Tips to choose a theme for your wordpress powered blog.

Please your readers with a clean look
Please your readers with a clean look

With wordpress as a blogging platform you have lot of themes to choose from, choosing a theme is a tough job with thousands of themes around. Here are some tipsto help you choose a theme for your blog.

  • Decide a colour scheme for your blog. Colours speak a lot of emotions so choose them with care. If you already have a logo for your blog choose a theme that fits your logo. Don’t choose dark colours unless your niche or logo demands it, make it pleasing for your readers eyes. Black/dark grey on white is ideal for reading.
  • Check the top blogs in your niche and make a list of features that you would like to have on your blog, make sure that the theme you choose provides all the features, if it doesnt provide all the features see if you need see if you can add them yourself.
  • Before testing a theme on your blog, write at least 3 posts,
  1. One including a list.
  2. One with an image.
  3. Comment on one post and leave one post uncommented.
  • In general, websites feature some standard layouts. Which layout you choose is based upon your needs, imagination, and potential inclusion of additional features like feeds and advertising in additional columns. Themes with widgetised footer are becoming popular these days, advantage with these themes is you get some extra place on your blog. If a person is scrolling till the end of the fotter, then he is genuinely intersted in your blog and you. So its a ideal place for wrting a short about me and placing links to your other blogs.
  • Fluid width versus Fixed width

I prefer fixed width over fluid width, with fixed width you have control over how your blog looks to users with different resolutions. Another disadvantage with fluid width is the long lines, if the user has high resolution. Its hard to read long lines compared to short lines of text.

  • Do not choose themes with heavy graphics, they take lot of time to load and your users may not be patient enough to wait till it loads.
  • Keep the blog design simple and usable.
  • Will you be able to grow with the same theme? As your blog grows you may want new features or room to add new things. Some themes won’t offer much flexibility or room for growth. Be sure that your theme isn’t going to limit you.

Resources..

  1. http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/
  2. http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/05/18/100-amazing-free-wordpress-themes-for-2009/

Task

Choose a theme for your blog follwing the above suggestions. If you already have a good theme, check top blogs in your niche and make a list of features you would like to have in your currnet theme.

Post how you accomplished this task in the discussion thread located here

After you have choosen your theme, there are some things to be cleaned and some minor tweaks to be applied to your theme. I will write about them in my next post.

Updates from the forum

Here are some resources pointed by Julius Santos @ DialysisPostings.Com

and for WordPress resources: