Choosing a theme baseline you can live with for years

Short answer: Pick a maintained theme with sensible defaults, accessible markup patterns, and room to grow—cheap one-off templates often cost more in fixes than a modest premium baseline.

For NZ SMEs, the theme is the chassis everything else bolts onto; swapping later means rebuilding layouts and retraining editors.

What to verify before you commit

• Update history from the author—abandoned themes become security and PHP-version debt.
• Performance profile on a realistic demo with your must-have plugins enabled.
• Editor fit: block patterns, template parts, or builder lock-in you can live with.

Child themes and customisation

Use child themes or supported hooks for CSS/PHP tweaks—hacking parent files breaks updates. Document overrides so the next developer is not guessing.

When to walk away

Encrypted licence payloads, opaque “frameworks” with single-vendor shortcodes, or demos that only work with a dozen bundled plugins are long-term risks.

Frequently asked questions