There are tons of free themes available for WordPress, and there are plenty of premium themes too, but each theme comes with its own set of features. Some of these features are incredibly useful, some seem to be wasteful, and some can be duplicated with plugins, but what’s your favorite theme feature?
I’m partial myself to themes which are responsive in design, like Twenty Eleven, meaning that they are built to adapt to any screen size (even mobile devices). So, what theme features do you look for when selecting your theme?
I look for themes that have minimal features, because I generally want to create child themes for my sites. I try to avoid themes that boast a lengthy list of items that can be done in the admin screens, because that usually means extra work tracking down the specific things I might want to change in a child theme.
Great topic!
I like themes that come with a good number of options, provided the options are really simple. The more options, the easier it is to customize the theme and make it your own.
In terms of the topic at hand, my favourite features normally involve the ability to change colours and replace logo’s.
I like adaptability of themes to multiple screens apart from 2011, yoko is another special theme with such feature.
Features apart typography and simplicity is very important to me. That’s why I still keep using Fresh theme, a design by bartelme ported by iLemoned to wordpress. It hasn’t been updated for almost three years. I fell in love so much that I paid a designer to update it to latest wp features.
a theme is crap without draggable sidebar items. Doesn’t necessarily have to be brothercakes drag and drop javascript per se, it could be CSS it doesn’t matter, but I like those draggable sidebar items. I wouldn’t even consider putting a theme on my blog without them period!
Documentation- commenting the code is what I like best :). Makes it easier to customize.
Built-in templates (for example being able to switch to >1 column content area)
I prefer to work with themes that have magazine-style layouts, feature content galleries and only a few to zero options in the admin area.
I like themes with flexibility in terms of images. I think large images on blogs are captivating to readers.
I am a novice. Therefore, I like themes with all the bells and whistles, and easy to configure.
First, great typography, because that is what a blog (at least my blog) is all about.
Second, post formats, because I like for an aside to be easily distinguishable from a quote or a link.
I am drawn to minimal themes at this time.
Lots of sidebar options, lots of widgets.
I want lots of widget areas, so that I can customize the theme as per my wish. It should be minimal and responsive.
My favorite feature or the most sought after items is consistent with Adwords to monetize effectively. There are some issues where it is very bright but very difficult to add advertising without making it look bad.
My favorite feature is to have different sidebar option for every category. The next is to have tabbed widget š