In reality, when you are at the initial phase of building a WordPress site, a significant number of factors will be on the plan. Starting from setting up the website, optimizing the site for SEO, maintaining the content strategy, and social engagement – you don’t have anything less to do, to be honest.
The popularity that WordPress has in terms of creating a business website excuses the overstatement of calling it the best platform to start with. With the increasing number of users, you can see a significant uplift in the number of available themes and plugins developed for WordPress.
It’s incredible how multiple thousands of WordPress themes are being published – each of them is unique in terms of visual representation, features, and overall performance.
Themes are an essential part of a website. You should always pay keen attention to the theme of your choice when you are setting up your WordPress site.
The theme is the gateway that makes your website attractive, extends the features of the site, provides faster navigation, and, most importantly, it is the interface that represents your internal server files to the web browser in an excellent organized way.
Types of Themes:
In terms of source, WordPress themes are of two types. Over eight thousand themes are being stored in the WordPress theme repository, and this number is only growing day by day.
On the other hand, some themes can be downloaded from 3rd party websites without any specific license. We usually call the predecessor nulled themes.
Although not to confuse premium WordPress themes can be acquired from a developer, official website, or trusted marketplace. Still, often they do have a lite version with limited features available in the WordPress repository.
Why You Should Always Pick a Theme From the WordPress Repository?
So in this article, we aim to short out why you should prefer to use a theme from the WordPress repository. Hopefully, this article will help you understand why it’s important and how it will keep your website safe, engaging, and exciting to navigate.
1. Safe to Use
We all prefer to use secure stuff from any trusted supplier. WordPress repository is a trusted resource place to download themes so you can be sure that the internal coding of the theme is clean and harmless.
The WordPress repository also closely reviews the themes to assure the required standards and guidelines to meet before they put them on the list for users to download.
Some of the premium themes that are available on the developer’s website usually have a child or lite version in the WordPress repository so you can test it and later decide whether to purchase the full version packed with the latest feature updates and fixes.
On the other hand, downloading themes from random websites does not guarantee that they are safe to install. And honestly, in most cases, they are not. You never know which theme file includes malicious code, and injectors can easily hack your site.
So avoiding such a security breach is the number one reason for everyone to choose a theme from the WordPress theme repository.
2. Receives Regular Update
The theme developers or author release updates from time to time to improve theme functionalities, compatibility fixes, bug fixes, and, most importantly, updating the security patches and more.
These updates are crucial for your active theme. If you use a theme from the WordPress repository, you will receive these updates as soon as released by the developers.
Recently, WordPress introduced the auto-update feature that immediately updates the themes and plugins once a new update arrives. But if you use a theme from a random source with no direct interconnection with WordPress, you may not be able to get these updates.
The scariest part of not getting updates is that you won’t get your current issues fixed with the theme. The website will be vulnerable to hacker attacks because of an outdated theme. Moreover, you may face theme compatibility issues after the WordPress version update.
3. Avoids Compatibility Issues
As a webmaster, you don’t want to see your site breaking all over the place and behave differently on different browsers. To avoid such behaviors on your site, the first thing you want to do is keep all the components up-to-date.
It’s nothing surprising that WordPress is continuously developing its software and releasing updates now and then. So to follow their rules and regulations, themes should be up-to-date too.
All the themes available in the repository follow WordPress regulations, so there is a low chance of facing compatibility issues with these themes.
On the other hand, themes that come from random resources may or may not follow the standard guidelines and lack regular updates, so the chance of site break is higher.
4. Ideal for Responsiveness
Another essential factor of a theme is responsiveness. A responsive theme is designed to adjust the spectator’s device screen size automatically. So having a responsive site means your site will equally look good on the smaller screen devices such as mobile phones and tablets as it is on computers.
Nowadays, people have access to multiple personal devices. It increases the versatility of the visitor’s screen size, and as a site owner, you must adjust your website to this trend.
However, there is nothing much to do when you have a responsive theme/template for your site, and it becomes even easier when you are running a WordPress site.
Since you can pick up the preferred theme from the WordPress repository, given the fact that almost all themes are responsive there, it decreases the chance of being not responsive and does make your site suitable for all kinds of devices.
However, themes that don’t belong to the WP repository have a 50/50 chance of being responsive, and if not responsive, it can decrease your site’s reputation dramatically.
5. Doesn’t Harm You Site SEO
The acronym of “Search Engine Optimization” is SEO and is an undeniably significant part of your website. It is the approach every website owners use to drive organic traffic to their website, and you should adhere to good SEO practices. Along with your part of maintaining website SEO, a theme also has to do with SEO.
