The ‘Best’ WordPress theme is…

In case you didn’t know, I’m a regular over on the WordPress forums on LinkedIn. I like helping people out with their WordPress puzzles and conundrums.

Without a doubt, the most popular question people ask is some variation on “What’s the best WordPress theme?” For example, looking through page one of the forums today, I see:

Any insight into the best themes for mobile responsive?

What’s the best free or premium theme with featured page blocks on the home page?

What are the best free customizable themes available?

Which framework do you guys suggest for making responsive child themes?

These questions are tough, if not impossible, to answer. Not because there aren’t any great themes, but because the premise is all wrong. Here are the bad assumptions I see people making over and over again: Continue reading →

Using Google Analytics with WordPress

Chances are, if you’ve set up a website with WordPress, it would be really nice to know how many visits you’re getting, where those people are coming from, which posts are the most popular, etc. Google Analytics is a great tool for that job. But how do you use Google Analytics with WordPress?

There are tons of places you can go to learn how to set up a Google Analytics account, so I won’t go into that here. But basically how Google Analytics works is you set up your account, tell it what website you’d like to track, and then Google gives you a bit of code, called a code snippet, that needs to be added to your site to enable Google to track what’s happening on your site and provide you with reports. Continue reading →