themes

In search of the perfect blog theme.

~ Ron Walker ~ 31 Comments

My Eyes, are tired. There is a headache screaming to escape the confines of my cranium. I have spent the last two days testing, searching for a blog theme that has what I need. The conclusion? It doesn’t exist for me. Just give me something between simple, and versatile.

In years past, you could find a free theme, with a sidebar. Nothing overly flashy, yet not so simple that you couldn’t dress it up a little with plugins or widgets. WordPress 2011 was the last one I ever used that just worked. You could customize it with a few bits of code. Of course, back then they weren’t cranking out an upgrade to the core every few days.

Today, the theme ecosystem is just a commercial catalog of themes that cater to businesses, or those that need a website instead of a blog. Giant in your face banners (just go ahead and call them pictures). Nearly taking up two-thirds of your screen, before you even see the first post is the new norm. Twirly, flashy, fading in and out graphics. Then the despised popup blocks as you start to leave the site, or heaven forbid, while you’re just sitting there trying to decide if you like the posts.

Give me that Money!

Yearly charges anywhere from $25 to $55 or more, just so you can get the update, if one of the numerous upgrades of the core breaks your theme. No, thanks. It would have to be a hell-of-a good theme, fitting all my needs for me to fork over the support money. Already paying domain fees, and hosting fees is enough. Of course, we all saw this coming years ago.

What little blogging I manage to do, is for fun and sharing with others. I don’t have a business. I have tested around 30 themes, and they all come up lacking in my basic needs. Maybe I’m too picky.

Perhaps, I should stop griping and learn to build a theme myself, but I want to enjoy it, not work on it all the time. My theme I currently use, is “Graphene” It does most of the things I need.

Share what theme you use, why you like it. What you look for in a blog theme.

Maybe it’s time for a new look, for the Blog.

~ Ron Walker ~ 13 Comments

The last couple of weeks, I have thinking of searching for a new theme for my blog. Turns out, it is harder than I would have imagined, to find a new theme that still looks like a blog. 90% of what I looked at, and I mean there were a lot of them, looked more like businesses with huge introductory pictures as the first thing on the blog. I like a picture along the top, it gives a flavor of the blog your visiting. I just don’t like the in your face, full screen pictures that look more like wallpaper.

The only good ones you find now, are limited versions

They were either too plain, or too full of gadgets. It seems the only good ones you find now, are limited versions having to purchase the upgrade to get the nice things. I’m used to this trend though. Like forums, when I started there were probably 100+ free themes that had nice features, then the realization of making money for themes took over, and now you’re lucky to find 1-5 free themes on the forum support site.

I like a few features, like being able to change the color to better suit your blog subject. Maybe the ability to adjust the text size, so those with poorer eyesight have an easier time reading.

Generate curiosity for the older posts.

I have found one that I am going to try. It is standard, but it has a nice feature for the top or bottom. While I am not a fan of the large sliding images on business sites, this one caught my eye as being small and can be adjusted to randomly select past posts. Some visitors may be more prone to click on one that comes up in the slider which looks interesting. You can set the time interval, so it stays long enough to generate curiosity for the older posts.

So for the next few days, if you visit here, you may see something come and go from time to time as I adjust it. If you have things that you like, items you use that work for you, feel free to share them with everyone. I’m always looking for improvements to help visitors.

Comments always welcome,