How To Choose Your WordPress Theme: The Smart Way (Without Being Dependent On Developers)

When you’re setting up your blog, one of the first decisions you will make is to choose your WordPress theme. And I want to help make your job simpler as well as to ensure you can avoid future pitfalls.

I want to give you a kind of buyer’s guide. I want to arm you with some information that will allow you to make a smart decision for you. 

I also don’t want you to be boxed in by your theme or feel like you need to run out and hire a developer to customize or tweak your theme for you. It’s never fun to feel like you’re in a jam like that and I want you to be able to be self reliant.

I have been working with WordPress for over 20 years. I’ve worked with a lot of different themes, platforms and page builders. I’ve built numerous sites for clients. And I’m involved day to day with the ongoing work of maintaining client sites through the Concierge service, so I see what many of these themes end up doing down the road in the real world.

In this article, I will use my experience to try to simplify this world of WordPress themes for you and give you solid experience-based recommendations for how to build out a website which is going to be far less trouble down the road.

Common WordPress Theme Terms… Defined

Before we dig into themes, let’s first make sure you understand some of the common terms you’re sure to see:

• WordPress Theme: The theme is essentially the design of your site. It is a skin. You can have several themes installed to your site, but only one active at a time. A theme consists of a bunch of files, images and stylesheets that together control how your site looks. Your theme also contains the underlying programming to power the front-end portion of your site, including querying out content to display it and more. So, your theme is pretty much a package of code that, as a whole, is responsible for the portion of your WordPress site that people will actually see in the public (often referred to as the front-end, versus the back-end being the admin side of WordPress).
• Child Theme​: OK, let’s say you have a theme active on your blog that was developed by another developer. And that developer occasionally releases updates and fixes to that theme. If you make any customizations to the theme, they would be overwritten every time you upgraded. So, a child theme is a sub-theme that will derive all of the look and feel of your main theme, but layer over top of it some additional edits. You can make as many edits as you want to your child theme without risk of losing anything, but it will give you the ability to upgrade the main theme whenever there are updates.
• Plugin: A plugin is a piece of software that you can tack onto WordPress to give it additional functionality. Plugins have a variety of purposes. Some are simple… others quite involved. Some are free, others are not. While some plugins can do various things to alter the look and feel of your site, it is still your theme that has primary control.
• Stylesheet: This is a file that controls the colors, fonts and most other visual settings of your site. It is built with a language called CSS (cascading stylesheets) which your browser understands. In most cases, modifying colors, fonts and other things require editing the stylesheet that came with your theme. In some cases, this requires manual editing of CSS files. In most modern themes, this can be customized within WordPress.
• Page Builder. A page builder is an add-on plugin that provides a visual, drag-and-drop interface to design pages and even your entire theme without knowing any code. Generally speaking, the output of a page builder will override the theme.
• Block Editor (or Gutenberg). This is the current default editor built into WordPress. In essence, it is like a page builder except that it is built in and not an add-on. By default, you will write your pages and posts using the block builder, although you can use it to design any kind of site you want using plugins that add custom blocks to the editor.
• Theme Customizer. This is a native interface within WordPress that allows you to edit the global settings of your theme. The options available in the Customizer vary theme to theme, but the interface remains the same since it is native to WordPress. If your theme makes use of the Customizer, you would use it to control global settings of your theme. Individual page-specific designs are done on a page by page basis.
• Full-Side Editing (FSE). This is a newer type of theme that is designed to allow you to build every site component using the native block builder. So, you could design your header, footer and site templates all using blocks. This is a different type of theme than the kind that uses the Customizer.

Where Do You Find WordPress Themes?

To put it bluntly, there are themes everywhere. So many that it makes choosing one difficult.

Perhaps the most direct approach is right inside WordPress itself. Go to Appearance > Themes > Add New and you will be able to browse the WordPress theme repository right from within WordPress.

You can preview any theme right from inside WordPress. If you like it, you can hit the Install button and download the theme right into your WordPress for free. Then, activate it and your site instantly changes.

Now, all of the themes available directly within WordPress are free. And there are many of them to choose from. The WordPress theme library also lists out a bunch of commercial themes if you want to check those out, too.

