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Themes

WordPress has become the most widely used Content Management System (CMS) in the world, thanks in large part to its flexibility and accessibility. Central to this flexibility is the concept of the WordPress theme. A theme controls the design and layout of a WordPress website, determining how content is presented to visitors. From colors and fonts to page structure and navigation, the theme acts as the visual layer of a website, shaping both its aesthetic and its user experience.

Table Of Contents
  1. General
  2. Theme Types
Table Of Contents
  1. General
  2. Theme Types

General

A WordPress theme is made up of a set of files that work together to create a consistent design across all pages of a site. These files include templates for different types of content, stylesheets that define the look and feel, and often scripts that handle dynamic behavior. When someone installs WordPress, a default theme is provided, but users are free to install alternative themes or even build their own. Some themes are simple and minimal, while others are more elaborate and feature-rich, offering drag-and-drop design tools or integration with page builders.

Themes are available in a wide range of styles and complexities. Some are free and can be downloaded directly from the official WordPress repository. Others are premium themes sold by independent developers or companies, usually offering more advanced features and dedicated support. Multipurpose themes are popular because they can be adapted to almost any kind of website — from online stores to portfolios to business landing pages. More recently, WordPress has introduced block-based themes that support Full Site Editing, allowing users to customize headers, footers, and templates using the Gutenberg block editor, without needing to write any code.

WordPress allows users to install multiple themes, but a site can only have one active theme at a time. This active theme determines the overall appearance and layout of your site. While additional themes can remain installed in the background, they typically serve no function unless you’re working with a more advanced setup. In such cases, developers may create a child theme to customize the site safely without altering the original (parent) theme. However, for most everyday users and businesses child themes aren’t necessary and will never be used.

Theme Types

There are thousands of WordPress themes available, and they generally fall into a few broad categories:

  • Free Themes – These are available in the official WordPress theme repository. They must pass a review process to ensure basic quality and security. Free themes are ideal for hobbyists, beginners, or simple sites.
  • Premium Themes – Offered by third-party developers and marketplaces (like ThemeForest or Elegant Themes), these come with more features, advanced design options, and dedicated support. They’re popular among businesses and agencies.
  • Multipurpose Themes – Themes like Astra, Divi, or OceanWP are designed to be used for a wide range of websites. They often include starter templates and deep integration with popular page builders.
  • Niche-Specific Themes – These are tailored for specific industries (e.g. restaurants, gyms, or photographers) and come pre-built with relevant design and features.
  • Block Themes (Full Site Editing) – With the rise of the Gutenberg block editor and Full Site Editing (FSE), a new generation of themes allows users to customize not just pages and posts, but headers, footers, and templates directly using blocks. Examples include Twenty Twenty-Four, Blockbase, and Frost.
  • Free Themes – These are available in the official WordPress theme repository. They must pass a review process to ensure basic quality and security. Free themes are ideal for hobbyists, beginners, or simple sites.
  • Premium Themes – Offered by third-party developers and marketplaces (like ThemeForest or Elegant Themes), these come with more features, advanced design options, and dedicated support. They’re popular among businesses and agencies.
  • Multipurpose Themes – Themes like Astra, Divi, or OceanWP are designed to be used for a wide range of websites. They often include starter templates and deep integration with popular page builders.
  • Niche-Specific Themes – These are tailored for specific industries (e.g. restaurants, gyms, or photographers) and come pre-built with relevant design and features.
  • Block Themes – With the rise of the Gutenberg block editor and Full Site Editing (FSE), a new generation of themes allows users to customize not just pages and posts, but headers, footers, and templates directly using blocks. Examples include Twenty Twenty-Four, Blockbase, and Frost.

You will see a lot of hype regarding Premium and Custom Themes when you start planning you site. These are paid templates that can be used as the basic layout for your website. The idea being that you find something close to what you want and then tweak it to suit your specific needs. So you can change all the content and maybe make some styling changes (fonts, colours, etc.) and your site is up and running in no time. This concept was fine for Classic Editors with Classic Themes where only a certain amount of customization was possible without coding skills. Such limitations to layout and structural changes are the main reason that Page Builders and Block Editors are now dominating WordPress website creation. In our opinion there is absolutely no reason to pay for Themes in the age of Block Builders. There are plenty of free Block Themes that can be used and absolutely everything can be tweaked as desired without the need for any coding skills. WordPress release a new Block Theme every year (Twenty Twenty-Three, Twenty Twenty-Four, Twenty Twenty-Five, etc.) which are the default themes on a fresh inastallion. The names are not very imaginative but these themes are popular as they have clean designs optimized for speed, accessibility, and deeper FSE integration.

Moved from WordPress Block Editor Section

With traditional page builders, the theme often plays a minimal role in the overall design. In contrast, block editors — especially in the FSE era — make themes more integral. Many page builder users opted for lightweight, barebone themes (like Hello Theme. Astra, or Neve) because the builder handles most of the layout and styling. This allows users to create headers, footers, and entire page layouts directly within the builder interface, often bypassing theme-level design controls. Block themes, on the other hand, define templates, global styles, and structure, which users customize via the site’s block editor. In short: both approaches require a theme, but block editors are more tightly coupled to the theme’s architecture, while Page Builders tend to override or replace it.