A few things I learned about WordPress themes
Ajith | May 2009 | Blogging Tips, Miscellaneous
As I mentioned in a recent post, I am in search of a new WordPress theme for this blog. I already figured out that choosing the right theme, while theoretically very easy, is one of the most difficult things in one’s blogging life – probably the toughest decision to make in a blogger’s life.
After a couple of weeks’ search for the ideal theme, the following are my thoughts about WordPress themes in general (I hope my loud thinking may also help a fellow blogger while hunting for the right theme for his/her blog)
- Most themes – whether it is $200 professional themes or free ones – require a lot of customizing to make it look unique and branded according to your blog needs
- If you were to design a new theme, start with a clean codebase (e.g. WordPress default themes) as many themes are not really coded by programmers
- Magazine themes are only as good as your image stock and they are
not suitable for most blogs - Most of the theme designers actually copy paste themes (own or others’) and make minor changes to arrive at a different theme. So you need to think twice before picking a theme out of 20-30 that a single designer has to offer
- The claims such as SEO optimized and AdSense ready themes are more like sales tactics. On-theme SEO optimization and changes to host ad slots can be done really easily
- ‘Widget ready’ is an overstatement! Unless you have a theme from the stone age, most of them are widget ready anyhow
- A big part of your branding needs can be taken care of by having a killer header (logo + changes there in)
- Theme customizing is really an expensive thing to do though it is not something that happens every day. I am talking about the case where you need unique branding
- The hype about highly colorful, anime-based and over-branded themes is slowly coming down. Now a days, professional bloggers are more inclined towards neat, light and properly engineered themes like Thesis
- Though not frequent, major WordPress upgrades can trigger certain amout of work on your themes. Hence – unless you are a programmer yourself – it makes sense to go for a theme that promises after-sales support
- Fixed width themes are still the most popular option despite the PC monitors getting wider
- If certain plugins are mandatorily required to run a theme properly, don’t go for such themes
- Theme selection is not getting any easier with 1000s of themes out there to confuse you. Hence, if you are in doubt go for a professional theme
In principle if you are not developer, Webmaster, designer and SEO expert (on top of being a blogger) life can get really difficult on the great WordPress platform.
Any thoughts folks?
Good points mentioned above. Specially about the seo optimised part. I have a theme which is supposed to be seo optimised but however for 2 whole weeks my posts were not being indexed in google when I had first set it up.
To say that these claims are just sales propaganda. I had to look in the header and by trial and error i removed many useless tags and then the indexing started to become normal as before. There are also themes which can create duplicate content on the same page by repeating the same paragraph 2 or 3 times.
I thought these were not a problem but then this was the reason why my post were not being indexed for two weeks in February.
Magazine theme is good only if have many categories or different niche topics on same blog. Else for a niche blog I still prefer a normal theme.
Would like to know which theme you have chosen? Thesis?
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Most Seo ready themes have post titles on a H2 tag. I usually modify the so that the bog description is not in any tag and my post titles are in a H1 tag. Most of the time it requires messing with the Css sheet.This avoids having the same H1 in all posts and I can target the keyword more efficiently on the post title. As for magazine themes I don’t use them. When it comes to niche sites the uglier the site the more people click on stuff. For a flagship blog the story is different and you should go for a nice looking blog if you can.
All this sounds so familiar…I had this prob too for the whole of last week when I was looking for a new template for my blog…with blogger it is more worse coz there are not many good themes out there even in professional.
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Very valid points.Even I am also thinking to have a theme change.But unable to finalize due to varities of themes available and customizing it.
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I just redesigned my blog using the WP Framework theme (http://wpframework.com/). It’s a blank theme, so you can tweak everything exactly the way you want it, assuming you know some basic CSS.
@Archie, I did the same thing with my H1 tags. Considering that you don’t want every single page and post ranking for the same keywords, it seems like the smart thing to do.
