In my last email, I mentioned a plugin that would convert a non-responsive WordPress site to one that is responsive (mobile-friendly) and many of you had additional questions. I wanted to take a few minutes to give you some information about how to test your sites and why there's all the buzz lately about going mobile.
Don't just test your home page - test individual posts, pages, category pages, miscellaneous pages (About, Contact, etc), and any posts or pages where the content was
created using a plugin (posts with TablePress tables, etc.).
If you are already using a mobile-friendly theme on your site you shouldn't have to do anything else but still test your pages to be sure. Plugins can have an impact on the performance of a URL on your site even if the theme is
responsive.
If you want to change from a non-responsive theme to a responsive one rather than using the plugin or other, technical solutions, but don't want to spend any money, try the free Magazine Basic theme for WordPress. It hasn't been updated in awhile but I've used it on a number of sites. It loads fast, is easy to set up, and is responsive. I have it working just fine with the most recent version of WordPress and all plugin updates.
When you change themes, you'd be best off backing up your existing site - just to be safe.
Then, install the new theme in WordPress and activate it in order to work with the settings. You will not lose the old theme or the settings in the
old theme so if you need to switch back for any reason (maybe to see what your content looked like before) everything will still be there. Your plugins and content should all be fine.
The new theme will impact how things look because the new theme's CSS file now controls the layout, font, colors, post
width, site width, etc. It doesn't change your content - it changes only how content is styled.
You would lose any custom CSS and any verifications you manually put in your old theme's header.php file (or other theme files). This might mean that your Google Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics,
and Pinterest verifications are missing and you'd have to set those back up. If you used a plugin like Yoast's SEO for WordPress or if you used your WordPress/User dashboard to input those meta verifications then they should carry over to your new theme. Check the source code of your site to see if the verifications are still in place or not.
You may have to create a new header for your site to match the width options of the new theme.
Check that your XML sitemap is still working and that Google can access it just fine.
A new theme may have different on-page SEO built in than a previous theme. If you select a theme that is not as well optimized for SEO you may see some impact in your rankings. I am comfortable with the on-page SEO built into the free Magazine Basic theme mentioned above.
Your content is going to look different. Images may shift, text may not line up the way it did before around images. Your font size may be different. Some of this you may have to fix manually post by post. Some of it can be addressed by setting up some custom CSS for your theme.
Don't panic. :) Test your site using the tool mentioned above. Decide whether or not to use the plugin option as a quick fix, another solution (techies have all kinds of options but much of that is more complicated than most of us want to tackle) or if you're going to change themes. Implement your solution and test the site again. Then complete any final cleanup
for the look of your site.