Guide To Blogging

Archive for the ‘themes for your blog’ Category

I’ve mentioned here in the past that one of these days I’d like to create my own theme for my WordPress blogs, and in fact I’ve linked to a couple of sites that make it easy, I think part of the reason I’ve never actually done it is because to me it’s a fairly scary prospect (all the php gooblygook) for now I tend to just play around with themes I already have by customising them a little and putting it on a test site etc which means I’m slowy (very slowly) learning what does what.

Having said all that, I just came across what looks like a really cool site, with a download and some quick videos that should make creating your own WordPress theme a piece of cake.  WP Themer Kit has some blank files and instructions along with the brief video examples which enable the user to make their own theme based on the chosen template etc.

I haven’t used it (yet) but it looks like a really cool idea so for anyone out there that has tried it I’d love to hear your thoughts on it - is it as easy as it looks, are the changes you can make limited or can you really fiddle around with it etc?

One of the great things about WordPress is the wide variety of themes you can find and often it’s simply a matter of looking through the Theme Viewer and finding the perfect theme to suit your needs; other times it’s not quite that simple because you’re looking for something in particular or nothing just jumps out at you as being exactly what you want.

Generally when it comes to themes I’ve been pretty lucky and usually find just what I want and have never felt the need to change themes after my initial installation - until now, for some reason I can’t seem to find what I want for this blog (though I did just upload one that I may eventually switch over to) though naturally the thought of trying to create one of my own crossed my mind. And I think at some stage down the track when I get brave enough I’ll probably have a bit of a play around (if I can find a nice, easy step by step guide first) but until then I’ve just come across a couple of sites I thought I’d share with others that might be thinking about trying to create their own theme.

As yet I haven’t really given them much of a look though the second one listed does come with video guides to hopefully make it even easier.

WordPress Theme Generator:  This online generator creates your own custom unique WordPress Theme. Without any need for HTML, JS, PHP, or CSS knowledge.

Web 2.0 Template Generator: Need no knowledge and no special software, just a little creativity and some idea of how you want the finished product to look (check the help section for the video and the blog for any updates.)

 If and when I decide to try creating my own theme from scratch I’ll make sure to write out each step to share with you, but until that happens if you use either of the above, have fun creating your own themes.

Regular readers of this blog will no doubt notice that I just changed the theme, it’s not something I do often (at least once my blog is established and I’ve found a theme that really suits my blog)

I imagine like everything there’s pros and cons for changing your theme often or not at all

You can keep your page fresh, interesting or new if you play around with templates on a regular or semi-regular basis

Your readers may become annoyed if you change it too often - after all we are often creatures of habit and get used to buttons, links etc being in certain places and don’t like to have to go searching for things if a template changes

Okay I know there’s a lot of other reasons for and against it but those are probably the two most common.

I think one of the reasons I like the WordPress blog is the fact that it is so easy to change your blog’s theme - some of us find the perfect theme straight away while others might need a little tweaking etc (and with so many available to choose from it can take awhile to find exactly what you want)

I admit I’m still struggling to find the perfect theme for this blog (one of these days I’m actually going to spend some time playing around and seeing if I can create my own) and that’s partly because I’m not entirely sure what I want - I just know that if I see it I’ll know it

So for those of you out there - how often do you change your blog’s theme and do you have any major pros or cons for doing it?

When it comes to blogging many people become almost addicted to it and soon find themselves having (or wanting to have) multiple blogs. Because they are so easy to set up it’s not hard to have a new blog up and running within minutes, often the hardest thing to do is to come up with a name and your first post.

Once you’ve used a WordPress blog you quickly decide what works for you and your blog’s topic/theme etc and what doesn’t so when you’re ready to start a new blog odds are you’ll use much the same thing again (the themes may vary, but most plugins etc will probably stay the same) It’s at this point that you realise just how handy it can be to keep a checklist and folders of your most commonly used themes/plugins etc.

While for the most part it’s pretty standard when it comes to setting up a WordPress blog there are a few changes you may want to make and there’s nothing worse than establishing a blog, writing a few posts only to realise you forgot to activate or change a default setting etc.

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Once you’ve decided on what theme you want for your blog and you’ve both uploaded it and changed it in your presentation menu you may soon find there’s a few other things you need to do.

While a lot of the basics stay the same with wordpress themes there are often a few differences. The first thing you’ll want to check is whether your new theme will accept any plugins you had used in the past.  If they are okay you may want to double check on your rss feed (while a standard wordpress feed is yourblogurl/feed this can sometimes get messed up if you change designs etc - a good suggestion when submitting rss feeds is to burn your feed at somewhere like feedburner etc so you get standard feed that can be used anywhere)

It will also pay to check any changes you’d previously made in your separate pages - your header, 404 page etc as these may not always transfer across. For example if you’d used an image in your header you may need to edit your header.php file (via the presentation/theme editor tab) to ensure your image is linked/visible.

Those are a few of the more common differences and as always I suggest before making too many wholesale changes to things you save any codes etc.

Once you’ve chosen your blog platform and either uploaded your blog to your host or created a new blog on your free server it’s time to choose the right layout. This can be a little tricky as there’s a wide variety of templates out there. As mentioned before I used wordpress for my blogs and the best place to find some of the different themes available to download is via the theme viewer. You can search for themes in a variety of ways, from the number of columns you want to whether you want it widget ready or without images etc.

Once you’ve chosen your theme it’s then simply a matter of uploading it to your directory. With wordpress make sure you use the correct path (wp-content/themes) once it’s uploaded go to your dashboard and click on presentation - from there you will see the themes you have to choose from - click on the one you want and it’s done.

You can also change aspects of your theme by going into the theme editor, this will bring up all the files related to your chosen them (and I’ll discuss changing some of that in another post) - remember too that wordpress.org gives a lot of detailed instructions on how to do pretty much anything.

As mentioned while this blog will be primarily directed to wordpress blogs - blogger too gives you the chance to change themes and play around with the layout and from what I gather with the new version it’s reasonably easy to do