There is thousands of WordPress themes available. Literally thousands and thousands of free and premium wordpress themes.
If you are shopping for themes then you could spend days window shopping through the directories.
Unfortunately many of the themes are outdated, their codes are redundant, and many of them belong in theme coding heaven.
Admittedly the majority of free themes, are for use by the “casual blogger” or someone just testing the waters.
Many of them have been designed by people experimenting with CCS. That is the beauty of (free) open source code. The downside of course is there are a lot junk themes.
These free themes also serve as a guide as to the “performance” of a premium theme.
Professional bloggers, E-Comm business’s and others will always trail a free theme before handing over money.
If there is a premium theme backing up a free theme, then it is likely that the bugs have been ironed out, and it is compatible with commonly used plugins (not all of them obviously).
Can it be customized? is it fast to load, what are the image options, the typography options, color options?
These any many other questions professional bloggers ask themselves , will be answered in this post.
Table of Contents
- 1 WordPress Free Themes
- 2 Best WordPress Themes
- 3 Switching Themes.
- 4 My Theme Shop
- 5 What’s Included in My theme Shop Premium Themes
- 6 Premium WordPress Themes for Bloggers
- 7 Some of My Theme Shop Themes Power Sites Worth Millions
- 8 Want to know how to get 100 million visitors to your blog ?
- 9 An E-Commerce Website with WordPress.
- 10 My Theme Shop E-commerce Themes.
- 11 Dedicated E-Commerce Themes
- 12 Adding Descriptions
- 13 Free vs Paid E- Commerce Themes.
- 14 Conclusion
- 15 Discount offer For Alidropship Themes.
- 16 Final Note
- 17 Coming Soon.
WordPress Free Themes
WordPress is the go to website building platform for nearly 50% of all online website builders.
If you are a blogger looking to monetize your passion or a business owner who wants to raise your company’s profile. WordPress has something for you.
In this post I will look at a couple of “off the beaten track” free and premium WordPress themes suitable for a wide range uses.
By paying a few dollars for premium, you’ll benefit from lots of extra features that make the management of your theme so much easier if you decide to enter the mainstream blogging arena.
You will have things to make your website building a lot more rewarding.
- like, better built in search engine optimization
- better control of your website with theme management control centers
Premium sites make it easier for you to tweek certain elements of your website without having to take classes in computer coding and without affecting the search engine optimization of the theme.
Best WordPress Themes
It is a brave person who makes that statement and tries to back it up.
Of all the thousands of themes out there, a statement like that is totally subjective. People have their favourites.
I am biased towards a few, but never would I say they are the best.
Highly Rated?, yes. It’s just what I have become comfortable working with.
Switching Themes.
This is pretty much a no brainer. on your dash board go to Appearance >>Themes>> Add Theme>> Upload theme. See video below if your unsure.
My Theme Shop
After using other WordPress designs over the years and not really knowing much about anything. SEO, or what a heavy or light plugin was. I stumbled across Rank Math Search Engine Optimization one day.
At the time I was using All in One SEO (which is quite good by the way) and getting serious about learning wordpress and what makes a successful blog.
I was still researching search engine optimization, while many of my colleagues were switching to Yoast or going to All in One Pro.
I had found one called Rank Math and wanted to know more about it.
They had a face book group (often this can be a place where people vent their frustrations if things aren’t working as they expect). What I found on facebook was enough to convince me give Rank Math a go.
I found I liked it, installed it and upgraded to the Pro Version shortly after.
I did have a couple of small problems initially with it, but received great service from this small company and everything was resolved amazingly quickly.
Looking into them further I discovered they have a back room department making themes.
And that was my introduction to My Theme Shop.
Premium wordpress themes from my theme shop are known for their fast loading, ease of setting up and ease of customizing.
See more in the video below.
Speedy to load with the CCS Search engine optimized, these themes have free versions for bloggers or those in E-Commerce to test drive before going premium.
Often they run special deals on new releases and you can pick up a good deal on a very well optimized themes.
This blog uses Schema
- SEO and speed optimized
- Great easy to use options panel ( see pic above), to manage fonts, headers, footers ads and colors.
