Five Ways to Tweak a Wordpress Theme

Ah, free Wordpress themes. I’m convinced they’re one of the biggest reasons Wordpress is the most popular blogging platform today. From one-column minimalism to grid-based magazine layouts, photoblogging styles to made-for-Adsense themes, there are free Wordpress themes for every taste- just download, install and activate!

But to set your blog apart, you’ll want to tweak that theme- and when I say tweak, I mean make small changes here and there. To make these tweaks to your theme of choice, a tool like the Firebug extension for Firefox can be very handy- but, really, any text editor will do.

1. Tweak your header
   Usually the first place new visitors will look, and a good place to start. Some themes include “theme options” pages that show up when you’ve activated the theme, and others include banner photos or graphics that can easily be replaced with your own. If you’re using the default Wordpress theme Kubrick, the aptly named Kubrickr will automatically find photos on Flickr for you to customize your header with. To get more in-depth, I recommend reading through Wordpress’ official codex page on Designing Headers.
2. Play with your widgets
   Most Wordpress theme designers “widgetize” their themes, and for good reason: widgets are probably the quickest way to personalize a Wordpress theme. Built-in widgets, available in every fresh installation of Wordpress, include widgets for displaying your Archives, Calendar, Recent Comments and so forth- and And if the theme you love isn’t widgetized, you can do it yourself.
3. Experiment with color
   Even slight changes to the colors on your site can have a big impact. Online tools such as the Color Scheme Designer can keep you busy for hours, or you can check out pre-made color schemes at sites like colr.org and GenoPal.
4. Change your fonts
   We used to have just two choices when it came to web fonts: serif or sans-serif. Today, we have methods like sIFR and FLIR, which replace your fonts using Flash, the newish Cufon, which doesn’t require Flash, and CSS3’s @font-face, which works by downloading the specified fonts.
5. Personalize your About page
   This one, which requires no CSS tweaking at all, just might be the most important way of all. Tweaking your About page, the only page that comes pre-built with Wordpress, is where you can truly let your personality shine through. A photo of yourself is always good, but you should feel free to add anything here that shows the world- or your readers, at least- who you are. You can read more about tweaking your About page in a previous post of mine.

Of course, we’ve only barely scratched the surface of the ways you can tweak your Wordpress theme. For more ways, the Wordpress Codex is an excellent place to start, or look through our previous posts on Wordpress here.

Performancing Releases the Herald Theme for WordPress

Considered one of the premier sources of blogging news, commentary and information, The Blog Herald has gone through different iterations since its inception in 2003. Among the most successful designs was Brian Gardner’s grey-themed three-column layout released in 2007. Performancing is releasing this theme as our latest free WordPress theme as the Herald Theme.

Sporting a grey-dominant color scheme, with red and blue highlights, the Herald Theme looks clean and crisp, with a wide main content area, and two sidebars to the right. The middle sidebar us wide enough to contain an ad block of 125×125 pixel buttons or a 250×250 banner, and supports featured posts which will display only posts from a defined category or tag. Each sidebar block and footer column can be customized using widgets for easy drag-and-drop rearranging.

The Herald Theme is optimized for use with WordPress 2.8 and newer. Dropdown menus use jQuery.

Preview the Herald Theme

For a live preview of the theme, click here.

Download the Herald Theme

To download Herald Theme, click here.

How Important is the Design of Your Blog?

I’ve been thinking a lot about blog design because in the last couple of days, I’ve gotten some compliments out of blue on one of my blog’s designs.  This was surprising because I don’t think the design is exceptional.  The design is based on a popular premium theme, which I modified with my limited coding skills.  I changed the colors, resized the columns, and moved and deleted some of the visual elements.  Also, I hired a designer to create a custom header.  These changes made my design look very different from the original look.

Make It Unique

One key is standing out from the crowd.  No one will talk about your blog design or even take note of it if it looks too similar to other blogs.

Many of the blogs in my niche were using popular free Wordpress themes, so they looked like other blogs.   While there are many great free Wordpress themes, if you use them, you’ll often find many blogs that look just like yours.  Therefore, you’re not standing out from the crowd and your design doesn’t make a lasting impression.

Takeaway: If you do use a popular Wordpress theme (whether free or paid), make sure to modify it enough so it has a fresh look and doesn’t remind your readers of other blogs with the same theme.

Cut Out The Clutter

My design may not win any awards, but one thing I kept hearing in the compliments was the simplicity of the design.  A clean, uncluttered design goes a long way to improving the usability of your blog.

Many blogs have too much going on.  Whether it’s five different ads above the fold or ten widgets on the sidebar, a cluttered design can frustrate and confuse your readers.

Takeaway: If you give your readers too many things to look at, they may miss out on the most important part of your blog, your posts.  Keep your design simple and you’ll highlight your content.

Content Vs. Design

One of the blogs in my niche has uses the Wordpress default theme so the blog feels very boring and bland.  However, I look forward to visiting the blog because it’s regularly updated and has high quality content.  The blog has grown quickly and is starting to become one of the most popular blogs in my niche.