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Yep so true… I do made mistakes before by picking an attractive theme that in the end are just cookie-cutter themes.. To be honest, picking a premium theme is stressing, wht do you think?
Melvin’s last blog post… Driving Traffic With BlogCatalog
Learned lot in the process i guess
Finding a free theme to suite the requirements in always difficult task than anything.
We see lot of options and can’t decide which is best
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A totally personal experience:
I find myself instantly reading blogs with a 13px font, (Thesis has that font size). It might be cuz of my screen resolution, but the font size looks perfect for online reading for me.
Also I completely agree with point one, Even professional Do-it-yourself themes that come with support need lot of work before it can really work. Most of the clients I get come to me with a professional theme, that explains why..
For somone who can spend some money, a solution would be to:
1. List down their needs
2. Scan some of the best Free theme directory to find something close to their needs
3. Hire a designer to customize it for them. Since he doenst have to do it from scratch, the rates wouldnt be sky-high.
4. Hire a SEO expert for basic SEO stuffs. For instance Mani Karthik of DailySEOBlog has a 25$ package for basic SEO, thats good for the money I guess. (Disclaimer: I havent used it yet, so dont trust me)
Hmm, anyway this is what I am gonna do for my next theme..
Arun
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it seems you come across with some bad experiance with Themes. Theme designer are hard working guys and themes play a vital role unless you arre as big as TechCrunch. Great write up there.
Your list and more is exactly why i went with a designer…major upgrade coming soon as well!
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My 2 cents to it. Always stay away from theme which use custom field. Most of wordpress magazine theme use custom field to show images which is bad for future.
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Nice post, this will help me for my Theme hunting process.
Even, i am not with SEO Optimized themes. If you have more internal linking on the posts, then you have a SEO optimized page.
Thanks harsh for this input, I liked one theme but to switch to that i have upload images for all my previous posts and also assigning custom field. I was not totally 100% sure whether to use that theme or not.
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Ajith,
Thanks for the great analysis. You are saving hours of my research time (if not days) on choosing a theme. You’ve given valuable advice to me in lot of blogging areas earlier. I’m going to rely on your advice on the theme selection also. I’m eagerly waiting for your final decision on what theme you’ve selected and I’m planning to seriously consider using the same for my blog, instead of going through the whole process myself.
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great post!! everyone would have gone through this sometime or the other but putting those thoughts into words is a great achievement. I agree with almost every point over here!
Raju’s last blog post… Thesis Wordpress Theme – No Big Deal About It
@Kurt, yep. SEO Optimized is a big useless claim as one needs to spend only 30 minutes to make any theme SEO ready (and still onsite SEO is much more than the theme). As for my final theme, I am hand editing my own theme write now based on a lean strategy
Hope I can release it in another two weeks… Logo remains the main issue. I am not very good at that. Should try to get it sponsored.
@Luis, yep, main change for SEO is the H1 tag and then probably H2s on sub headings. Also relevant is the meta follow settings on the header.
@rads, blogger themes are a different story altogether. It’s all about looks alone as not much SEO scope, organizing capabilities come with blogger templates
@George, if you are good at CSS go take a blank theme and edit it to suite your purpose… Finally, I have decided to take that route
@Adrienne, wpframework is good… But it’s a little bit over engineered and hence I had to edit several files… I tried that in fact and decided to go with a flat sturctured (codewise) theme. It’s a great piece of work though.
@Melvin, in fact, premium themes may be stressing if their code structure is difficult to manage/change. Otherwise, for most themes you need to worry about style sheets only. But yes, don’t go by the looks of the demo page.
@Lax, tell me about it
I am finally on my own now…
@Arun, thanks for your views on the font sizing and pleasant reading. I agree on thesis and for its font. Most verdana/arial font based themes need to be smaller in size, I guess.
As for the steps you mentioned, I am working pretty much towards that except for hiring
I listed my requirements. Took a blank theme and now modifying… I am planning to do the SEO part as well.
