How to choose a free WordPress theme for your blog
Yesterday my friend recommended 4 beautiful WordPress themes in his blog post. I am glad to see the beautiful free themes, and I like the second very much. It is a theme with clean layout and feat color. I even considered to substitute the present theme on my Chinese blog. So I downloaded the theme, and tested it in my computer.
As we know, a new theme can not wholly fit our blogs, and we often add more codes or widgets to it. When I opened the files, such as sidebar.php, index.php, I found many useless codes. These codes have no function, and display nothing when browsed in browser. I think the designer had forgotten to delete these useless codes after s/he finished the whole design. So I did not replace my current theme with it.
What I learned yesterday is that not all the free themes have clean layout and codes. We should check the codes besides the beautiful surface.
There are so many WordPress themes online. How can you choose a beautiful theme with clean codes and layout? I think you should take the following tips into consideration.
Layout - What is the theme’s layout? 2 columns or 3 columns? Is the whole page ordered in header-container-footer? I think you know what a layout you want. If you only like 2-column themes, you will exclude the 3-column ones.
Color - Here color includes background color, text color, link color, etc. Someone like deep background color, and others like light background color. If you want a 2-column theme with light background and blue link color, you will exclude more themes. There are less themes for you to choose.
Codes - After making sure what layout and color you want, you may have selected some themes you like. You download these themes, and test them in browser. I advise you to see the source codes of the theme files. Are the codes clean? Are there some useless codes with no function or impact to the whole layout? If these codes exist, you should delete or modify them. You can also choose another theme.
A good theme is friendly to both visitors and search engines. Have you find your favorite free theme? What is your standard when choosing a theme? Please tell us in comments 
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Many bloggers are using WordPress for their blog site construction. I am also interested in it. However, I know little about WordPress. Maybe before long, when I have enough free time, I will be able to build my own site with the help of you. I’m sure that I can learn a lot about WordPress from you.