This just goes to prove that content is by far more important than design.  Still, that blog could get a big boost from a fresh design.  A custom design will cause it to stand out even more from other blogs.  It will make the reading experience more enjoyable, generate buzz within the industry, and improve the blog’s brand.

Takeaway: Focus first on the quality and quantity of your content, but once you’ve got that down, a custom design will take your blog to the next level.

Performancing offers custom blog designs with our blog launch service.

Why invest in a premium theme for your blog?

There are a whole host of very good free themes for most blogging platforms, which can often be used “as is” or customized just a little to create something a bit different, but is it time you invested some money in a premium theme to really push your site forward?

It’s true that content is very important, but the way that it’s presented is not to be ignored, particularly when you consider that first impressions count a lot, people will initially judge your site on what it looks like, and it takes just a second or two to click on the “back” button.

If you have the time, knowledge and dedication to work out a theme from scratch, or rip out the guts and replace swathes of code on a free theme, then good for you. I know there’s satisfaction in creating your own design that’s completely yours. I also know, now, that I’d rather spend that time creating content than designing from scratch.

How to get a premium theme

There are two routes to getting a premium theme.

The first is to find a designer that sells premium themes. Generally you’ll want to look for designs that are highly and easily customizable, have a degree of support (whether that be direct with the designer or via a forum), offer upgrades/updates to fix bugs or add new features, and offer more than “run of the mill” features you could easily find in a free theme.

The second is to hire a designer to create a unique blog template to your exact specifications. You’ll want to take a look at their portfolio to ensure that they’re creating bespoke sites, and maybe talk to some of their previous clients to see how the process went.

The first option is cheaper and quicker but you still may not own a completely unique theme.

The second option is more expensive and takes longer to implement, but you’ll hopefully get a design that’s truly your own.

Advantages

Look and Feel

Whether you’ve had your blog template designed for you, or you’ve customized a premium theme, the way it looks and operates will be unique and tailored to your blog.

Ease of use

If you’ve picked a good theme or designer, it should be really easy to add new elements without breaking the template or having to get bogged down in the code. This means you have more time for creating content and building community than wrestling with how things work.

Pride

I found that after I’d invested some money in a premium theme, I took more pride in my blog. Though I didn’t spend much on the theme, it was enough to change my mindset and take my site more seriously. Not only did the theme present content much more attractively but it looked more professional and encouraged me to work harder at building it.

This might not work for everyone, but I find that if I’ve invested money (beyond basic hosting and domain name costs that everyone incurs) I’m more likely to stick with a project.

Long term view

Linked to the pride factor, I’ve taken a much longer term view of my blog design, and am more likely to let it evolve over time rather than completely redesign it.

When I was running free themes, I found myself tweaking or even replacing the design more often. After I invested in a premium theme, I left the foundations alone and added things that created more worth.

That’s not to say that I’ll never revamp the design in the future, but I’m far less likely to do so on a whim.

Conclusions

It’s possible to run a successful blog off the back of a free theme, but moving to a premium theme definitely has its advantages.

If you’ve not considered it before, why not take a look at some of the options available. You don’t have to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to get something a bit different that could set your blog apart from the crowd.

What do you think? Do you use premium themes and how has it changed your view of your blog? Or do you think free themes are fine?

The New Landing Pages

With social media talk fluttering about, your product’s website doesn’t necessarily need to be discovered via search engine results or billboard ads (for more info, go to www.yourwebsiteyay.com). The past 3 years has brought forth a new set of “landing pages” for your brand. Here are some of them:

a. Social Networks: Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Yahoo! 360 (eep, they’ve closed!)… the list goes on. But which one should you join? Which platform should you grow your community? Should you pick at random? Should you do all? The key is to experiment, yes but according to Gladwell’s principles in Blink!, you may already know the answer — go for gut feel. If you still need social proof, take a look at your referral traffic in your stats page. In my case, I run a blog for a local men’s lifestyle magazine and we figured that Facebook and Plurk (not Twitter), give us the biggest referral traffic next to Multiply.com. It’s gut feel, solidified with stats.

b. Apps: Brands are slowly realizing this, by taking their brand name into sponsoring or co-developing applications mostly for your mobile phone. The iTunes store, open social app development for social networks, the Nokia Ovi store, the Android store — a plethora of opportunities lies in ubiquity. So let’s think for a bit: do we put that flash game in our website or do we bring the game to our users onto their Facebook profiles and iPhone apps? I say the latter!

c. Brand Ambassadors: There’s nothing like good ‘ol word of mouth. Genuine word of mouth. Not those conceived “viral” messages that get passed on artificially. I personally think PR practitioners should be more attentive to what goes on in the circle of their “stakeholders” on the web. There are tools for this — Twitter hashtags are great ways for finding people who have good things to say about your product. Why not encourage them to love you more by giving them a little push (like a review unit of your upcoming phone). It isn’t about losing credibility. It’s about selection and being a smart marketer.

Sitepoint Marketplace becomes Flippa

Most of you have probably heard of Sitepoint, either from its books, tutorials, or their well established marketplace, but over the last few years, they have been finding the marketplace becoming a community of its own. At first, they split off the design work to a new site, 99designs.com and now it seems the buying and selling of websites will be moved to a new domain called Flippa.

