One trouble in figuring out which themes or plugins to try out is that there are tons of reviews on the web, but with a lot of them you don’t really know who’s doing the reviewing.
After awhile, though, you start to recognize sites that have respect in the WordPress community. Some I would mention would be
- Smashing Magazine
- the wordpress codex
- wpmudev
- wpbeginner
- creative bloq
As well as some of the more general computer industry publications like MacWorld or PCWorld.
What I want to stress here, though, is that you need to research themes and plugins before you use them—especially on a live site. A bad one can contain malware, slow your site down, or bring it down entirely.
Never, in other words, download themes and plugins unless you are clear where they come from.
For this exercise, I want you to try out at least 10 themes from the following article. You should be able to get all or most of them through the WordPress Themes area in the dashboard.
WPMUDEV: Best 100 Free WP Themes Ever
When I say try out, I mean check out all the configuration options that theme provides. Look in depth to how the theme behaves, and what customization options it has.
Try also to test themes that look different, and have different intended audience or uses.
Finally, from the WordPress dashboard, install the theme entitled parabola.
When you are done, in a TextEdit (or NotePad) file, explain which three you thought were the most impressive. Provide reasons why. Point form is totally OK.
Explain also what you thought of the parabola theme.