General
Set the Site Title to something long and set the Tagline to something even longer. These settings will test how your theme handles edge cases for site titles and taglines.

Reading
Set “Blog pages show at most” to 5. This setting will ensure that index/archive pagination is triggered.

Discussion
Enable “Threaded Comments” at least 3 levels deep. This setting will facilitate testing of your theme’s comment list styling.

Enable “Break comments into pages” and set 5 comments per page to test the pagination and styling of comments.

Media
Remove the values for the large size of media to test the theme’s $content_width setting.

Permalinks
Change the permalink setting a few times to ensure your theme can handle various URL formats.

For more setup instructions, take a look at the Theme Unit Test page in the WordPress Codex.

General
Set the Site Title to something long and set the Tagline to something even longer. These settings will test how your theme handles edge cases for site titles and taglines.

Reading
Set “Blog pages show at most” to 5. This setting will ensure that index/archive pagination is triggered.

Discussion
Enable “Threaded Comments” at least 3 levels deep. This setting will facilitate testing of your theme’s comment list styling.

Enable “Break comments into pages” and set 5 comments per page to test the pagination and styling of comments.

Media
Remove the values for the large size of media to test the theme’s $content_width setting.

Permalinks
Change the permalink setting a few times to ensure your theme can handle various URL formats.

For more setup instructions, take a look at the Theme Unit Test page in the WordPress Codex.

Making tweaks and changes to your WordPress installation is another good way to ensure that you’ve built your theme to handle numerous scenarios. Use the following settings to test your theme.

General
Set the Site Title to something long and set the Tagline to something even longer. These settings will test how your theme handles edge cases for site titles and taglines.

Reading
Set “Blog pages show at most” to 5. This setting will ensure that index/archive pagination is triggered.

Discussion
Enable “Threaded Comments” at least 3 levels deep. This setting will facilitate testing of your theme’s comment list styling.

Enable “Break comments into pages” and set 5 comments per page to test the pagination and styling of comments.

Media
Remove the values for the large size of media to test the theme’s $content_width setting.

Permalinks
Change the permalink setting a few times to ensure your theme can handle various URL formats.

For more setup instructions, take a look at the Theme Unit Test page in the WordPress Codex.

When you’re just starting to populate your new blog with content, the default WordPress post template that came with your current theme may be the only one you need. With tools for creating and styling text and adding other content like images, the basic post editor allows users to designate categories for different kinds of content or post types. With custom post templates it’s also possible to create a WordPress blog post template for content created by individual authors or to add a distinctive appearance to selected posts for higher visibility.

But with custom theme templates for single blog posts and post types, you can customize the layout and content of these different kinds of posts. This allows you to quickly and consistently add all the elements for a particular kind of post and make those different post types easier for readers to recognize and read. For example, a health and wellness website might want to have separate post types for categories like “recipes” and “workouts”—or to alert readers to featured content. Creating different templates for these different purposes can make it easier to add the appropriate content without re-creating the format every time. 

When you’re just starting to populate your new blog with content, the default WordPress post template that came with your current theme may be the only one you need. With tools for creating and styling text and adding other content like images, the basic post editor allows users to designate categories for different kinds of content or post types. With custom post templates it’s also possible to create a WordPress blog post template for content created by individual authors or to add a distinctive appearance to selected posts for higher visibility.

But with custom theme templates for single blog posts and post types, you can customize the layout and content of these different kinds of posts. This allows you to quickly and consistently add all the elements for a particular kind of post and make those different post types easier for readers to recognize and read. For example, a health and wellness website might want to have separate post types for categories like “recipes” and “workouts”—or to alert readers to featured content. Creating different templates for these different purposes can make it easier to add the appropriate content without re-creating the format every time. 

Why Create Your Own Post Templates?

When you’re just starting to populate your new blog with content, the default WordPress post template that came with your current theme may be the only one you need. With tools for creating and styling text and adding other content like images, the basic post editor allows users to designate categories for different kinds of content or post types. With custom post templates it’s also possible to create a WordPress blog post template for content created by individual authors or to add a distinctive appearance to selected posts for higher visibility.

But with custom theme templates for single blog posts and post types, you can customize the layout and content of these different kinds of posts. This allows you to quickly and consistently add all the elements for a particular kind of post and make those different post types easier for readers to recognize and read. For example, a health and wellness website might want to have separate post types for categories like “recipes” and “workouts”—or to alert readers to featured content. Creating different templates for these different purposes can make it easier to add the appropriate content without re-creating the format every time.