Last Updated on November 8, 2022 by
There are a lot of themes out there that you can dress up your blog with. Everyone wants to be different and personal flair is great. However, will your viewers take a liking to it? There are some sites that are far out there and it can get quite confusing.
A friend of mine actually listened to his readers and he decided to go with a theme that was pleasing to the eye and very familiar. He took a theme that had the same colours as Facebook and some of the layout was very similar.
In the end, the readers could navigate the website better and the colour was easy to look at.
Before when I made a website with WordPress, I usually used the same theme because it has lots and lots of options. Then I found myself being distracted by modifying the theme. I was spending too much time trying to make eye candy, so to say.
Now I just use a basic theme and spend more time on the content. True, a website should be pleasing to the eye. However, as is said very often, content is king. Visitors do not actually come to see the eye candy. They come for the content.
I think a website should be visually pleasing, however at the same time it shouldn’t be over done! The theme should be appealing, however simple! I find sites with complicated themes to be less functional and harder to get around! It’s best to keep it simple. As we all know, content is king!
Very true, content is king. All flash and no substance spells dome for any site.Yes, all flash and no dash makes Jack a very poor boy indeed.I am always looking for free blogging tools that make it simpler to look great.
Something that has always helped me personalise themes is CSS. You can learn it for free on the internet in a few days and it is quite liberating as you are now in control of your theme. Whatever you want to do, you’ll be able to do it after a few lessons on code. I recommend it to everyone.
However, to say that you can use it to customize your theme after just a few lessons is stretching it a tad. Unless you are already experienced in website design and already have experience in programming, otherwise just to assume that you can customize your theme after just a few lessons is very much in the realm of daydreams.
If this is possible, then all those developers who live by creating themes and make money by customizing themes would all be out of work.
Now, mind you, I am not discouraging anyone from learning CSS and learning to customize their own themes. I am just saying that there is more to it than meets the eye. What I mean is that you can change all the main things. Granted, it takes absolutely ages and lots of trial runs from all devices to make sure it does work properly. And if it doesn’t, a quick Google search will let you know why.
Customising a WordPress theme really isn’t that hard, I agree. It’s not all that hard. However, making it happen and making it good are entirely two different kettles of fish, so to say.
There are such things as design aesthetics and page load speeds to consider. Some designs which look good may not load fast On the other side of the coin, some designs which load fast may not look good. So there has to be a trade off somewhere along the line. This is where experience makes a difference.
I think a good rule of thumb would be a re-working of the 20-80 rule. Spend 20% of your time on the design and 80% on your content. When all is said and done, it’s the content which keeps the visitors coming back for more.
I try to use a template that matches what the blog is about. It is pointless having a Australian business coaching blog and your theme is covered in flowers and butterflies. Right now I am just using the black background with white text and orange headings. I think I used a similar background for my gaming blog. WordPress has some really nice templates and header images however I am not really into their layout and last time I was there I noticed you can’t use adsense.
Yes, content is definitely king and I am willing to put up with a less than gorgeous website to read good quality information. However, as a reader, I won’t read content on sites that are really ugly. At this point, I kind of feel like if the website is hideous then the content itself might not be good or it will be a spam website.
However, there is a line between just not pretty and spam, so there is a lot of grey area. I do find that being pretty is no match for being well organized. If I can’t navigate the website, I don’t care how pretty or ugly it is, I won’t stay there even for good content because it’s more trouble than it is worth.
With so many free templates out there, especially for those of us who don’t know CSS, there are great options that can be pretty, easy to navigate, and focus on great content.
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