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@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.

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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@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

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.

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@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

Raju’s last blog post… Thesis WordPress Theme – No Big Deal About It

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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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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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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We see lot of options and can’t decide which is best

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