Is Choosing Your Wordpress Theme Just Like Dating?

If you’re building your site on WordPress you’ll know that trying to choose a WordPress theme is a bit like sending a 25 year old single guy to a ‘Looking for Love’ convention for women.

The choice is vast and no sooner have you found one that you think is just perfect then you find yet another ‘10 Best WordPress Themes’ articles. There you were, ready to settle down and choose a WordPress theme and suddenly you’re back into a downloading, uploading and activating frenzy all over again. Or am I the only serial theme hopper here?

Anyway, somehow one night in a ‘10 Best Wordpress Themes’ frenzy I stumbled upon the StudioPress site and ended up purchasing the Lifestyle theme.  And I can honestly say I am now a reformed theme-a-holic.

Yes it was $60 which but I’ve definitely had value for money there. There is no way I could have designed that theme for that price for a start! But over the weeks that I have used it I’ve really started to appreciate it more and more.

So, top 3 features for me?

1. It’s pretty & professional

Simple, stylish but with just enough design features to keep it interesting.

2. It’s simple to customise

The style sheet is set out very logically if you’re looking to make changes. I won’t lie here, you definitely do need to know a little over a smidge of code but it’s easy to learn that as you go along.

3. Video tutorials

It has a whole series of super simple, video tutorials. Can’t speak highly enough of these and wold love to see more of them added.

4. The price

Yes, it’s $60 more than a free theme. But where else can you get a professional deisgner to develop your site and be available to support it for that little?

5. The support forums are top notch.

This is what sets StudioPress apart for me. No matter what theme you choose there will invaribly be times that you have to customise in the actual code and this can be hairy. People are so helpful .. you are encoraged to post the URL of your site and they will take a look and tell you exactly where your code is wrong, the exact file you need to edit etc. How cool is that?

But, even with the tutorials and forum support you will invariably still find yourself spending hours customising and tweaking your site. I’ve probably spent 50 hours minimum on this one.

But you know what. I’ve realised that that is not specific to this Lifestyle theme. All themes need that kind of love and attention to get them humming along. And now that I’ve stopped the ‘grass is always greener’ kind of approach and settled on one we’re getting along just fine and I can definitely see us growing old together

Who would have thought there was a life lesson in a simple WordPress theme?