I’m setting up a simple website for a shop, and I’m going to use WordPress. I already have a registered domain and hosting set up for it, and have previously set up my own website using WordPress.

I’m looking at themes for the shop website, which needs to have some nav buttons to go to pages which will contain some text and images. And I want to feature lots of images. In some ways the Portfolio-type themes are relevant. I also want to be able to change the logo on the home page for the shop logo.

I see some WP themes are free, but others I have to pay for. How do I know if I’m getting good value for money? Or if I will be able to find support if there’s a problem?

So what should I watch out for?

And anyone got any good links to safe, usable WP themes for use on a separate website?

I’m no WP expert but when I installed WP, I could just search for themes from within the admin console. As far as I could see there are loads of decent, free ones.

There are enough good free ones to not need to pay for anything. I found the search a bit poor and need to persevere to find the right one. Most are pretty customisable once you have the basic layout.

No advice other than find a theme that you like and works for you, a few quid now will be worth it if it makes the development process easier.

If you do get a theme and want to make any changes to it do this via a child theme – it’ll make future updates a lot easier.

My current go to theme is Enfold. Its a paid for theme which has a large and active user base, forum questions get answered in reasonable time and the support is pretty good. If you think you might need a bit of support along the way it’s a good idea too look how many downloads a theme has and how active the user base is.

Given the hours you can spend trying to find the one theme that looks exactly like you want (hint: it doesn’t exist, they never do.) I think the option of a highly customisable theme that you pay the equivalent of an hours fee for is well worth the money. Once you get to grips with the theme and the especially the options opened up by modifying the custom.css file you really can use the same theme for several sites without them looking generic.

For a shop I don’t think you can beat Woo Commerce.
Most, if not all, of the Woo themes support it.
Pretty slick right out-of-the-box.

If you want more creative freedom, you can use Woo Canvas as the theme which is a cross between a framework and a theme.

They have gone up in price recently, but I still think they are worth it.

My business website – http://www.kinetics-online.co.uk – uses iFeature Pro 5. It’s a paid-for theme, about $25, but allows a huge amount of customisation.

I don’t agree that free WP themes are good – for hobbyist sites maybe, but not for anything properly commercial/professional.

ThemeForest and loads of similar sites offer 100s of themes, most of which have reviews and cost only £10-30.

My website http://www.finelytunedride.co.uk/ is a free wordpress theme, and a few “plug ins” like twitter feed and “side bar”

I also found the search is a bit poor tbh.
Adding the FTR logo, was a bit trail and error to start with.

I do find it a easy website to ad content and pics to, didn’t take long to ad the new “Di2” logo and page for custom tuning and firmware upgrades etc