Unless your content is absolutely killer and often even then, the theme of your blog will play a crucial role in converting every chance visitor into a reader. Choosing a blog theme can be really confusing when facing so many choices! Here are some tips to make choosing a blog theme easier.
Professional or Personal
Is your blog personal or professional? You must first decide this, cause only then can you choose an appropriate theme. For a personal theme you can go for brightly colored, funky and snazzy ones but for a professional one its better to go for an office looking theme with more gray, maroon, dark blue, dark green type of combinations on a white background.
Light Background or Dark Background?
Go for a light background color with dark text, cause it is easier on the readers eyes. Darker backgrounds are good only for photo or design blogs with less writing, where the images come across well due to the background.
Content Theme
Does your content have a theme? If so you can add a customized touch to your blog theme or choose a blog theme accordingly. For example: If you blog is only about fish, then you can choose a fish blog theme with an underwater image for header or animated fish widget on the sidebar.
Simple, minimalist or Filled up, content rich?
This is your choice but always better to be clear about what you want before you come across a huge array of different themes for your blog. Do you want a simple theme with just the post and one or two widgets on the sidebar, or do you want a 3 or 4 columned blog with content filling every corner of it?
Color Scheme
Have a vague idea of a preferred color scheme. More sober greys, dark blue and maroon type colors or do you prefer bright greens, yellows and reds. However this should not affect which theme you choose. Almost all themes can easily be tweaked to change the color combination to one of your choice.
What tips do you keep in mind while selecting a blog theme?
This is a guest post by Priyanka who writes at Priyankawriting.com. If you like to write for Shoutmeloud, do read Shoutmeloud Revenue sharing program.
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{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
@ What tips do you keep in mind while selecting a blog theme?
Well, firstly I need my blog to load faster, that’s the primary focus and then I look for themes that are well optimized.
Thesis is the best wordpress theme it’s a bit for people like me, so had to settle down with a free theme called “Digital Statement”.
Thats a good tip Pro!
For me, the best thing should be a white background that would make the text readable. After all, it’s a blog and not a poster. The main content is the *text*. So, always choose a white background rather than any fancy ones. Secondly, typography plays the most important role for the success of any blog.
Rishabh some nice point , but I see it the other ways. A blog which is dedicated to textual content should have white backgroound like blog on tutorials, Blogging, MMO and so on.
Blogs like Gaming, Hacking People prefer to see them on Black background, for some reason it matches with the niche of blog…
No doubt Typography matters in every type of blog. Thanks for your comment.
I have a point to add, since I run a gaming blog =)
Text is always best with white background. The site can always have a dark background, but text area should have a white background.
I agree with you Balu, since it provide readability.
I usually go with the magazine themes first.
Sushant Magazine style theme are good because they showcase lots of content on homepage. Though it should be selected carefully, because many magazine style wordpress theme doesn’t provide great navigation.
I want to change my theme as per my wish. So i prefer to choose do it yourself variety themes especially thesis. Thesis and headway rocks in that way.
When we use these type of themes, we can vary color,colums etc when ever we want.
Priyanka, you have collected nice points.
That is a great way of looking at it. I think that a lot of bloggers just go with the design they think looks the best, without thinking of how that theme will effect their blog.
Great tips Priyanka. Theme is the soul of blog so everyone should keep these things in mind before choosing the blog theme.
Regarding the ’simple or filled up’ point, I would have to say: ‘why not both?!’
It’s perfectly possible to achieve a design that is clean and simple enough to be gentle on the eye, but include enough content to get your point/adverts across. Take this blog for instance. The design is simple and clean, yet there’s still tons of room for information.
I think this is usually acheived by a great sidebar/header/footer, rather than the actual content area. Again, take the footer on this site. There’s loads of room in there for the categories and all different information (nice design Asnio!
), yet it still looks nice and clean.
For me Light theme is always soothing. People hate dark colors. Keep the theme cool.
i have been searching new theme for my blog and this will come good
for me a theme with different typography and white background is the criteria and so I chosed Thesis
I always go for a whit background as it makes text easier to read. Most of the people don’t like dark back grounds.
I select themes which have a white background. Not having too many images and widgets helps in speeeding up the loading of the blogs.
Selecting a them is indeed a tough job and the points that Priyanka has listed really needs full attention. I know it, since I was trying to select a perfect theme for my needs at SpeakBindas and it took almost couple of months! Harsh know about it
I would like to add a point to already mentioned points here in comments and by the author herself and that is SEO. Being a blogger you would surely look for a proper theme that acts good with SEO as well.
In my opinion if you are thinking to buy any theme don’t forget to check how it stands for SEO.