Developing a WordPress website by yourself can be challenging, especially if you want to make drastic changes to your website, like changing its design. Those who want to give their WordPress website a new look can easily find several free or paid themes available.
All you need to do is install and activate the desired themes; however, there are a few things to consider before switching your existing design theme to a new one. In this blog post, I will share a few checklists that a webmaster or a web developer must consider before applying a new design/theme to your WordPress website.
#1 Check: The Sidebars
If the existing theme of your WordPress website is widget-ready, then you must ensure that the new theme is also widget-ready. It is quite possible that most webmasters/web developers would customize their sidebars and use them as widgets, making it easier for them to edit and call these sidebars in any of the areas of their WordPress website.
#2 Check:Â Custom Codes
Often, many WordPress users/webmasters tend to find some patches & solutions for the issues with their themes. The webmasters or web developers would change the template or other PHP files to implement these fixes. Before switching themes, these changes must be noted to ensure you can implement them with the new theme.
#3 Check: Tracking Codes
Tracking code is also an essential element that you must include in your new theme pages. These tracking codes could be Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, etc. WordPress websites often lose tracking codes after the theme switch, mainly if the webmasters or web developers have used the codes directly in the files and not through a tracking plugin.
#4 Check: Backup
Have you backed up your WordPress website before switching over the themes? If not, you must back up your website first (including all the files, database, etc.) to ensure that you can restore the website in case of any issues with the new theme. Many backup plugins are available for web developers who want to back up their WordPress website regularly. In one of my previous posts, I shared a few of the best backup plugins for a WordPress website.
#5 Check: Browser Compatibility
Never assume that if your previous theme is used to support all browsers, your new theme will do the same way. Browsers, especially Internet Explorer, keep upgrading their versions frequently, and to cope with the latest versions, you need to make sure that your web pages are built using updated syntax. If you don’t keep a check on the browser compatibility of your website, your analytics report will likely start showing an increase in the bounce rate. So, to retain your users for a more extended period, you must ensure your website is browser-compatible.
#6 Check: Loading Time
To avoid any bad experience for your users, you must ensure that the new WordPress theme can load as quickly as your old theme, if not faster. The quick loading speed of a website is good not only for the website users but for the search engines as well. The reason is straightforward: Search engines love websites that load quickly.
#7 Check: 3rd Party Widgets
When you switch over your WordPress website theme, you must ensure that third-party widgets like Google Adsense, Affiliate Ads, etc., still look good on your website. You must have customized your previous theme templates to make the third-party widgets look good, but you may have forgotten.
So, when you switch to the new theme, you must ensure those widgets still look good on the website. If not, you can refer to the old template files and implement the same changes in the new ones.