@shanker, no offence meant
In fact, I was talking about those who churn in several themes in no time… And you are write, if you really see blogs like TechCrunch don’t look all that great but they have an established readerbase so anything will go. Even WordPress default theme 
@Dennis, great buddy. I am awaiting your next theme upgrade
@Harsh, you made a great point. Themes that use custom field can be bad for future upgrades
@Nihar, yes, we need to worry about themes with custom field based animations/images etc
@Ramesh, I am editing my own theme for now… I will try to make a releasable version for others – of course different in style from mine
Your blog is due for a skin upgrade…
@Raju, thanks Raju
You know, you’re right about WP Framework being a little over-engineered. One thing I did right away was combine all the various CSS files into one big file, which helped simplify it tremendously (and reduces page load times). Using the Firebug plugin for Firefox also makes editing CSS so much easier.
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@Ajit,
I was hoping that you’ll choose thesis theme as I was pretty impressed by it and wanted to get someone’s first hand experience on converting to thesis theme. But anyway, lean strategy is always good.
I may go with thesis theme. But not now, probably after 6 months or so. If they give any nice discount, I may consider before that.
Also, you mentioned earlier there are some websites where you can post your requirement for logo and lot of people will bid for it (even by giving a sample for you). If you like the sample you can pay them. Are you planning to get your logo done with some sites like that? If yes, please let me know how it went.
Ramesh Natarajan’s last blog post… 3 Books Giveaway: Hacking Vim, Lighttpd and Xen Virtualization
@Adrienne, I am taking the firebug route to customize my theme which is copied and paste from several themes – not just one
@Ramesh, thanks for the tip on the logo. At the moment, I am tyring to do one myself and might go for those channels you mentioned soon… because, i’m out of ideas on that front
You point out some very important things. I was wondering how some guys could be selling their themes for so little, yet make all these claims about the value and features of their offerings. I’ve been playing around with a purchased theme and am finding it interesting going, to say the least. I’m looking at buying WordPress for Dummies, actually!
Wonderful article Ajith and I’m sorry I missed it when you first published it. You were able to clearly express many of the thoughts I’ve had jumbled in my head about Themes.
I hadn’t thought about the problems with custom fields with upgrades. I do know, however, that the use of them is difficult for the average user and in training people how to use.
I’m also not a big fan of the magazine style themes – I find them difficult to read – I’m not sure what the order is of the articles.
And, of course, with many claims about SEO it’s all just B.S.
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@Jacques, mostly themes can come cheaper if their codebase is small (which means less time they took for development). But pieces like Thesis may be a well engineered product though the final outcome as in rendering/SEO etc are not much different.
@Kim, Thanks Kim. With every WordPress upgrade, I am worrying about a scenario when they pull out certain features…custom fields may be still there but a big worry in terms of potential problems as Harsh mentioned.
Though, I don’t like magazine themes, recently I downloaded a lean magazine theme and started my new theme development on that. Of course, I removed all featured stuff, thumbs etc. Hopefully D$ will be relaunched on the new theme in another week or so.
Customization is so necessary with a theme and one of the reasons I prefer to not change a theme every so often (something I used to do a lot before). Now with every theme change I end up changing everything from Google code to just about everything else. But I do agree, getting the right theme certainly goes a long way.
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That’s one reason why even I don’t change my theme often. Theme change and WP upgrades takes almost as good time as actual blogging
[...] Things I Learned About WordPress Themes – Ajith has been looking for a new theme and wrote up a great list about what he learned while on his quest. Ajith has since decided to build his own theme. [...]
wait till u guys see our theme for Charlie Claw’s – Wasini Island. It’s K2 with about 30 random banners showcasing pics. K2 rocks!!! http://getk2.com
Very good article.
I have make many searchs to find a design for my blog, yeah it’s free, i don’t have money to spend right now xD, i prefer to not change the css code, i don’t want to do an error, i’m so su** at css, php and others “internet languages”…