<img src="https://itxdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/48271524_s-277x300.jpg" alt="Blog Theme" width="277" height="300" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-10377" />Starting a new blog is stressful enough without spending days thinking about which theme you should use for the blog. After taking the plunge, you need to have the right theme, but this shouldn't be a decision you take forever trying to figure out. Many themes will work well for your blog. There are a few things you should consider, however.

As you make the decision to choose the right WordPress theme for your new blog, make sure you're looking at more than how pretty it looks. Your theme needs to be more than just good-looking. Here are a few things to consider before you make your final decision.

<h2>Mobile-Friendly or Responsive Design</h2>

With so many searches happening on mobile devices every single day, you have to have a theme with a responsive design or one that is mobile-friendly. With this type of design, you will be able to get plenty of traffic from the many people searching on smartphones, tablets and other devices. 

Any good WordPress theme will already be responsive or set up to be mobile-friendly. However, make sure you double check this when you choose your theme. IF it's not responsive or mobile-friendly, it's not the theme for you. 

<h2>Readability</h2>

<img src="https://itxdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/20378007_s-300x277.jpg" alt="Blog Readability" width="300" height="277" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-10376" />Readability makes a huge difference when it comes to your WordPress theme. If you want your visitors to come back often and enjoy using your blog, you need to make sure the theme is very readable. This means, you want a theme with a white or light colored background and dark or black text. Flipping these around will strain the eyes of the reader and will take away from their enjoyment of your blog.

Along with the colors of your text and background, you want to consider the fonts, whitespace and spacing of your blog's theme. It's important to choose a theme with easy to read fonts and don't use anything hard to read. Times New Roman, Arial, Verdana and Courier are all very popular and safe fonts to use. 

Your theme should also have white space designed in with pictures, as well. This will help to give your reader's eyes a break when they are reading your latest blog posts. Spacing will also help, as you want to have plenty of space between paragraphs and avoid indenting.

<h2>Compatible with New WordPress Updates</h2>

You need a theme that can be updated whenever WordPress updates. This should be guaranteed by the theme designer. If your theme won't update with each WordPress update, it will cause you all kinds of problems when WordPress makes changes.

It's best to use a reputable theme marketplace that guarantees all their themes. This will ensure you don't have any issues when WordPress releases a new update.

<h2>Custom Options</h2>

Depending on your needs, you may want a theme that's easy to customize. Some themes you have to adjust the code to customize the colors or layout. This isn't going to make it easy for you.

However, other WordPress themes give you an easy-to-use backend so that you can choose any color you want for any element of the theme. You may also have multiple layouts to choose from. This can be a very nice feature for your blog.

<h2>Security</h2>

Another factor you may not have thought of when choosing your WordPress theme is security. When you use a free theme, there's no guarantee it has been designed and coded properly to help keep out hackers. However, most premium themes have specific features to ensure they don't have any bad code within the files of the theme. It's always best to pay for a theme and the investment is usually very small, anyway.

<h2>SEO-Friendly</h2>

<img src="https://itxdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/18056153_s-300x201.jpg" alt="SEO-Friendly" width="300" height="201" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-10375" />Most WordPress themes will be SEO-friendly, but it's always a good idea to check and make sure it will work with your SEO plans. This is very important if you plan on doing quite a bit of SEO marketing or just hope to become listed high on Google.

There are several things to consider before you settle on a theme. Ultimately, your blog's theme is important, but if you have great content, it won't matter as much. Make sure you do more than just look for a pretty theme, however. Find one you like, but also one that has all the necessary features to ensure you can build a successful blog.
