After learning the WordPress terminology,  now, let’s get started with learning about how to choose the right look, feel and functionality of your website so that you can make more sales. It all starts with choosing the right WordPress framework and theme for your website.

Choosing Your WordPress Framework & Theme

When deciding to use WordPress to build your website you’ll be confronted with a multitude of choices for WordPress frameworks and themes. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands.
There are free themes and premium themes. It’s important to realize that by using a free theme, you will be more limited than if you choose a premium theme from a well-respected and known theme developer.
(Read more on this below).

Popular Frameworks & Themes

Studiopress.com — Built on the Genesis framework, Studiopress child themes are loved far and wide for their versatility and clean code. It’s very secure and they offer a lot of tutorials to make it easy to use. They have great support via their forum too.
Elegantthemes.com — Built on the Divi framework, they are known for their high quality themes. There are many pre-built themes to choose from that might work for what you need. They are highly customizable and beautiful. Their Divi Builder allows you to visually design a website the way you want it via dragging and dropping.
Pagelines.com — Built on the DMS framework, which allows you to drag and drop to build a desirable website using WordPress without understanding code. They also have several child themes designed for their framework that are useful. This is mostly for beginners as the framework is limited compared to the others. However, sometimes that’s a good then so you’re not overwhelmed.
DIYThemes — The Thesis 2 framework is loved by many designers due to the huge amount of control they can have with Thesis. You start with Thesis and built it how you want. Instead of themes, you use skins.
The whole thing is drag and drop, which many people prefer if they are visual thinkers. Plus, the customizations you can make are almost limitless, even if you don’t understand code.

Free or Paid?

There are, of course, free themes. You’ll get a free theme or two the moment you install WordPress onto your server. While the basic theme that comes with your first install of WordPress is perfectly fine and usable, it’s highly recommended that you choose a premium framework and theme to use when building a profitable business site.  You can trust the free themes provided by WordPress.  However, free themes available across the net are often coded with spam; or even worse, coding that will make your site unsecure.  Additionally, premium themes will always provide higher end options that are already built into the theme.
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