Hey Good Lookin’ - advice on finding the right theme for my blog
Posted on January 18, 2008
Filed under Uncategorized and tagged blog themes, blogging, blogging advice, technoLOTE
Right, that’s it. It’s gotta go. A makeover is needed. I’d been thinking this almost every time I looked at my other blog, technoLOTE, for a few months. I thought it was a bit dull, and I was no longer liking the colour scheme. I was very unsure about the posts background being green, and the grey sidebar was giving me troubles whenever I tried to edit the code.
Time for something new for 2008! I asked Sue Waters to have a good look at my blog and tell me what she thought. After a few emails back and forth her main points of advice were:
- keep it simple and make sure that new readers can see exactly what you want them to see quickly and easily
- it is important to have a ‘Home’ page that directs readers to the front page of your blog, especially for people who are new to your site
- put your RSS and subscription information at the top of the sidebar where it is easy for readers to see
- make sure there is a Search function and place it at the top of the sidebar too
- remove all widgets that aren’t really necessary. It is very easy to collect too many widgets and they can clutter your sidebar and be a distraction.
- don’t have too many pages listed on the top menu
- a white background makes for clearer reading for most people
- read her post on tips for effective blogging
So started my quest for a new look. I was obsessed. I spent hours trawling through the Wordpress Themes Directory. I downloaded at least 40 different themes and got Nick (my husband and personal IT assistant) to upload them for me to whatever content directory they needed to go in. Then I played. I found a few I thought were ok, then asked the techoLOTE readers whether they preferred the original or testsite1. Generally, technoLOTE readers were split as to which one they thought was better - positives and negatives for each were mentioned. I really found there was a fairly even split between readers who liked the original vs the test site. Some general comments were:
- the green background on the original wasn’t great (although some thought it was better than white - what to do?!)
- the header on the original took up valuable ‘real estate’ - I had never heard this term used in conjunction with blogs before, but several people mentioned it.
- the white on the new site was easier to read - although some thought it was too glaringly white
- even thought the text on the new site was easier to read on the white, the site looked cluttered.
Ok, with this feedback in mind, I kept looking. This damn theme searching was getting in the way of everything else. I didn’t feel as though I could really go forward until I had it sorted. The more I looked at themes and other people’s sites the more I felt the need to change mine.
I drove my poor husband nuts by saying ‘What do you think of this?’ and turning my laptop around to show him. This was taking up so much of my attention that he thought I loved my laptop more than him. Oh, darling, it’s just a phase I’m going through! I got advice from some Twitter contacts, which I wrote about a couple of posts ago.
I then started emailing one of my very best friends, Michelle, who works in IT at LinkMe to get her advice. She came back with the goods, just like Sue did. Michelle made a lot of sense and her main points were:
- sidebar headings must be as clear as possible
- really think about what you want to have on your blog and how you want to organise it, then find a theme that suits that. Think about what pages you need - keep the topics broad - and what exactly will go on them.
- adding drop down menus to page titles if possible is not a bad idea
- reduce amounts of unused space
- Michelle has this to say about headings and text styling:
- Michelle -Not sure in the blog posts why there are all different sized headings. Perhaps this is because it’s a demo and not finished(?). Me - that was me experimenting. so, not a good idea then? Michelle - Different sized headings are used to indicate hierarchy. If you mixed them, you start losing the hierarchy. Plus, it can look messy. I would def advise to keep the headings at the same level and the body at a different level. Any emphasis can be done using bold. Where there is a call to action (therefore, you want people to act on something, use italic text). Try not to mix bold and italics because you want people to subconciously know what you mean just by the style of your text.
So, thankfully I have many wise people around me who are so willing to help! I found a possible theme for technoLOTE last night. After playing around with it this morning (and getting a bit of feedback from Sue and Michelle) and I am pretty happy with it. I finally feel as thought I am getting somewhere and that I can start putting my energy and attention into improving the content technoLOTE now. I’m still playing around with some little bits and pieces on this new theme (which takes all of the above points into consideration, even though it may not be perfect) and will let you know when I officially ‘launch’ it which will hopefully be in the next couple of days. Just depends on how much time my dear, dear neglected husband has to help me.
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[...] with. I blogged about choosing a new theme and the advice I got while doing it in a post called Hey Good Lookin’, on my other blog, The Rise of [...]
Hi Jess - at this point I am concerned that your husband may not be a fan of me :). Templates can drive you soooo crrazy and it must be worse when you have even more choice.
Love how you were able to write my thoughts from several emails into points that made sense. They didn’t necessarily make as much sense in the original post.
I like how some readers mentioned how your old header was taking up Real Estate. They were spot on - really loved the header but would be better if smaller.
Drop down is excellent point which I have been meaning to use on my site. Personally I minimise my use of italics because I find it harder to read than normal text - I read a lot of posts per day and italics slows me down. So my thought is use italics for emphasis and certainly don’t make a post almost entirely out of italics (cause I won’t read it).