There are also numerous theme libraries that are not found directly within WordPress or on the WordPress website. There is quite the economy centered around WordPress themes, so there are many options to choose from. Here are a few of them:

In addition to some of these sites that serve as central hubs for themes, you’ve got a lot of themes available out there on a more individual basis. Some of them are built for more specific purposes (which we will cover more below).

Frankly, I think most of the themes in these centralized repositories aren’t worth using. If you go to install a new theme, I would stick mostly to the most popular options in the “Popular” tab. They will be free to install, but they are supported tools with paid Pro versions and dedicated websites. In other words, I’d recommend sticking to themes with actual companies backing them up.

Free Theme Or A Paid Theme?

OK, so let’s be real. You probably expect me to say that paid is better. And you are correct. 😎 But, let’s be clear as to why that is.

Commercial themes will provide the support you need and the options will be far more plentiful. The code is generally better quality… and features will be better. They have a commercial interest to make a great theme and the results are usually better.

In the end, you get what you pay for. And, why would anybody spend much time coding a great theme that is well coded and has a lot of expandability simply for charity? It takes a lot of time to do something like that. Why would they be expected to simply give it away without any thought of a return on their time?

There are a lot of free, abandoned themes out there. But, in my opinion, it is a bad idea to use them.

Is The Theme Easy To Customize?

One of the most important considerations you have is the ease which any theme can be customized. The last thing you want is a theme which would require developer skills to modify.

Even if you’re hiring an agency to design your site for you, be very careful not to let them choose and use a theme which only they know how to customize. You want something flexible that doesn’t depend on one set of people (or a single designer) to modify. Some agencies do this as a way to keep you dependent on them.

Some may even make the argument that the site will be fastest if they hand-code the perfect custom theme for you. They are wrong. A theme does not need to be hand-coded to be fast. But even more importantly, a hand-coded theme will be incredibly difficult to make changes to in the future. The cons far outweigh any pros.

These days, any good theme makes it easy to modify the look and feel without the need to do any coding. Any theme that would require you to delve into the underlying PHP programming to modify is a theme best to be avoided.

Theme customization options come in different flavors. Each theme is different in how it works. They are…

Theme Options Panels

Some themes have a settings or options screen that allows you to pick all kinds of different options such as fonts, colors and other typical settings.

While this is better than nothing, I wouldn’t recommend you use a theme that relies on a settings screen like this. Such a screen only allows you to turn things on and off and control basic settings. But, you can not make fundamental changes to how things are presented on your website without modifying the underlying code using a child theme.

Theme Customizer

WordPress has a built-in Customizer (found under Appearance > Customize) that many modern themes make use of. This Customizer is more or less the equivalent of a more proprietary options panel (mentioned above), however it is using default WordPress rather than something proprietary.

The options found in the Customizer will depend on what options your theme supports. Some themes are better than others.

The Customizer does not provide options to change individual page layouts on the site, but is used to control global theme options across your entire site. Individual pages would still be edited either using the block builder or a page builder.

Full Site Editing (FSE)

Many more modern themes are block-based themes. This means that you can use the native Gutenberg block builder to build global site functions such as the header, footer, templates, etc.

When you are running a block theme (designed for FSE), you would edit the site by going to Appearance > Editor. You can then design templates, components and entire pages visually using the block editor.

A very common FSE theme is the default 2025 theme that comes with WordPress by default. While the theme looks pretty basic at first, it is a block theme. That means that 2025 theme can be turned into anything you would like.

FSE is the most modern type of theme, as of this writing. However, some people (including me, frankly) find FSE to be a little bit cumbersome. This is all a matter of preference, of course. 😇

Page Builders

A page builder is a plugin that you install to your website that then gives you a full visual, drag-and-drop interface for designing any kind of page you would like.

A page builder is not usually part of the theme. I’ve seen some themes that have the page builder baked right into it, however in most cases the page builder is indeed a plugin. The page builder is used to build and design pages with any look and feel you want. And that page builder works in conjunction with your theme to deliver the final site.

