your audience and build your brand.
WordPress is one of the most preferred blogging platforms for its flexibility and powerful features. A distinctive feature of WordPress is blog themes that are easy to customize. It allows you to create a blog for free according to your preference. If you are not an experienced programmer or know only the basics of HTML and CSS, then the ideal WordPress theme for a blog is essential to your site.
Free or Premium?
Although there are WordPress themes for a blog that you can use for free, do not exclude premium WordPress themes too. You can find a theme for every type of content. If you need a blog theme, there is no need to pick a template, that has only pages and features for a blog. Almost any website can be a blog. For example, WordPress portfolio themes often have ready pages for a blog. Moreover, the theme can include online chats, calendar, online shop or a gallery.
Lots of wonderful things can make your blog more exciting and unique for your readers. Perhaps, some of the features you add in the future might define your unique style.
Creating a website has become much easier than it was years ago. So, don’t be afraid to experiment outside the lines.
What Should the Template Be?
Although you want to pick the best WordPress templates for a blog, and not for an online store or some other type of business, many factors stay the same here. However, there are still a few differences:
- Design — is the first thing we pay attention to, it should be modern, stylish and beautiful. Originality is always welcome;
- SEO — theme optimization is very important. Your theme should have basic optimization possibility and other functions to promote your blog;
- Speed — website pages should load very quickly. This depends on two factors – the size and number of files that need to be loaded to form the page. The fewer files you have — the faster the theme will work;
- Settings — everyone needs to personalize their theme, customize it for yourself. The more changes you can make through the theme interface, the less time you have to spend on editing the code.
How to choose a WordPress Theme? – Useful tips
Picking a theme from 100s can be a daunting task. However, these simple steps can ease the process:
1. List the requirements for the template
You might have repeatedly imagined your future blog. What should it be? What topic should you choose to cover? What content should you plan to place on it? To make it easier, make a plan or draw a site map on a regular sheet of paper. It is much easier to find a topic, basing on clear requirements. Many details of a theme can be selected using a filter in the marketplace, where you can mark the necessary features.
2. Pay attention to the area for content
The more the number of sites, the more the people look for quality. Search engines can now identify hastily made sites with poor navigation and ill-placed content. To avoid this, choose a theme based on your subject. You can find out how pages, articles, galleries look like in the structure of the template by viewing the demo version on the developer’s website.
3. Determine the theme functionality
This tip echoes the first one partially. A beginner might find it difficult to determine the functionality of the theme immediately. Design and placement are visible to everyone, but the functions become known later, when, for example, it turns out that there is no link to social networking pages. Such “utility” can be implemented with plugins, but the developers often add them to premium versions. For a beginner, it is better to choose a paid theme with built-in functionality. It is important not to overdo it. The overloaded site with all sorts of effects will alienate visitors and make the site slow. Also, search engines, as you know, love fast sites.
4. Feel free to contact the developers
WordPress themes do not appear randomly. Programmers create them. And this is a fraction of their earnings. Each developer wants to have more customers. Therefore, the developers offer assistance in customizing the template. This should not be neglected. Even if the theme is free, a good professional will always give you some information, and sometimes for a small amount of money will help you set the theme up. The main thing is for you to understand clearly how your site will look like or you should have a clear site scheme.
5. Reviews and Ratings
Reviews can also help you find a good theme for your blog. The most important here is not to give in to emotions and to evaluate information critically. Quality templates may have negative feedback from beginners who do not understand how the theme works. Some reviewers misunderstand theme capabilities and think of limitations as defects. It’s important to read reviews from trusted sources and people.
10 Best WordPress Themes for your Blog
Premium WordPress themes give you more options for customization than free ones, which is usually simpler. Remember: your website design should help you stand out among other sites, and also make a positive impression on your visitors. A well-structured WordPress blog theme also helps your website acquire a good position in search results — this is useful, especially if you want to get more traffic to your site.
Here’s a list of 10 best WordPress Blog themes you can check out.
