As a follow-up to our post on How to Pick a Joomla Template, here’s a post on picking a WordPress theme.  As with Joomla templates, WordPress themes can be customized to create the exact look you are after.  Picking a good template will give you a good starting point to begin customizations.

Though there are many third party sites offering WordPress themes, it is a good idea to start your search at http://wordpress.org/extend/themes.  If nothing strikes you there, begin to broaden your search using Google to search for WordPress theme sites.

Typically, WordPress blogs are set up in columns, usually between one and four of them.  One column is usually reserved for widgets.  Widgets enhance your users’ experience by giving additional information and options in an easily accessible format.  Popular widgets include latest posts, image galleries, RSS feeds, related posts and web links.  The widget column (or “sidebar”) can be on the right or left of the main blog text.

Not all themes are widget-ready.  If you plan to use widgets, check the theme to see if it is compatible with them.  Widget-readiness can be added later, but it takes some coding, so it’s nice to start with one that is ready to go.

The other columns are where you will add content.  As you scroll through the templates, you will get a feel for what more or fewer columns might offer to your site’s layout.  A single column would be good if you want clean simple look in which you scroll through the text from top to bottom.  Multiple columns can help you to get more information on one page in more of a Newspaper format.

Themes come in a variety of colors.  It is easy to get hung up on a theme’s color scheme when browsing themes.  Remember when you are choosing that colors can easily be changed.  Images can also be changed, rearranged, relocated or removed.

The other important variable in theme selection is choosing between fixed width and flexible width.  With a fixed width template, your site will display at the same width regardless of each user’s screen resolution.  With flexible width, you will get a different width depending on the resolution of your screen.  In my opinion, flexible width is becoming less needed as the zoom screen technologies for devices rapidly increase.  Still, many people are unaware that they can zoom pages.  A flexible width theme will look nice on the lowest resolution screens, but can sometimes appear small on high resolution screens.

If you are creating a WordPress site for business purposes, customization will be important.  You won’t want your theme to look like 20 other sites out there.  So when looking through themes, think about what you want to change (remember, anything can be changed!) and take notes on what you like and how you might make the theme more original.

Now that you have the basics, you will be able to find the perfect template for your site.