Decision, Decision, Decision

Which theme to use?

This is the biggest deciding point when it comes to blogging. It is especially difficult when your a designer and you constantly change themes like you change, well you know what I mean.

A designer is never satisfied! I know because I am one. Until I got to the point in blogging and with my life that it was going to be simple. Simple, simple, simple.

Starting a blog is a planning process. You have the idea, its in your head and your wanting to find the best tools to tailor your fit. I love the expression K.I.S.S. (keep it simple stupid). I detest the word stupid, but I have yet to find a word I could replace that with. But what I am saying here is this, find a theme that you know you can work with and move around in easy. A theme that will allow your readers to find your content simple to get to. Don’t use a theme that is distracting and causes your words to get lost on the page. Its a blog! Not a design page.

Do not choose a theme that will disrupt or defer you from the purpose of the blog. Its a nightmare to have written tons of information and have a somewhat successful blog  to only decide half way through that you want a different design because your either bored with it, or it takes to much of your time to work with. If you do not plan this through to begin with you may find yourself never really getting a good start.

Choose a theme that you can plan for growth later. One that the code is not so much a nightmare that you have no idea what to do. I know most people tighten their lips when they think about having to look inside the code side of blogging. But I am here to tell you, unless you can afford to pay someone to make the simple little changes for you, you are going to have to learn some simple actions.

I operate a handful of blogs on a daily basis. The one thing that was the biggest aggravation for me was working with challenging themes. I would find a theme that I really liked only to find working with the coders, code, was very time consuming. So then I started designing and doing my own until I ran into Brian Gardner. I can’t say enough about how perfect his themes and his code work has been for me to work with.

Strive for a big win right off the bat by putting all the basic things in place before you get started. The real thing about blogging is to make sure you focus your energy where you can make a difference.