24.Storycle – Multipurpose News Portal Elementor WordPress Theme
The first theme on this list is a multipurpose one. This is a basic full-featured theme that can be used to create any blog and website you want. You can use various theme settings to customize its design. You can create attractive headers and footers, work with the look of the sliders, build your menus, choose the layouts of your posts and a whole lot more with this great theme. This theme is extra light, which allows your site to load very fast. Also, it is SEO-friendly and a great choice if you want to extend your blog to an online store. 24 Storycle will provide you all you need for any your ideas.
Main features:
- 15 One-click Demos at any taste;
- Elementor Drag-n-drop Builder;
- Header and Footer Builder;
- JetMenu, JetTabs, and JetBlog;
- 10 Single Post Layouts;
- JetReviews and JetTricks;
- Extended Posts Functionality;
- 7 Blog Layouts and 3 Site Layouts;
- 24/7 friendly Support;
- Full responsive design and Retina ready;
WorldMap – Travel Photo Blog Elementor WordPress Theme
Who does not like to travel? Who does not like to discover various corners of the world? Many of those people who like to visit new places, look forward to writing their own experiences. Their blog can become a source of information about the place for other people who wish to visit it and can help make someone’s vacation a memorable one.
Do you like to travel, take photos and share your impressions with Internet users? In this case, you do not need to go past WorldMap WordPress theme. The theme’s wonderful design and excellent visual editor allows you to build a site, even without knowledge of the code. A four blog layout will allow you to submit posts in the form that will look most attractive to readers.
Main Features:
- Fully responsive design;
- JetElements;
- SEO-friendly;
- Retina Ready;
- Mega Menu;
- WordPress Live Customizer;
- Outstanding plugins and much more;
Love Life – Responsive Personal Blog WordPress Theme
Traveling, fashion and blogs are different niches, but they follow the same concept. So, if you own one such blog, or if you are thinking of starting one, try Love Life Responsive personal WordPress theme. It will allow you to express yourself, like never before, with footer layouts, dozens of different display options and first-class coding that can make your website soaring upwards through SEO ratings. Great concept! People who choose such options want to give maximum attention to the content, be it photos, personal notes, illustrations, small texts, etc.
This template leaves you with a pleasant feeling due to the light, non-tense design, in terms of functionality it is very well-built. Here you can find a lot of graphics and information blocks. Some may even doubt its “simplicity”, but on the other side, you are not forced to use absolutely all the features at once.
Main features:
- Elementor page builder;
- Mega menu;
- 4 Blog Layouts;
- Retina Ready;
- Fully Responsive design;
- JetElements;
- WordPress live customizer and so on;
Mafiaso – Blog WordPress Theme
This is a WordPress theme that is designed to present your portfolio and blog with various options and layouts for theme design. In addition, it includes an excellent content designer. You can create your own blog or portfolio from scratch, and it only takes a few minutes. Mafiaso is easily translated using the multilingual WPML plugin. Now users from all over the world can enjoy your great content. Besides, visitors can view your page from the phone with convenience.
Main features:
- Bootstrap;
- Easy Installation;
- WMPL ready;
- Visual Editor;
- Fully responsive design;
- Sample data installer.
Henry Stoun – Personal Website WordPress Theme
Henry Stoun personal website WordPress theme is a flexible platform that is perfect for designers, architects, and photographers because it brings together such themed websites. Creative webmasters will feel at home using this theme. Intuitive tools will allow you to create attractive portfolios, without touching the code. Henry Stoun is an excellent theme to give your online representation a completely new look. The theme combines amazing modern features with convenience and ease of use.
A particularly important factor when considering this theme is that you practically do not need to know anything about coding in order to get the most out of its use.
Six ready pages will be useful for all occasions. Drag-n-drop builder will help you to build your website how you see it. And your visitors will be able to see your website from every screen thanks to the mobile first option. If you have any questions, feel free to ask the theme’s support, as we mentioned before.
