The look of your WordPress site, and a lot of how your readers can interact with it is controlled by the use of themes. A theme is basically a directory of files that control the design and presentation of your articles and the layout of your site.
A default WordPress installation comes with a few themes, which makes it ready to use right out of the box. Because of this, you can start adding content within minutes of having WordPress installed. Unfortunately, these themes are being used on tens of thousands of other peoples sites as well.
WordPress offers a wonderful directory of free themes where you can find something to replace the look of the default theme. It is important that if you are looking for a free theme, only use one from the official directory at WordPress.org. Any theme uploaded there with malicious code or viruses is usually caught and removed from the directory, which is not something that can be said of themes downloaded from random other websites. Still, it can take several hours of browsing through the listings before finding something that fits the vision of how you’d like your website to look.
Using premium WordPress themes is one of the best ways to make your website look more professional and add extra functionality while keeping costs and development time down. Listings in the premium directories are full of highly polished designs and better functioning code. By using a premium theme you will save time finding a great look for your site that will actually work better in the long run.
My best recommendation for finding a premium theme is to browse through Themeforest where you can find excellent themes and see examples of them in action.
When you hover your cursor over where it says “WordPress” on the menu bar, a pull-down menu allows you to find themes based on the kind of business you are looking to promote.
You can find themes for any number of types from Corporate sites and Non-Profits, Mobile sites optimized for viewing on handheld devices, and ones for more creative types of sites.
Once you’ve narrowed it down to the type of site you’re looking to create you can sort the listings, seeing the newest ones, most highly rated or the bestselling.
When you’ve found one that catches your eye take it for a test drive by clicking through to the themes product page and then clicking “Live Preview,” which shows how the theme will once it’s been installed and configured on your WordPress site. Typically, these previews are full of dummy-text but sometimes pages will describe the theme’s special features or allow you to change through the available color schemes.