This article was sponsored by Artbees - creators of the Jupiter WordPress theme. Thank you for supporting the partners who make SitePoint possible.
WordPress is the world's most successful Content Management System. It powers 28% of all websites. A massive 59% of sites running a CMS choose to use WordPress. The software is open source and free to use. So why should you consider paying for a commercial WordPress theme?
There are a vast number of WordPress themes available. Some are paid products but many are offered at no cost. Many are excellent. Many are terrible. Purchasing a premium theme can provide a level of reassurance and a guarantee of quality which transforms WordPress into a glorious, fully-customized, customer-focused experience.
What should you look for before hitting that BUY button?...
1. A Good Feature Set
Does your chosen theme have all the features you need now and into the near future? Perhaps you only need a gallery today but do you have a persistent nagging worry your client or boss will eventually ask for a fully-featured shopping cart? Can you add a portfolio or pricing table? Are you able switch designs on a single page or throughout the site?
Artbees Jupiter provides more than 140 template designs which cover every niche.
2. Without Stuff You Don't Need?
Some themes include every widget the author could find. This may not be a problem if they add value and remain disabled until required. What you don't want is 57 free snippets discovered on dhtmlgoodies.com in 2006 which use different libraries and appear on every page regardless of whether you use them or not. It will degrade the user's experience and prevent a...
3. Solid Performance
By the end of 2016, average page weight reached almost 2.5MB. WordPress must take some responsibility for this excessive bloat! Too many themes contain bandwidth-hogging payloads, unoptimized images and futile widgets which make your site slow and costly to view on a mobile network connection. A responsive design does not necessarily equate to a responsive experience.
Analyse your chosen theme's weight using browser development tools or online reports such as pingdom and imgIX page weight to ensure it isn't secretly gorging itself toward obesity.
4. Client-Facing Functionality
Designers and clients love WYSIWYG, drag-and-drop, color pickers, live previews and all the other lovely features which abstract the underlying process of creating a web page in HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Premium themes often provide an experience which stretches WordPress to new user-friendly limits. Artbees Jupiter is design-oriented so designers can provide a customized experience without the need for coding.
But will the theme remain...
5. Developer-Friendly
Eventually, you may need to delve into the theme code to make tweaks which are not possible from the user interface. A premium theme should be well documented and permit changes without you having to wade through thousands of lines of uncommented, compressed HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP code! Ideally, the theme developers will offer some level of...
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