A well-coded theme that follows the guideline of SEO and provides essential controls to the website owners is more likely to perform better than a different theme that doesn’t build the same way. A theme from the WordPress repository doesn’t likely contain spam links, unwanted content, and injected keywords to the high-ranking pages.
These kinds of links and contents often contain backdoor access to hackers. Spammy links can redirect your visitors to another website. In most cases, these sites are harmful, so google can de-rank your page or place a harmful page warning. Check this guide to fix the site ahead and contain harmful content issues.
So it’s recommended to use a theme from the WordPress repository to avoid such malware activity.
6. Developer Support
WordPress is more than a CMS software and has a more significant community. As a user of themes from the WordPress repository, you will get constant support from the theme developers and other community members on how to have sufficient experience with these themes to guide you in fixing an issue.
The developers of these themes spend a lot of time-solving your issues and answering your questions. Since the themes are coded in a particular language, often PHP, they usually do have some issues.
If you can notice those bugs, you might need developer support, and that’s what you won’t be able to get in terms of nulled themes or a theme downloaded from an unknown site.
Support is something you should always consider when choosing a theme for a WordPress site, and a repository theme won’t discourage you in terms of support.
#7. Free of Cost
Another great thing about repository themes is that they don’t charge you a single penny. Yet, most of the theme developers limit the features and ask you to upgrade to the premium version to access the full features of the theme.
However, there are still some themes packed with so many features you would be surprised to know that they are coming free of cost.
It’s hard to explore over 8,000 themes in the repository to find out which theme allows full access to the features for free; however, I am glad to mention these two themes that fall in this criteria are Blocksy and OceanWP.
There is nothing new, to be honest, but I would be happy if these two themes can help you in building an amazing WordPress site given the amount of control they have for free is exceptional.
8. No Legal Issues
Using the software, themes, and plugins from the official WordPress repository means they are legit, and you are safe from facing any copyright issue.
The developers have to put a significant amount of work into creating these themes, so as a user, we should give them credit either by purchasing it or using it for free under their license.
Those themes that are not from the WP repository or the theme’s official website can be distributed by a person that was stolen from the authors. Then they either give it to the people at a lesser price or for free.
Of course, you can use them, and you’ll get yourself in serious trouble since the theme authors, and developers can and will sue you.
Using stolen assets is not something you want your business to be known for. So, it has a logic to recommend you for using themes from the WordPress repository, Official site, and trusted theme marketplace.
9. Protect From the Demoralization of Development
The WordPress community is combined with individuals of different spirits, motivations, and purposes. Some developers enjoy creating themes and plugins to solve problems for the general users who do the rest and showcase their creativity to the interested group of people.
We can only appreciate the developer community for their continuous efforts to bring amazing features to our business websites. Along with dedication, the process of developing a WordPress theme takes a significant investment in time and money as well.
So, our contribution and mindset towards the use of nulled themes not only discourage the developers from creating and investing time, and money in it but also harms the entire innovation system.
As a beginner, if you do not have the budget to purchase a premium theme, you can always opt for a free alternative. There are a lot of themes in the WordPress repository, and that’s another reason why someone should consider using themes from the repository because it’s cost-effective.
Wrapping Up
In summary, when you finally decide to publish your website, you should focus on a good theme, and as we discussed briefly, you should pick a theme from the WordPress repository that suits your needs.
There are enough themes available for a WordPress site, and a lot of themes are being published every day.
Hopefully, you should not struggle to find an excellent theme for the website. Your theme suits every other important criterion, whether website security or performance up to SEO friendliness.
Happy blogging…
Most of this is not true
– Safe to Use
The WordPress staff only does an initial check of the first version of a theme. As a theme becomes more complex, vulnerabilities will be introduced. These are not commercial themes people are making money off of, many of the theme developers are noobs who don’t completely understand WordPress security.
– Receives Regular Update
So do premium themes, you just have to pay the yearly subscription cost.
– Avoids Compatibility Issues
Compatability has more to do with how many people use a theme. A theme that is widely used will have had more exposure to different plugins, and there will have been more compatability issues already fixed.
– Ideal for Responsiveness
– Doesn’t Harm You Site SEO
– Developer Support
Anyone who buys premium themes knows that the place to do this through themeforest. Themeforest also has quality standards just like the WordPress repository. Furthermore, because you are paying for the theme, the themes developers are motivated to keep maintaining the website throughout the lifespan of your website. The most popular themes on Themeforest are built by companies that have a large staff that are available to help fix issues and answer questions. Compare this with the WordPress repository where themes are built by a single individual who only has a limited set of time outside of work to maintain his theme.