As we mentioned before, there are two main types of themes—free themes and premium (paid) themes. Also, if you don't consider price being a factor here, we can also divide themes into four other groups—standard themes, child themes, starter themes, and theme frameworks:
- Child themes: We will discuss this in detail in the following chapters, so, for now, let's say that a child theme is a theme that inherits the functionality of another theme, the parent.
- Standard themes: These are themes that are meant to work in their original form while allowing some basic customizations and tuning up (just like the default theme, Twenty Nineteen).
- Starter themes: These are a relatively new concept in the WordPress world. In short, when using them, you are encouraged to modify the theme files directly, and effectively make them the foundation of the theme you're currently building. As the name suggests, they provide a great starting point for your own theme to be built upon. They are a great solution for developers, but not so much for regular users, who just want to download a great theme and be able to use it right out the box.
- Theme frameworks: These are somewhat similar to starter themes (they are meant to be used as the base for your custom theme development), but they usually deliver a larger range of various built-in features, plus they can be used straight out of the box as a standalone theme (at least to some extent).
In some way, the main difference between starter themes and theme frameworks is that when you get a starter theme, you must put work into it beforehand to make the theme functional. With frameworks, you get a functional theme right away, but then you are expected to spend time tweaking its various elements to make it fit your site hand-in-glove. The thing with both theme frameworks and starter themes is that they are usually highly code-heavy products, which means that you can't really take full advantage of them if you don't possess any programming skills or don't have anyone on your payroll who does. This may not sound that clear right now, and that's okay. We will explain this concept some more in the following chapters.
In the end, standard themes are what most bloggers and site owners work with during their WordPress journeys, especially if they don't need any advanced customizations or don't run purpose-specific websites (such as animated sites and interactive sites).