- Typography. Select from over 600 Google fonts or any of the included standard fonts to make your website uniquely yours.
- Short Codes. Every premium theme comes with a beginner friendly short code plugin which allows you to display call to action buttons, contact forms other buttons with sizing options in your posts.
- Unlimited color and background options.
- Most important of all. They are Ultra Responsive Designs using the latest HTML5 and CSS3 markup
- They will display equally as good on Mobile devices and Tablets as well as Laptops and Desktops.
- For more features and benefits check out the links below.
My theme shop specializes in themes for bloggers.
Schema ( this site), is a fast loading, ultra-SEO friendly, wordpress theme, developed by the creators of Rank Math SEO.
Featuring all the best MyThemeShop features, including a custom options panel, shortcodes and widgets, and a pixel perfect design.
Schema also includes rich snippets in order to help search engines your site and rank you higher.
Schema is only one of their 120 + themes though.
Other popular ones include “Publisher” and “Saddle”, which are Adsense optimized.
These is great for bloggers who often worry about advertisements over-powering their content.
And… I found out the coding for their themes still delivers a fast loading site even with lots of images.
Some of My Theme Shop Themes Power Sites Worth Millions
Scott Delong started a Buzzfeed type website from a my theme shop theme and sold it in a cash and stock deal is will him gross him a $100 million.
He could have used any other theme…
Except that he needed a theme that could handle viral traffic from social media sites.
The beauty of my theme shop themes is not only are they designed to attract traffic, they are designed to handle it as well.
Want to know how to get 100 million visitors to your blog ?
Take a look at this link. How to get a 100 million visitors to your site.
An E-Commerce Website with WordPress.
My Theme shop has themes for blogging, E-Commerce and Business.
Most premium WordPress themes have a built in E-Commerce option and My Theme Shop is no different.
From a personal point of view, I have yet to seriously trial it in the E-Commerce sphere. I have used Shopify and I like Alidropship / Woo Commerce. So I do not want to be to judgmental here.
Keep a lookout for a serious comparison on these pages in the near future.
With my theme shop, you have 7 choices, one being Schema. Good as it is, at the moment I prefer it as a blog.
For you it may be great, depends on what you intend to do with it. 500 niche type products or 1,000 product general purpose type site.
One of the most important things in selecting a theme is to check how recently it has been updated. If it hasn’t been updated for more than 4 months, Leave It Alone.
The reason for this is, WordPress updates regulary, but every 6 months or so WordPress has a major update. If your site codes haven’t been keeping up, then it could crash due to conflicts with coding.
With My theme shop you are not likely to have this problem because they have such a small stable of themes, their themes are regularly updated and optimized better than one of RedBulls F1 Gran Prix racers.
My Theme Shop E-commerce Themes.
My theme shop with only 7 themes in e-commerce, I think need more evaluation time on those themes.
I am not recommending against them, it is just a personal preference, at this stage and I do follow Woo- Commerce threads over on Face Book.
I am a never say never type of person.
I am sure the guys out in the back room of my theme shop are working hard at getting something really good for critical, hard to please people (like me).
Dedicated E-Commerce Themes
Among the myriad of free and premium themes available, I have found these WordPress dedicated E-Commerce themes.
All designed for Woo-Commerce, these themes have been developed by people involved in E-Commerce. Lets have a look…
The shot above of the El Greco theme, is one of a few of Woo themes and Alidropship themes that are dedicated to drop shipping / E Commerce.
El Greco is a sleek and fully responsive theme much appreciated by WordPress and WooCommerce users.
It easily handles any niche and catalog, so customers can enjoy all the comfort and convenience of online shopping.
Options of these themes usually include everything shown in the screenshot below with a couple of other cosmetic features, like a Parallax banner which will give some depth to your banner.
Of course cosmetic features play an important role in E-Commerce. Good photos of products, a visually appealing site, all help to make a site profitable.
The biggest thing with Woo Commerce themes is its ability to handle plugins and images.
The plugins need to be light weight and have fast loading times. Example, Add to cart, Go to checkout.
Dropship and E-Commerce sites are image heavy so you need good optimization from Pluginsd like Compressor, combined with your themes settings.
