Looking to discover the ideal WordPress topic? Then you’re in luck. Below, I’ll be taking an in depth appearance at ThemeForest — one of the maximum famous locations to shop for WordPress issues — and sharing a few critical pointers to make certain you don’t turn out to be with a dud.
When constructing a a success website, your selected topic is one of the maximum vital portions of the puzzle. After all, a topic is often answerable for now no longer handiest a website’s fashion and design, however regularly a good deal of its capability as well.
In different words, shopping for a topic isn’t a selection you need to make lightly. Instead, you’ll need to weigh up all your alternatives earlier than leaping in — and, in terms of alternatives, ThemeForest is a domain that truly can’t be beaten.
So, take a seat down back, loosen up and enjoy, as I let you know the entirety you want to recognise approximately shopping for issues on ThemeForest.
What Is ThemeForest?
Launched in 2008, ThemeForest is the world’s most popular WordPress theme marketplace, pairing WordPress theme developers with hungry buyers. ThemeForest is part of the seven-property Envato Market family (unified in 2014), which also includes the now extremely well-known WordPress plugin marketplace, CodeCanyon.
Because of its popularity, ThemeForest is one of the best ways for WordPress developers to earn a living — simply develop a theme, upload it to ThemeForest and, after validation by quality control, start selling to a huge pool of qualified buyers. Depending on whether they sell exclusively through ThemeForest and what their sales volume is, theme developers earn somewhere between 45% and 87.5% of their sales.
Although Envato’s financial details aren’t publicly disclosed, the stats that are available are absolutely staggering. In 2014, it was revealed that Envato had paid a cool quarter of a billion dollars to its sellers, with 48 of its sellers having generated more than $1 million worth of sales each. And in 2017, Envato pulled in a whopping $29.4 million in net profit.
From a theme buyer’s perspective — the main focus of this post — you’re spoiled for choice. ThemeForest lists an impressive 12,000-plus WordPress themes, typically priced around $60 each, though Envato moved to let authors set their own pricing in 2016.
Getting Started: Finding a Theme
With such a lot of topics to pick from, narrowing down your choice is tough — I understand from private revel in that it’s all too clean to spend numerous hours (even days!) staring blankly at masses of various topics.
However, ThemeForest comes geared up with some of functions that will help you to locate your ideal theme.
For a start, ThemeForest helps a beneficial seek function, permitting you to locate topics primarily based totally on your selected keywords. Themes also are break up throughout 14 top-stage categories (company topics, running a blog topics, eCommerce topics, and so on), which must assist you to locate some thing suitable.
After you’ve completed your preliminary seek (or class choice), ThemeForest will go back an extended listing of applicable topics. To assist you to slim your seek further, you’ll be capable of type those primarily based totally on 5 standards indexed above the quest results:
- Best sellers
- Newest
- Best rated
- Trending
- Price
Before Buying: How to Choose a Theme
After deciding on the standards you want to apply to slim down the candidates, it’s time to analyze in greater detail. In this segment, I’ll speak a number of the unique matters to examine whilst you’re thinking about a subject matter:
EXPLORE THE DEMO SITE
Every subject matter on ThemeForest capabilities a stay preview — a beneficial device that lets in you to peer a subject matter in motion on a preconfigured website, which have to show its major capabilities and functionalities.
The stay preview may also provide you with the possibility to check a number of a subject matter’s customization settings, inclusive of converting the shadeation scheme or attempting specific layouts and backgrounds. It’s really well worth checking out those customizations extensively, as this can provide you with a higher concept of ways a subject matter will appearance whilst it’s kitted out together along with your branding.
One phrase of caution: Try to assess the subject matter with out being inspired through the photographs. Most subject matter previews characteristic extraordinarily unique, exquisite inventory photographs. But, in lots of cases, those are top class inventory photographs you won’t have the rights to apply (except you buy them separately).
Often, the subject matter developer will specify withinside the description whether or not or now no longer the subject matter simply comes with the rights to apply the photographs.
When you’re searching at a demo site, you have to additionally make a factor of beginning it on a cell device, or the use of some thing like Chrome Developer Tools to preview the cell version. These days, approximately half of all net visitors takes place on cell devices, so that you need your preferred subject matter to appearance remarkable on those too.
While nearly each cutting-edge WordPress subject matter is responsive, you’ll nonetheless need to discover the cell demo to make certain the responsive layout is implemented well.
CONSIDER NITTY-GRITTY DETAILS IN THE SIDEBAR
The sidebar of every subject matter’s person list web page gives a few very treasured facts that will help you to make your decision:
- Number of sales — if a subject matter sells through the thousands, it’s probably to be an excellent subject matter, and the developer could have the sources to maintain updating and enhancing it.
- Buyer rating — appropriate issues will entice excessive scores, and vice versa (be aware of the range of scores too).
- Last updated — a WordPress subject matter that hasn’t had an replace in some time is greater liable to protection vulnerabilities and compatibility issues. If it’s been six-plus months for the reason that final replace, that’s now no longer an excellent sign.
- Comments — much less vital than they used to be, however the remarks segment is a superb region to search for greater distinct customer thoughts. It may also provide you with an perception into how responsive the developer is, and the way they typically deal with issues.
READ THE DESCRIPTION
It also pays to read the sales description on the theme’s product page. This is where the author will list the main features and share any bonuses — for example, some themes include several premium plugins in the price, sometimes worth upwards of $100 or so.
You’ll also find other pertinent information, such as compatibility with WordPress plugins and whether or not the images are included.
Support
It’s easy to think: Hey, I already know how to use WordPress — it’s not that hard. I won’t be needing any help, so what does support really matter? Unfortunately, things sometimes break, or perhaps you aren’t able to get the theme set up in quite the way you’d hoped. In such a scenario, the theme developer is by far the most qualified source of assistance.
In 2019, all themes come with six months of support from the developer included in the purchase price. You also have the option to extend that support to 12 months for an extra fee. This extra fee depends on the list price of the theme — typically, it’s about 30% of the list price to extend support.
Within this support period, the author is committed to answering any questions on how the theme works, its features, and how to set up specific functionalities. It’s worth pointing out, though, that the support services don’t include installation or any personal customisation work (this is still, as it should be, entirely on the theme-buyer to sort out).
Some theme developers provide support directly through the Envato comments section, while others use their own website and a forum/ticket system. Some do both.
Best-Selling WordPress Themes
If you’re unsure which theme to buy, I recommend taking a look at the best-seller list.
AVADA (549,000-PLUS SALES)
— by ThemeFusion.
X THEME (205,000-PLUS SALES)
— by Themeco.
ENFOLD (194,000-PLUS SALES)
— by Kriesi.
BETHEME (174,000-PLUS SALES)
— by Muffin Group.
JUPITER (124,000-PLUS SALES)
— by Artbees.
If you’re at the hunt for a brand new WordPress theme, it’d be silly to rule out ThemeForest. You may also pay attention a few rumblings approximately high-satisfactory issues, however in case you stay with the especially rated, nicely–set up issues you can’t certainly pass some distance wrong — those issues promote nicely for a reason, and it’s commonly due to the fact they’re at the high-satisfactory quit of the spectrum.
Of course, ThemeForest’s foremost promoting factor is selection. And, with greater than 12,000 WordPress issues available, there certainly is some thing for everyone!