All Dressed Up: The Perfect Template For Your Blog

Written by angela from Blogging For Dollars on November 7, 2007

New bloggers’ focus is often on the look of their blog. They become obsessed by their blog’s template before they write any content. It’s as though they’re hunting for the perfect suit of clothes for a ghost.

A blog is a Content Management System, so your content, rather than the aesthetics, is what counts. Without content you don’t have a blog, and it’s difficult to judge whether a particular template will meet your needs until you have a few blog posts and a couple of categories.

WordPress bloggers are especially prone to theme mania, because there’s such a huge choice of themes, most of which are completely free.

So before you start tinkering with your blog’s template, add some content to the blog.

Got content? Great.

Now let’s look at some steps to finding the perfect template/ theme for your blog.

1. Decide how many columns you want

People visit your blog for the information and entertainment you provide, so you’ll want a theme which makes your content easy to read.

If you’ll be running ads on your blog, you may decide on a three-column template. However, ensure that your blog loads quickly. If you’ve got dozens of ads in three columns, your blog may load too slowly and you’ll lose traffic.

2. Decide on the color and feel you want

Your blog’s colors and graphics are a personal choice. For most people, white text on a dark background is difficult to read, but again, it’s your choice.

3. If you’re using WordPress, install all the plugins you intend to run before you start testing themes

Occasionally, a plugin will break a theme. It’s best to discover this before you’ve decided on a particular theme.

Once you’ve settled on a theme, and have added material to it, it’s heart-breaking to discover that a newly-installed plug-in breaks your theme.

4. Are you running AdSense? Choose a template/ theme which has placeholders for AdSense

Many WordPress themes are AdSense ready. You can just paste in your publisher ID and channel number of you use channels, and you’re done. This is a great time-saver, so do a search for “AdSense-ready” themes.

5. When you’ve made your choice of a new template/ theme, test it

This is where your content becomes useful. Check that everything on the theme works, and that there are no nasty surprises.

So there you have it, five steps to finding the perfect template for your blog.

Written by angela from Blogging For Dollars on November 7, 2007 | Filed Under Blogging

7 Responses so far | Have Your Say!

Erik Karey | November 7th, 2007 at 10:26 am #

Nice tips. I just switched to a new semi-custom theme and had a plugin break the theme temporarily. I was able to fix it by messing with the stylesheet and functions file, but it’s good to try all themes with the plugins enabled to watch out for that.
david | November 7th, 2007 at 11:35 am #

I’m slowly modifying my theme to have the look and feel that I want. Well is hard since I’m new to wordpress so I have to do a lot of research just for some changes. If you change to a new template does it reset your Alexa and Google’s ranking?
Lori | November 7th, 2007 at 3:22 pm #

I just had mine made over and it suits my personality perfectly:)
jblanton | November 7th, 2007 at 8:17 pm #

I am mentoring a new blogger and she insists that her Theme must be perfect before she posts a single entry. I sent her this article.

Thanks for writing this Angela.
ProBlogReviews | November 11th, 2007 at 5:19 pm #

I would say that without great content, I will click away fast but the template has to also be easy on the eyes and not crowded, too busy a theme and I don’t care how good the content is, I’m leaving never to return.