The selection of plugins is always a factor, so it is best just to install those recommended by the theme provider.
Any problems and you have a fall back position to fix the issue.
Of particular importance are the payment processors. If you are unsure or simply don’t know, ask. These people will go the extra mile to help you.
Talking of which, this post might be of interest.
Adding Descriptions
One of the chores many people have an intense dislike of doing.
Fact is though, whether it is an on line or brick and mortar store you need to able to tell a prospective customer what your “widget” does.
If you had read this post, you would know that Alidropship was founded by some young guys after they had completed their IT degrees at University. After they had paid their way through Uni by running drop shipping business’s
Their latest app…Is a tool that will do descriptions for you.
You can get all the info here.
This is a brand new app, so get onto it while it is still at a testing the waters low price.
Free vs Paid E- Commerce Themes.
In my opinion free themes are a waste of time with E-Commerce.
I know you have to outlay money for hosting, domain names and a few other things. But in the overall scheme of things those expenses are not that great.
The expenses that count are the themes and the plugins. Go pro everything. You can save money by using Rank Math SEO.
It is as good as the paid version of Yoast or AIO. Only, Rank Math is free.
Plugins are one the biggest headaches for any website owner, WordPress, Wix, any website platform.
Plugins, like WordPress, need to be updated to avoid conflicts with coding used by other plugins and WordPress itself.
The term IT people use is fluid. If you think of running water or a small gently flowing creek as the web. Everything looks nice and smooth on top, but at the bottom, small stones are constantly being moved (updated).
One of the other reasons I like My Theme Shop / Alidropship is… I get a same day response for any issue / question I might have.
Always have a fall back position, even experienced webmasters have a friend they can call..
People go to Shopify or Magneto thinking these are free of conflicts, they are not, because they use 3rd party apps.
Conclusion
Premium WordPress Themes should go hand in hand with plugins that are compatible with them.
This is one of the reasons I use my theme shop. When you download a premium theme the recommended or plugins created for it, come with the installation.
It is up to you to install and activate them though. I don’t use them all. I delete what I don’t want and go with what’s left.
I run this site on 6 plugins, sometimes 7 if I am testing a new one (if I think it may be useful).
E-Commerce themes work in the same way, but you will have more plugins than a blog site. Some plugins are heavy others are light.
You need your site to be fast loading. Go with the recommended plugins, they have been tested.
Discount offer For Alidropship Themes.
Use the below link to go to the Alidropship site. The Discount link Once you have made a selection and arrive at the checkout page add GETTHEME 10 .
You can get this and other discounts by using this link
Final Note
Both of these companies have safe, secure payment methods and great support staff to back you with any issues you may have getting the most out of these theme plugins.
Coming Soon.
More on payment processors
This is a very informative post on word press themes. It is something i have been looking further into, at the moment i’m using the generate press theme. I’m not sure it suits my niche and site speed that means i am being less productive in writing content. Technology and me don’t mix to well, i’m now thinking i should get an expert to do it for me. My Theme Shop looks like an excellent choice to go for.
Generate Press is a good theme.
But it is a plugin, which means you don’t have the same control as you do with a built theme, like the ones from My Theme Shop. These are designed for a broad range of uses or niches if you like.
This makes My Theme Shop themes a little more versatile The coding makes these themes easy to customize and the number of plugins your site needs is also reduced, which means your site loads quickly with the obvious SEO benefits.
Thank you very much for sharing with us your experience using themes. I was a bit distracted wondering what theme I should buy and not having any clear path. I really liked what you said about Shema. And the story about this guy that sold his site and earn 100MM (site built with my theme shop) has inspired me. Thank you.
Schema is a highly valued theme from My Theme Shop. Much of the development of their themes comes from adopting SEO practices in the code script to help reduce the use of plugins and have the site load fast. This all helps Googles rank sites.
Hi,
Premium WordPress Themes is a great article for many reasons. Firstly, you have covered a lot of details on all themes, free and premium. Secondly, U have gone into tremendous details of My Theme Shop which is a huge benefit to readers.
I must compliment you on this article and its value. I use Ashe Theme Pro and the results are quite good. I believe that generate Press is also a great theme to use.
