So you’ve chosen a CMS, you have your domain and hosting sorted out, and you’re onto the fun part. You look over some templates and suddenly realise you’ve stepped into an overpopulated world where hundreds of templates look exactly the same. How do you find the one that’s right for you?

Universal essentials

Any theme should be well supported. That can mean a dedicated support forum in the case of companies like Elegant Themes or WooThemes, or it can take the form of a comprehensive user manual that reduces the need for support in the first place. This is especially important for new users, so try and be sure the theme you’re looking at will make it easy for you to implement.

Themes should always, at the very least, work across all current popular browsers on both Windows and Mac. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari are usually the most important browsers to check for. If the theme information doesn’t specify browser compatibility, you can download all of the above and test them yourself.

Internet Explorer 6 is where requirements tend to differ, it’s a very out-of-date browser (we’re currently up to IE8) and it’s often much more difficult to create a website or theme that displays properly in it. For that reason, you’ll sometimes come across themes that do not support IE6. Often that’s not really a problem because a minority of your audience will be using it but if your intended audience are those who are likely to be browsing from work this becomes important due to the amount of companies who refuse to upgrade.

Remember if you can’t find enough information on a theme, you can usually ask the seller.

Your personal needs

Corporate themes are often completely different to personal themes. Which type of site are you building? Tags on each theme featured here help you to narrow down the purpose of each theme and only investigate those suitable for your project.

Do you already have an idea about how you’d like the site to be structured? Perhaps you like those ever-popular featured post sliders at the top of the homepage, or plenty of ad space is top on your priority list. All theme screenshots on this site feature the homepage, so you can easily get an idea of how they look without looking any further. That said, many themes (especially WordPress ones) come with a number of layout options so if you like the design, investigate further.

Other tips

It’s a good idea to make a list of things you’re looking for in a theme. Split the list into “essentials” and “would be nice” and really be honest about what needs to go into the former column. Try not to go into your search looking for the “perfect” theme. If your requirements are fairly standard you may very well find it, but if one theme ticks all your boxes but one it’s still worth consideration.

Try not to be seduced by themes offering 101 colour options, look past these claims to the base design and layout beneath. Some colour options are great, yes, but often this can be a smokescreen for lacking functionality in other areas.

Remember if all else fails you can hire someone to make customizations, for much much less than it would cost to have a custom build in the first place.