Main features:
- Elementor page builder;
- Retina Ready;
- SEO-friendly;
- Mega Menu;
- Cherry Projects and PopUps;
- WordPress Social login;
- Lots of headers, footers, and layouts;
- Bonus images and many more.
Sprout – Personal Blog WordPress Theme
Sprout has a user-friendly interface with flexible and intuitive theme settings. The subject comes with a short message generator for which coding skills are not required at all. You get a convenient theme with an adaptive layout for the screens of various user devices. Sprout is perfectly compatible with 800+ Google Fonts. The theme package also includes Instagram feed integration. The documentation is developed and understood, you can also ask questions to technical support without hesitation, individual support is provided. You just need to focus on understanding how to make your project attractive, Sprout theme will do the rest.
Main features:
- Responsive layout;
- Featured post widget;
- Social widget;
- Easy installation;
- Widget-ready sidebars;
- Social profile and sharing integration;
- Child theme support;
- Cross-browser compatibility;
- Jetpacks;
- Unlimited colors and so on.
Lily – Clean & Elegant Blog WordPress Theme
Lily theme is strongly connected to social networks so that you and your users can easily share their content with the Internet community. Besides, the theme is optimized for SEO, ready to be translated and offers the import of demo version content with one click.
Main features:
- Easy-to-use theme;
- Sticky navigation;
- Friendly support 24/7;
- MailChimp for WP;
- Sidebar control;
- Cross-browser compatibility;
- Translation ready;
- Featured slider and promo boxes.
WordPress Fashion Blog Theme
The name completely corresponds to the essence – this is a fashionable blog about clothes, style, trends. The elegant, simple design allows you to focus on specific models and accessories, as well as to place any amount of information — from a brief reference to full-fledged long read. This theme is very easy to install and it takes only 5 minutes. Also, you can make an online store in your blog just with a few clicks.
If you want to display your content more creatively, Social media widgets, slider, more than 500 Google fonts, and post carousel will help you. Moreover, theme Fusion has such a magic tool as Cherry Framework 4. Check out this collection of videos, about what you can do with the help of Cherry Framework 4.
Main features:
- Ecwid ready;
- Custom widgets;
- Live customizer;
- Fully responsive design;
- SEO-friendly;
- 24/7 effective and friendly support;
- Cherry Framework 4.
EightyDays – Travel Blog WordPress Theme
This multi-targeted, flexible theme will look great on any device. In addition, Eighty days theme will breathe life into any of your ideas and it is perfect for blogs about travel, active leisure, hitchhiking, tourism, travel agency sites, as well as for information portals on various subjects, news sites, etc.
Main features:
- Fully responsive design;
- Infinite scroll;
- Easy customization;
- 1-click demo import;
- Instagram Footer;
- Related posts;
- Tiled gallery.
Personal Profile Page WordPress Theme
Max Paxton is the perfect theme for a personal copywriter blog or portfolio. Even a beginner will adore this clear interface based on drag-and-drop. You can talk about your services, give examples of work, start a blog and share contact information with this template.
With Max Paxton, you can create a very modern website. Especially for self-employed or freelancers such as authors or journalists fits this suitable responsive theme. Installing this theme, you don’t need anymore to think about creating a website — all you need it to create good content for your visitors.
Main features:
- Cherry plugins;
- Clean code;
- 24/7 support;
- SEO-friendly;
- Documentation;
- Live customizer;
- 7 header layouts;
- Google Fonts integration;
- Fully responsive;
- Ecwid ready;
- 5 minutes for installation.
Final words
This collection of ready-made solutions should at least slightly facilitate the selection of the most suitable template for your future site. In fact, now everything depends only on what business niche needs to be presented on the Internet space. But, in any case, you can be sure that any of the above topics will bring long-awaited success.
Of course, there are thousands of topics to choose from, but these are just some of the best. We hope that you will find among them what you like! And if you think that we missed some truly amazing theme that is ideal for freelancers or bloggers, leave a message in the comments below. We hope that we managed to help somehow with this difficult choice of template. Thanks for reading!
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