Thanks. Regards,
Aparna
Thank you for the comment. I do have experience with Generate Press and use it as a theme on another site which does not require much in the way of SEO optimization.
I am not being critical of Generate Press but the difference between it and My Theme Shop is Generate press is a plugin and comes with all the idiosyncrasies of a plugin.
Many Theme are developed for particular reasons, and of all the themes in WordPress there are many that are good and not that many that are really great.
The themes from My Theme Shop are a stand out in my opinion.
Good to know about My Theme Shop. Shame I didn’t know about it when I set my blog up! When I initially set up my blog I went through about 10 themes and a good 6 months of testing out themes until I finally settled with one that works for me. I wanted a specific vibe as well as options and getting it right was very important. I have been using my theme now for a couple of years now, if changing it is easy I am happy to! Thanks for the recommendation, I will check it out!
Many times people changing themes ask if it is a seamless experience. My answer is it is not because you are changing themes because you want to change something in your existing one. Be it the look or as you say the “vibe”.
Where people come unstuck is with the free themes. Most have limited features you can apply or adjust. Premium themes, like those developed by My Theme Shop have a cost, but the ease with which you can adjust every thing to tastes and ease of use is worth way more than the cost of the theme. There is no coding to speak of, and you can make most of the changes working from one dashboard.
Great input Michael,
I’ve never thought about it from that point of view, the fact that premium theme developers create trial and premium for 2 separate reasons. It makes sense now that they’d create a free theme as trial to taste the real deal which is the paid theme which is more smoother, highly customizable with bugs cleared out. Definitely getting one now, thanks for clearing that up!
Hi Riaz,
Yes you are onto it. the free themes from the makers of Generate Press or My theme shop works that are perpetual motion this is why they are among the top themes out there.
As a beginner blogger choosing a theme is one of the most frustrating tasks you have to do. Considering there are thousands of themes for wordpress it just becomes a tedious task. I had to instal and deactivate more than 20 themes before i settled for one which i thought was better. It allowed me more features to customise a lot of things. Your article recommending my theme shop is good. I wish I had come accross this article at the time I was looking for a theme to use. Anyway its not too late I am going to try out my theme shop on your recommendation. Thanks
Thank you Energy, You will find my theme shop has a very good support system.
Hey, I love your article. There are so many of us that are unsure of the themes we should be purchasing, or whether we should be purchasing one at all. I am using Generate Press at the moment, and I have just upgraded, however the schema theme seems very appropriate for me. This is something I will look into further. Thank you for the great information.
Hi,
Generate press is a good theme.
However, out of the box it does not have the customization and SEO optimization that the Schema theme has.
Wow, these are truly some very nice themes that I would be able to use for WordPress and really I am just so happy to see the information that you shared here about it too. This is good stuff and since I have just started my own website and not so many people are there,I can just easily change the theme to be even better. Thanks to WordPress and to you for this.
Thanks Jay,
Changing a theme is usually seamless. In my experience people with free themes seem to be witching themes every other week or so looking for something more innovative I guess.
Thank you for the comment.
Great article Micheal, thank you for sharing. I will bookmark this page so I can reread all this information again. I have just bought a theme, but perhaps I will trial the schema theme in the future on another site to see how I like it.
Jude
Hi Jude,
Thank you for bookmarking the page. There is Schema lite which is a free version for people to trial before buying the Premium.
It is quite good too. I used it for about 6 weeks before buying premium.
All the Best Jude.
Thank you so much for sharing a beautiful and insightful article with us. The prime element of this article is about Premium WordPress Themes. It is truly impressive that you covered this subject so well in your post. I’ve learned a lot from reading your article and developed a lot of knowledge about it. I like E-COMMERCE WEBSITE WITH WORDPRESS of the points mentioned in your article. I will create an e-commerce website in the future. Which uses the WordPress paid theme mentioned in your article. The features of this theme are very SEO friendly so I decided to use it.
Finally, I have read and enjoyed your article so I would like to share it on my social media group to let people know about the WordPress Premium theme if you allow me.
Thank you, and you may share this to your social media group.
I hope many of them find it as useful as you have.
Regards,