Some page builders come with their own themes that are designed to work closely with that page builder. Some page builders therefore have the ability to control the entire look of your site. For instance:

• The Elementor page builder has it’s own Theme Builder built into it. The templates built with it will override the active theme on your site. This leads many Elementor users to use the stripped-down Hello Theme so as not to bring in bulky code unnecessarily and then they design their entire site with Elementor.
• Thrive Theme Builder has a nice theme builder interface for designing templates and works in conjunction with their own Thrive Architect page builder to design pages.
• Bricks is a page builder that operates as a theme itself, so the builder is baked right into the theme.
• Beaver Builder is another popular builder that has both a theme and a plugin. BB Theme is their main theme and the Beaver Builder works as a plugin.

As you can tell, there are multiple options out there for editing your site on WordPress. Different themes offer different approaches to it. Much of it comes down to preference more than anything else. I’ll cover my own thoughts and recommendations below on specific tools, but the important thing here is…

Avoid themes that still rely on manual PHP coding and child themes to make modifications. The tools in the WordPress ecosystem have evolved too much to put yourself through that hell.

Need some no-BS technical consultation or direct tech help with your theme, but don’t know who you can trust to do it? Perhaps we can help you right here.

Theme Reliability And Site Performance

Not all themes are created equal. They are built by different teams with different coding standards. Some themes require usage of a page builder that can add extra overhead. All this can lead to other considerations regarding overall reliability and site performance.

Purists who know how to code may argue against page builders. They will say that they produce bloated code and that you can have a faster, more streamlined site if you hand-code your theme in the most efficient possible way. To be clear, they’re not wrong. That said, most of these people either don’t run real businesses or they’re in the business of selling you their coding services. In a business, speed of execution is important. And you can build a site far faster with a visual builder than you can by hand-coding it. Then, use your saved time to go make money. 🤑

But, not all page builders are equal. And not only that, some themes don’t even require that you use a page builder but instead you can just use the native Gutenberg block editor that is baked right into WordPress.

Before going deeper into reliability and site performance for various themes, let’s first confirm some important truths here:

• A site built with a page builder is rarely going to be faster than one built using the Gutenberg block builder. This is not a hard-and-fast rule, but is generally true.
• A page builder is a layer which sits on top of the theme. Not only that, some page builders are bulkier than others because they attempt to enable every possible thing you’d ever want to do.
• Any site can be made fast or slow depending on how it was built. In other words, merely using one tool over another isn’t the key consideration. You can use a big page builder to build a simple, streamlined site…. or you can use it to build a monster. A tool is just a tool.

This may seem to lend itself to the idea never to use a page builder. That’s obviously not true. Page builders provide a lot of power and flexibility. For instance, Elementor is super popular despite being pretty bulky. It is popular because it does so much and even has support for third-party add-ons…. ultimately making Elementor capable of pretty much anything you’d ever want to build.

When we speak about reliability, we’re referring to things such as:

• Updates don’t usually break things.
• Security issues are rare
• We don’t see a lot of plugin conflicts.

In my personal experience, you will usually see more problems with sites using page builders. Elementor, specifically, seems to be notorious. 😇 It is a great platform for many reasons, but Elementor upgrades are common and sometimes even end up breaking site features. In some ways, Elementor keeps a lot of WordPress agencies in business because of the maintenance required. 🤪

Generally speaking, I see better site performance and less reliability issues with themes that make use of the Theme Customizer and the native Gutenberg builder. This would include options such as Astra (along with Spectra builder), Kadence (along with Kadence Blocks), or GeneratePress (along with GenerateBlocks). Each of these themes are very fast and use the native Customizer, while all have their own plugin for adding blocks to the Gutenberg interface so you can build anything you want.

Theme Lock-In – How Easy Is It To Switch?

Nobody likes feeling stuck with something. And it is true that not all themes are equal when it comes to the ability to switch to something else later down the road. As much as possible, we want to avoid theme lock-in.

Generally speaking, it will be your proprietary page builders that pose the highest risk of lock-in. In fact, it can be so much so that switching to something else later would pretty much require a complete site re-build. I know… because I’ve had to do exactly that for clients many times. 😇

Some examples are:

• These page builders often use their own, proprietary stylesheets that are made to work with their page builder. There’s nothing wrong with that because it is what makes their software work so well. But, if you were to ever disable that page builder, all the stylesheets will be gone and you’ll lose the formatting of almost everything you built.
• Some page builders don’t even store their content in the standard location in the WordPress database, but instead make use of custom fields and even custom tables. If you deactivate that builder later, your pages will literally look blank. I’ve seen this happen with Thrive Architect sites when the site’s owner tries to move away from it.
• Some page builders make use of WordPress shortcodes behind the scenes. If you were to deactivate the page builder, your pages will look like a gibberish of shortcodes that no longer work. Divi and WPBakery are two builders off the top of my head that work this way…. and both should be avoided IMO.

