WordPress is by far, one of the most popular content management systems on the internet and the industry standard for blogging platforms. Due to its unparalleled versatility, WordPress isn’t just used for blogging, it is also used as a platform for e-commerce and even membership sites. As a result, many developers have designed WordPress themes for webmasters to use to make their site look suitable for its niche. If you’re thinking about developing a WordPress theme, there are many elements you must consider before you release your theme to the public:
- Attention To Detail:Focusing on the small details is not only important in designing a WordPress theme, but also in any web design job. Make sure that any formatting issues are taken care of and all the widgets and columns align correctly and smoothly. Also ensure that the font sizes of headings are not too big and not too small and they are easily editable. It can be really frustrating for webmasters when they have to look for which line of code in the CSS stylesheet they have to edit to change the font sizes. So make sure that the code is written neatly and there is descriptive pseudocode to help webmasters find what they are looking for.
- SEO-Friendly:Making your WordPress theme SEO-friendly is extremely important and surprisingly, many developers don’t take the time to make their themes attractive to the search engines. If you’re not sure exactly how to make your theme SEO-friendly, here are some basic tips you can use:
- On the homepage, give the blog title the default H1 tag
- On post pages, give the post title the default H1 tag
- Do not give H3 tags to widget titles. Webmasters are not trying to rank for words like “categories”, “recent posts”, or “recent comments”, so why waste H3 tags on them?
- Be Unique: If you copy an existing theme, then don’t be surprised when nobody buys or downloads your theme. Your theme must be original and provide something of value that no other theme provides if you want it to be successful.
- Easy To Use: When a theme is easy to use, customize, and configure, it makes the webmaster’s job a lot easier. I have used themes where if I wanted to change the content in the footer, it would literally take me hours to do so. If your theme makes it this difficult to edit its content, not many webmasters will be willing to use it. So make sure that you spend a sufficient amount of time into making your theme as easy to customize as possible for the webmaster.
- Obey WordPress Standards:If your theme doesn’t obey WordPress’ theme development standards, it will not even be accepted. Simply follow these tips to ensure that your theme abides by the development standards:
- PHP code is free of all errors and structured properly
- HTML is validated
- CSS coding standards are obeyed
- Most, if not all, HTML elements are styled
Rob is a freelance web designer and full-time online marketer. These days, he is working on a website comparing the best website hosting services to help people decide on which hosting service is right for them.