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How To Select A Theme

Manage a Site

Introduction

Themes control the look and feel of your WordPress site.  When you first create a site, you pick a site template and that template controls which theme is automatically activated. No matter what site template you choose, you can still change your theme at any time by going to Appearance > Themes. All site templates, except the default template, come auto-populated with pages and navigation to help get your site up and running. These will continue to exist if you change themes, but some adjustments may be needed.

So how does a Commons member choose a theme?

Themes On the Commons

The Commons strives to provides a wide selection of modern themes for our members. There are thousands of WordPress themes in the wild, and for security reasons, we cannot provide access to them all.  We curate a manageable number of themes (usually less than 50) based on their overall user ratings, their update history, their creation date, their developer’s experience, and the number of WordPress sites using theme.  We also try to look for themes that display content in different and aesthetically pleasing ways.

All themes on our curated list are responsive, meaning they display content on a range of devices. Nevertheless, when selecting a theme, look to see how it looks on all devices – desktop, laptop, tablet and phone. Some themes are more responsive than others.

If you want to use a theme that is not on our curated list, you can request it via our Help Desk. Our Dev Team will vet it to ensure it does not expose the Commons to any security risks. The theme will be activated on your site only. This applies to free themes as well as premium themes. If you purchase a premium theme, you will need to provide a zip file for it, and be responsible for any updates.

Selection Process Using Live Preview

No matter if your site has been around for awhile or is brand new, you can always change its theme. WordPress provides a neat way to shop around for themes: go to Appearance>>Themes to see the available list of themes. If you want to see how your site would look using a different theme, click Live Preview. This can help you decide if the theme works for you. Please note that Live Preview cannot show exactly how your site will display. When you mouse over a theme, you will see the two options, highlighted below, Activate or Live Preview:

When you switch WordPress themes, there are probably a number of changes that you need to make to customize your site. Most often, the header and the navigation will be different from what you expect. In Live Preview, a WordPress theme’s landing page might by default show a list of recent posts, a customizable page, or a banner, or any combination of these.

Just because your site doesn’t look great in Live Preview, don’t reject it. Check out how the theme displays individual pages and posts, and how it displays a list of posts.

Be aware that theme authors brand their themes with images and slideshows that you can swap out to customize your site’s look and feel. Don’t reject a theme because of its images and the way it’s branded – these are probably easy to fix in the theme settings, or by CSS.

Further Selection Tactics

If you are looking for specific theme functionality, use the Search All Themes and use keywords such as:

  • theme name
  • sidebar
  • full site editing
  • custom-header
  • custom-menu
  • blog

WordPress themes are tagged according to their functionality and searches can be made with a variety of keywords. When theme authors make themes available, they provide descriptions and tags. A keyword search can surface themes matching your search.

Should You Choose A Full Site Editing (FSE) Theme?

Full Site Editing (“FSE“) themes let users design every part of a WordPress post or page, with modular blocks.  No coding is needed, but users do need to understand how FSE works and how templates are used in WordPress. FSE lets user interact with the theme’s underlying templates. For more information, see  FSE themes on the Commons.

There is definitely a learning curve with FSE – is it worth it? If you are comfortable with how blocks work and can identify which template is being used on a page or post, on a header or footer, on a landing page, or an error page, FSE is for you.

“Gone are the days of diving into theme files or custom code just to make simple layout changes; FSE puts complete creative control directly in your hands, no coding required.” Richard Goodwin – “Is it worth switching to an FSE theme?“.

The “no coding required” is appealing and in most cases, justifiable. WordPress theme authors have for a long time created themes that are not that easy to customize. But they are getting better at providing a host of options that allow admins to display their sites in different ways. Depending on your comfort zone, these non-FSE themes may be your best bet.

As Richard Goodwin notes, FSE themes tend to be clean and easy to customize. They are fast. They have good SEO. They are flexible. They are usually very mobile friendly. Accessibility is built in. They require fewer plugins.

These are all good things, but if you never go to “Edit Site,” does it matter? FSE themes in general tend to be bare bones themes. They invite customization. Some include a number of Patterns, but these days, patterns can be used on both FSE and non-FSE themes.

Bottom line – if you find a theme on the Commons that satisfies your needs, go for it. If you feel more creative and are comfortable with messing around with WordPress templates and are good with blocks, FSE themes are for you.

Switching Themes On A Live Site

If you have a “Live” Site – meaning you have a site on the Commons that has content and is being used – you might hesitate to switch themes. Will the change screw everything up? Can I go back to my original theme with no display problems?

When you use Live Preview it will never be a problem – this functionality does nothing to your code base. But when you click on Activate, the new theme’s settings may interfere with some of your old theme’s settings, especially if you start customizing it. Also, if you have any custom CSS, some rules may break and will need to be fixed if they are still necessary. In a perfect world, going back to your old theme should cause no or minimal issues, but to be cautious, we recommend having a Test Site, populated with some of your content, so that you can play around with a theme’s functionality.

Alternatively, you can just create a new site and activate various themes to discover how they display headers and footers, landing pages, posts, pages and navigation, and how easy it is to customize them to create a unique look and feel. For non-FSE themes, does the theme multiple templates to choose from? When you click on “Customize,” are the options easy for you to understand and work with? Some themes have so many customization options that they are overwhelming, some have very few.

Setting Up A Test Site

One easy way to set up a Test Site is to clone your site. For directions, see How to Create or Clone A Site.  Please note that cloning only copies over content created by admins, so if you have content created by members who are not admins of your site, that content will not be copied over. If that is the case, you can use the Export/Import functionality provided by WordPress. For direction, see Importing and Exporting Site Content. You might need to a little cleanup to the new site no matter which option you use. If you use Export/Import, you will need to activate the plugins you are using on the Prod site, as well as make some changes to the navigation as needed. Please remember to make your Test site only visible to admins of the site. For directions, see Site Privacy Settings.

Besides using your Test Site for experimenting with themes, you can also use it to trying out new plugins and CSS.

Please note that the more you experiment on your Test Site, the more it might get beaten up. The content might get stale, the plugins might not be in sync with the Prod site, or the themes you have activated may have left unexpected reside in the database. It is extremely difficult to keep the Prod and Test sites totally in sync. This may or may not be an issue, but if you suspect the changes on your Test site are different when you implement them on your Prod site, it might be time to delete your test site and create a new one.

If you are experimenting with a FSE theme on a test site, you can copy the templates that you create or change, and paste them onto your Prod site, but the process may be a little tricky.

Conclusions

Don ‘t be afraid of shopping around for a new theme. WordPress provides Live Preview functionality that facilitates theme selection. It not only shows how pages and posts will display, but provides a look at the back-end settings that the theme provides. Live Preview is temporary, Activate is permanent. Use Activate cautiously if you think you might want to go back to your original theme. Create a test site to experiment with themes. Consider FSE (Full Site Editable) themes if you feel comfortable with templates and blocks, or are willing to experiment and learn. If you have an active site with a lot of content, consider making a copy of it and use it as a site to test themes, plugins and large changes.