Once again, the closer you stay to native WordPress, the less theme lock-in you’ll have. Generally speaking, you can replace one theme with another and it will all just work. It is the page content itself where you can get the most lock-in and reliance on proprietary stylesheets. Generally speaking, the more you use the Gutenberg block editor, the easier it gets.

Plugins which add third-party blocks to the block editor (like Spectra and Kadence Blocks) do use their own stylesheets. However, the fact that it is still using the block builder makes it more flexible. Even if you were to switch themes, those blocks will still mostly render properly.

Interestingly, if you build your page content with a page builder and then later switch out the underlying theme, much of that content will still work fine. As long as you keep the page builder plugin in place. If your page builder was integrated into the theme itself, though, you are stuck.

Your absolute worst options for lock-in are going to be platforms like Divi, WPBakery and Thrive Themes. Either through use of proprietary shortcodes, non-native data storage or outright intentional lock-in, I’ve found that these platforms are horrible when it comes to later switching to something else.

In my view, it is always best to build your site using a hybrid setup of a theme which makes use of the Customizer along with the native Gutenberg block editor.

My Personal Preferences on Theme & Page Builders

Alright, now for some of my personal opinions on various platforms and themes here…

For most sites, I would recommend Kadence. I think a block-based theme can be molded into anything you want. Plus, it is “native” to WordPress and you’re always going to get your fastest performance that way.

I’ve had people ask me why I chose Kadence over other options. I personally find Kadence to have the most options and flexibility. The way it works and looks “clicks” with me. These days, any site that I build is built with Kadence.

Whether you are just building a simple blog or a full-blown membership site, Kadence can work nicely for you. You can find the Kadence Theme for free in the theme library. There’s also a free version of Kadence Blocks you can use to add additional blocks to Gutenburg to build your site. To take it up a notch, you can get the PRO version which will add enhanced capability to both the theme and the blocks builder.

Kadence also has a nice library of starter themes you can import as a starting point and then modify to your liking.

In the past, I used to recommend Thrive Themes. I no longer do for a variety of reasons…. not the least of which is that the company was acquired and the new owners did a lot of things wrong, in my opinion.

For membership sites, I used to be a big fan of BuddyBoss. The BuddyBoss theme has a lot of great things going for it if you’re building such a site. But, I no longer like working with BuddyBoss sites. For one, the theme is pretty tough to customize unless you’re using Elementor Pro. This means most BuddyBoss sites are going to be inherently bloated right out the gate. I’ve also found, over time, that BuddyBoss sites end up having more plugin conflicts and reliability problems.

Divi, WP Bakery and the like are all just not good options, if you ask me. I know many people swear by Divi, so I’m not conceited enough to say the software “sucks”. Divi is clearly very capable. But, I hate the interface, find it to be slow and clunky, and it’s use of shortcodes makes the lock-in problem very strong.

I respect other block-based themes, such as Astra/Spectra and GeneratePress. They’re both good in their own right. As I said, though, I prefer Kadence to both of those. Astra/Spectra just doesn’t seem to have all the options I like with Kadence Theme.

Most freebie themes in the WordPress repository should be avoided, in my opinion. Same goes with most themes in third-party repositories like ThemeForest. It doesn’t make theme bad, but I just find them to be more of a question mark. I say it is best to stick with one of the common, supported platforms like those named in this article.

As for page builders, I respect what Elementor is capable of but it takes some care to keep Elementor sites fast and streamlined. I also see more reliability issues with Elementor sites, generally. I’m comfortable with Elementor, but I wouldn’t choose to build a site with Elementor anymore.

If I were to be forced to build a new site from scratch using a page builder, I’d probably go with Bricks Builder.

Frequently Asked Questions (With Quick Answers)

If you could use my help in converting your site to a different theme, or just want to book a call to talk over your options, feel free to contact me. Let’s talk about your goals for your site.