When you are browsing themes on wordpress.org, you can often see an example of what a theme will look like finished.
Preview
You can get a preview of a theme before you use it. Just go to wordpress.org/themes/. This page shows home pages you can get using various free themes. To get a preview, click to select a theme.
Then select Preview.
You can click through the pages of the sample site to get an idea about the theme.
But this is really just an idea. Once you have your pictures and words in there, it will look quite different.
From this page, you can arrow to other themes. This can show a little bit about how different themes will look.
Many of these examples look really boring because they do not show any photos. The little photo (left above) and the screenshots on wordpress.org/themes/ show how a page using this theme can look. The Preview shows it without any photos.
Demo Websites
Many themes have demo websites available.
To get a better idea of a theme’s potential, click Theme Homepage. (If the theme is a wordpress.org theme, you are already on the theme homepage, so the link doesn’t take you anywhere.)
The Theme Homepage usually gives you demo websites made with that theme or screenshots of how the theme works. The page likely has themes you can buy, too. If you don’t even have a website yet, it is probably not the time to buy a theme. Wait. Just wait.
Find other sites that use the theme
Another way to get an idea what can be done with various themes is to use Google to find sites made with the theme you like. Most WordPress sites display a footer credit with the name of the theme and developer. You may be able to see more examples of sites using a particular theme by searching for the footer credits. It works best if you use quote marks.
I found these sites by searching for “WordPress Theme by Kadence WP” on Google. If you do this, you will see how very different sites look, even though they have the same theme. You probably aren’t surprised to see that both of these sites above use the same theme. They look kinda similar.
These sites look kinda similar, too. These sites also use the same theme.
You might be more surprised to know that these sites also use the exact same theme.
All these sites look different, but they are using the same theme. The words and photos matter.
A demo can give you an idea of what you can do with a theme, but your words and photos make the biggest difference.
How can I make a mockup of my site before I have written the words?
You can use Lorem Ipsum or dummy text. Your project will go MUCH faster if you BEGIN by writing the words for your site. But if you are determined to move forward without writing content, you can make a demo website using fake words.
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen bookwww.lipsum.com
Why use Lorem Ipsum?
I cannot tell you how often I have shown a client his site design and instead of looking at the design, the client starts proofreading the words. I am asking about layout, colors and navigation. I get a list of edits to the words.
It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here’, making it look like readable English.
Using fake words can help avoid that.
If you are going to use Lorem Ipsum, don’t forget to replace it. I know that sounds really obvious, but I have clicked around on sites and found Lorem Ipsum still there.
Don’t get bogged down selecting a theme
One of the really great things about WordPress is that you can change your theme really easily. Get your words written. Create the pages your site needs. Obtain photos or graphics that support the pages.
Once these important steps are done and you have a basic site, you or the designer can give you previews of your site using different themes.
Below is the same exact page of the same site with a different theme previewed.
You can use Appearance > Customize > to preview what your site will look like using different themes without actually changing it by using Live Preview.
All of these screenshots are the same page of the same site. I just picked random themes and previewed them.
If you find a theme you like better, just click the button Change and make any edits to this new theme. You can always change back, too.
You will notice that some themes allow you to change more options than other themes will.
Some themes need you to install a plugin to get all of the advantages of the theme.
