Choosing A Theme For Your Blog

Blog theme

Theme also plays an important role in your blogging profession, so don’t take it lightly. Choosing a suitable theme for your blog is not an easy task as there are thousands available out there. It would take hours, even days. Plus you shouldn’t just go pick a theme and install it. You need to check it, test it.

Here i’ve listed some factor you might want to consider in choosing a good theme.

Speed
This is your first presentation to your visitors. Just being beautiful is not enough. You need to pick a fast loading theme. Visitors wouldn’t want to wait just to see your blog. There are many other blogs they can easily reach through search engines. They’ll keep moving from one to another. Try to avoid big fancy background pictures and audio.

Content
Your blog’s theme or template must be suitable to your content. Make a dummy post with images, links, lists, quotes and everything you’ve planned to put on your blog. Take a look at single post page, homepage, archive page, about page and everything. See if it suits your needs and likes.

Navigation
Make sure categories, pages, popular post, recent post are displayed in an easy to reach area. It’s best if it’s the first thing visitor sees when entering your blog. They haven’t read your post yet but they already have a few ideas where to go if they don’t like the post. In most cases, visitors only clicks on what’s in front of them. They don’t like to dig around as they themselves are quite busy with their own matter. If they have difficulties in some way, they just leave.

Design
Simplicity and professional look is highly recomended. Additional icons like RSS and social networking is a big bonus. About columns ? it depends on what you prefer and planned but two column looks more professional and neat. Then again, it depends on your contents.

Functionality
Check everything. All links, feedburner submission, social networking icons, commenting form, contact form are working perfectly. If something goes wrong with it’s functionality, simply move to another.

Does it require modification
Remember that tweaking a theme requires a lot of time and effort which is something you don’t have. Too much tweaking would mess it up and at some point you might just give up with it. It’s better if you just cut it loose.

Browser compatibility and code validity
Always test the theme with multiple browser, cross browser test. And also check for html and css validity.

Last words
When you have found a good theme for your blog make sure it’s final. Once you move further, got some friends and loyal readers then it’s not a good idea to change blog theme again. Your visitors and friends wouldn’t like it very much. Believe me i’ve been there. So choose wisely and good luck finding a theme.

Tags: blogging tips, template, theme