blogging

Choosing the Best WordPress Theme: Its all in your head

I have, over the past few days, been having sleepless nights while trying to choose the best WordPress theme for this blog. During the process, I may have inadvertently damaged a thing or two, not only on the site, but also in my head. That only goes to illustrate that, for beginners, the process of choosing the best WordPress theme can be rather daunting. This short article is, therefore, meant to help those who, like me, are struggling to choose from the millions of WordPress themes that are out there. So, how do you choose a WordPress theme for your site?

1. Don’t Obsess

My first tip to you, if you are looking to choose a WordPress theme, is that you shouldn’t be obsessive about the process. Take it from me, you don’t have to spend sleepless nights organizing over something that’s only part of the blogging process. What do I mean about that?

Blogging is all about providing value to your readers

Although aesthetics play an important role in the perceptions that people get of your site, your primary concern as a blogger is to provide readers with value. What most people do not realize is that this can be done even with the use of the plainest of themes.

Another thing that you need to remember is that not many people, particularly if you are into content marketing, are going to even visit your home page. Someone Googles something and if your page comes up, they will be taken directly to the article that you have written and not to your home page.

So, my advise here is that while it is nice to have a visually appealing site, your thrust at the beginning should be on creating value. I think I tried out over a fifty themes over the past few days till I realized that the best is sometimes the simplest.

2. Website Speed Matters

If you have been blogging for any given amount of time, you will have heard that website speed plays an important role in Search Engine Optimization. Well, it turns out that that statement is absolutely true. If your site is sluggish, it is likely to get a low SERPs rank.

That is one of the reasons why you should choose a WordPress theme that’s fully optimized for speed and performance. Believe me, finding the perfect one is rather difficult. There are so many themes out there that it’s impossible to sample them all.

Again, the thing to remember is that you should never be obsessive about choosing a theme for your WordPress website. The WordPress theme that you choose can always be changed at any time. Carry out research and you are likely to arrive at the one that perfectly fits your needs.

Meanwhile, remember that your aim is to provide value to your readers and not to dazzle them.

3. A Mobile First Approach

The above is particularly the case for mobile searches. If your site is not optimized for mobile devices, it is likely that your web pages won’t ever feature where it matters on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).

Remember, the majority of searches are now being made from mobile devices. Although desktops still matter in this equation, browsing habits have shifted across the globe over the past few years. Mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones, now rule the roost as far as Search is concerned.

It is important, therefore, for you to choose a WordPress theme that is fully optimized for mobile devices. This is where I had the most trouble. The theme that I first chose for this site was initially responsive. However, and most likely due to excessive tinkering on my part, it soon lost the responsiveness. Thus started my struggle to find a new WordPress theme.

4. Pingdom and PageSpeed Insights

Part of the reason why I went overboard while trying to choose a theme for my site was the fact that I was trying to get make a selection that would satisfy both Pingdom and PageSpeed Insights. That proved to be so difficult a task that I didn’t sleep for two days in a row.

Despite this, it is safe to say that these sites are absolutely crucial when it comes to determining what is and what is not working on your blog. You can read the article in the provided link to learn more about using PageSpeed Insights.

The thing that had me scratching my head was the fact that a couple of times I though I had the best theme possible, only to have a couple of errors show up after running one of the above tests.

5. How I chose my current theme

If you are wondering, my site is currently on the Mission News theme. And how did I choose this WordPress theme?  Well, I spend a day or two on what I thought was the best theme ever. I had even spend hours designing the logo and all.

However, after a day,  the thing stopped opening some pages. I mean, it was probably not the theme’s fault; at least not entirely. I suspect I had cooked things up in my WordPress while deleting and installing so many themes in a single day.

In any case, when the theme that I had stopped working, I pretty much gave up. I then, in disdain, installed the first theme that was in my “Themes,” folder and lo and behold, it turned out to be one of the best that I have ever used.

So, this theme is somewhat accidental. I do hope, however, that it does not break up on me after a day or two. Hope this article helps you choose a WordPress theme that works for you.

Add new users to your WordPress Website

I have, in recent days, been working on a new WordPress site for a client and thought I would write this post to help those who are struggling with the basics of Web Development. You may, at one point or the other, find it necessary to add new users to your WordPress Website. So, how do you go about doing that?

Why you Would Add New Users

If, as was the case in my case, you wish to have several people working on one website at the same time, having various user accounts simplifies the process. Remember how I talked about Freelancing in one of my articles? Suppose that you have hired several freelancers and wish to have them write and post articles directly to your website. This is where you may wish to create new user accounts on your WordPress site for each of these people.

Creating new WordPress Website User Accounts

Adding new accounts to a WordPress website is simple enough. All that you need to do in order to add new Users to your WordPress Website is the following;

• Log into your WordPress Website’s backend
• Look for and click on “Users,” from within the link on the left.
• This takes you to a page where all the people who currently have access to your site are listed.
• Click on “Add New” to add a new WordPress User
• This takes you into a new page where you are required to input the new WordPress user’s Username, Email, First Name, Last Name, Website and Password.

The New User’s Role

Now, here is where things begin to get a little complicated. Well, perhaps not complicated, but you get the idea…. WordPress allows you to choose between 7 roles when creating a new account for a new user. These are;

• Subscriber
• Shop Manager
• Customer
• Contributor
• Author
• Editor
• Administrator

Think Carefully

The roles that you assign to the accounts that you create determine the kind of access that the owners of the account will have. Of all the roles that are mentioned above, the Administrator is the most powerful.

It is important for you to, in this regard, think very carefully before assigning this role to an individual. You don’t want to give administrative privileges to a freelancer who you have just met through Upwork and who is doing a once off job for you.

The WordPress Admin has far reaching abilities, including that of changing your site’s theme, installing plugins, locking out other users and much more.

Limited Access

The other account types that are shown above do not have all these privileges. As an example, there is this site where I contribute articles.

The owner had assigned me a “Contributor” role. A problem arose when I needed one particular plugin. I had to ask the site’s owner to install the plugin for me.

I also discovered that the YouTube videos that I was embedding into posts were being removed! That only changed when the owner upgraded my status to “Author.”

Create New WordPress User

Once you have assigned a role to your new account, choose “Send the new user an email about their account.” Click on “Add New User,” and you are done. As you can see, adding new User Accounts to your WordPress Website is simple and wont even take you more than a few minutes.

The new user will immediately be notified about their account via email. In fact, you can have as many users as you want. However, as we have already noted, be careful with how much access you grant them. You don’t want them to start playing around with the structure of your site.

Need to keep track of your performance on Search Engine Result Pages? Why not try out these amazing Rank Tracking tools? Sign up and you will get daily updates on your blog’s rankings for your chosen keywords.