Choosing a theme you won't have to fight

A designer browses themes and finds one that looks extraordinary. The demo has a full-width video, overlapping cards, animated counters. She installs it for a tailor in Surulere.

Three weeks later she is still fighting it. The demo looked that way because it was filled with professional photography she does not have. The layout she needs — a simple list of services with prices — is buried under options. Every change means hunting through eleven settings panels. She has watched four tutorials and none of them match her screen, because they were made for a different kind of theme entirely.

She is not bad at this. She chose the theme the way you choose a shirt, and a theme is not a shirt. It is a set of decisions somebody else made about how your site will be built.

This lesson is about choosing one you will not have to fight, and about one fork in the road that decides more than any other — the one that explains why none of her tutorials matched.

Words in this lesson

The fork that explains everything

WordPress currently has two kinds of theme, and they are edited in completely different places. This is the single biggest source of confusion for beginners, and it is why tutorials so often do not match your screen.

WordPress's own developer documentation puts it plainly: block themes are "built entirely out of blocks", and "both creators and users can edit the templates in the Site Editor". Classic themes use "a PHP-based templating system" supported since 2005. And the line that matters most:

Only block themes can use the Site Editor. Classic themes rely on the Customizer instead.

Before following any tutorial, work out which kind you have. Open Appearance and look: an Editor item means a block theme. A Customize item means a classic one.

That single check will save you more time than anything else in this module. A student stuck for three hours because "the option isn't there" is almost always following instructions for the other kind of theme.

Neither is wrong. Block themes are where WordPress is going and are more consistent to work with. Plenty of excellent classic themes are actively maintained and perfectly good for a business site. What matters is knowing which one you are in, because every instruction after that depends on it.

The demo trap

Every theme demo looks superb, and almost none of that is the theme.

It is the photography. It is a professional writing 30 words instead of your client's 300. It is a business with twelve products to display, when your client has three.

Before choosing on looks, ask: "does my client have what this demo has?" If the demo's power comes from six full-bleed photographs and your client has four phone snaps of the shop, that theme will look worse in your hands than a plainer one would.

The harder version of the same trap: many themes only look like their demo if you import the demo content, which then has to be deleted piece by piece and replaced. That is sometimes worth it, and you should know you are signing up for it.

What to actually check

Check 6 is the one people skip. Install the theme on your practice site, build the one page that earns — services with prices — and see how it goes. Twenty minutes now, or three weeks of fighting later.

Multipurpose themes, and why simpler usually wins

Some themes advertise that they suit every kind of business — restaurants, gyms, law firms, photographers. To do that, they carry every option for all of them.

The result is a theme with a huge settings area, slower pages because it loads code for features you never use, and an update cycle you now depend on. For a five-page business site this is usually the wrong trade.

A simpler theme that does 90% of what you want, plus the custom CSS from Lesson 4, will beat a giant theme that does 100% through a settings maze. You know CSS. That is exactly the advantage this course keeps telling you that you have.

Free, premium, or the default

WordPress's own default themes are a legitimate professional choice. They are maintained by the WordPress project itself, they are block themes, they are fast, and they will not be abandoned. For many small business sites, a default theme plus your brand's colours, fonts and a little CSS is a genuinely good answer — and it is free.

Free themes from the official directory are reviewed before listing. Apply the checklist, especially last-updated.

Premium themes can be excellent, but be careful about who pays. If you buy a licence under your own account, the client's updates depend on you renewing it forever — the same trap as registering their domain in your name. If a premium theme is right, the client buys the licence in their own account.

Common mistakes

The short version

• Check whether it is a block theme or a classic theme first. Appearance → Editor means block; Customize means classic. It decides which tutorials apply.
• Only block themes have the Site Editor. Classic themes use the Customizer.
• The demo is photography and copywriting, not the theme. Ask whether your client has what the demo has.
• Check last updated, installs, support answered, recent reviews.
• Build the earning page on your practice site before committing. Twenty minutes now beats three weeks later.
• Simpler usually wins. A plain theme plus your CSS beats a giant theme with a settings maze.
• A default WordPress theme is a legitimate professional choice.
• If a premium theme is right, the client buys the licence.

Try it yourself

Part one — identify. On your practice site, open Appearance. Write down whether you see Editor or Customize, and therefore which kind of theme you are using. Then install a theme of the other kind and look again, so you have seen both with your own eyes. You will meet both on client sites.

Part two — the earning page test. Choose three candidate themes for your business. For each, install it and spend twenty minutes building only the services-and-prices page from your Module 3 page list. Do not style it. Just see whether the layout you need is reachable.

Score each out of three:

Part three. Write two sentences saying which you chose and why — and one sentence naming what you gave up by choosing it. Every theme choice gives something up. A designer who can name it is a designer who chose, rather than one who fell for a demo.

You'll know you've got it when you can open any WordPress site's dashboard and say, in five seconds, whether it uses a block theme or a classic one — and therefore where its design settings live.