Currently in Beta, Flippa looks like a whole break with the current Marketplace, where 99designs looked fairly similar in nature to the older design market. The good thing is that they’ve moved over the user accounts so anyone that has or had an account on the old Marketplace, can use Flippa.

Why change the Marketplace on Sitepoint? Details are already on Flippa:

Why Flippa.com? If it ain’t broke don’t fix it!

In a nut shell, the SitePoint Marketplace has outgrown its tab on sitepoint.com. For this marketplace to remain the #1 location for buying and selling web sites, and for us to properly service the needs of our buyer and seller community, it simply had to have its own identity – it had to be set free from sitepoint.com. Once you’ve had a chance to look around the site we’re confident that you’ll agree it was the right move.

So far, there doesn’t seem to be much real content on the new site, as people test out the new site. How will we be able to tell the real sales from the fake as they run this Beta? Not really sure, but one thing is for certain, Flippa is something we will all have to get used to, and hopefully it won’t kill the community that has grown on Sitepoint.

Another Web Service Implodes

Do you use ma.gnolia? If so, then you already know about the implosion which occurred with the services data on January 30th. According to a statement now on the front page of the magnolia website, the site experienced not only data corruption, but data loss as well.

For Ma.gnolia, this means that the service is offline and members’ bookmarks are unavailable, both through the website itself and the API. As I evaluate recovery options, I can’t provide a certain timeline or prognosis as to to when or to what degree Ma.gnolia or your bookmarks will return; only that this process will take days, not hours.

Magnolia is providing updates on the situation through their Twitter account. Not long ago, a similar incident happened To JournalSpace.

These incidents are stark reminders that perhaps placing all of our data into the cloud is not such a great idea, especially when companies are not establishing appropriate backup procedures. Taking into consideration how cheap storage is these days, not having a proper backup of user data is completely unacceptable. This is also a good reminder that these services need to be providing easy ways for their users to take their data/content off of the sites for end user backup purposes.

Do you think that this is a new trend? Web 2.0 sites and services imploding?

What Should Go On Your About Page

Just a few days ago, I put out the reminder to check over your about page to make sure all of the information is up to date. However, I noticed at least one person ask, “What should go on our about page”?

By no means is there a complete guide on what should absolutely be presented on the about page but keep this in mind. If a visitor comes across your blog and their first impression doesn’t tell them what the blog is about, they will head straight to the page that provides more information. Here is my non-concrete guide of suggestions to what I think should be on your about page.

Short And Sweet – Right at the top of the about page, you should be short and concise as to what the blog is about and the information that is covered. There is no need to provide a mile long description of why the site exists because you can provide that further down the page.

Personalize – Let me tell you, going to a blog conference and not being able to match your favorite blogger with a face is pretty weird. To keep that from happening, place a picture of yourself on the page. This gives the overall blog a human touch and also enables your fanbase to recognize you out in the real world.

Detailed Information – As far as detailed information is concerned, depending on the type of blog this is, you can add your real name, occupation, hometown, education, etc. As for myself, I treat my About Page as part of my resume and so, most of what you would see on a resume is published on my about page. This gives prospecting employers information that they would otherwise have to contact me for.

Contact Information – At some point within the page, you should either link to your contact page, publish your email address, or provide a means for contacting you. Having an about page or doing anything online is almost worthless if there is no means in getting in touch with you.

All About The Details – After providing pertinent information about yourself, now would be a good time to tell your audience just how the blog came to be. At this point, you can dive into the history surrounding the site to give your audience an overall look at the big picture.

Where To Follow You – Again, depending upon the type of blog you have, you can also list the places for which you have worked/written for on the web. I do this on my own page because it acts as my resume place holder. It also gives my audience a chance to follow me across the web as I move from place to place.

Conclusion:

In a nutshell, that is pretty much the basis of what should be in your about page. Of course, depending on what kind of site/blog it is will determine the type of information presented within. Keep in mind that a good way not to have anyone write about you or your blog when introducing it to their audience is to either have little to no information on the page or no about page at all. If you happen to be one of those bloggers with no about page, thanks for contributing to blogging frustration.

If you need more ideas on what to put into your about page, check out this post on Problogger from 2005 which interestingly enough, is still relevant today.

Time To Update That About Page

Well, it’s near the end of 2008 and I think now is a great time to remind everyone to check your About page on your blog and update it with current information. I think too many of us create the About Page when we initially launch a blog and then we never update the darn thing. Take this opportunity to mark down your achievements for prospecting employers to see, rethink your priorities for the blog and update your goals for the new year as they relate to the site. All in all, just make sure the information is current. Try to make it a habit to update that page at least once a month if necessary because I feel that it is the most sought after page that visitors look for, especially new visitors. Also, I can’t tell you how dumb I feel when I read a persons bio information on a podcast only to be told that the information is out of date and that they will need to update their about page.

So what do you say, will you help me spread the word?

37 Different Comment Form Designs

The comment form doesn’t have to be the standard black and white, four field text box that is common place amongst the blogosphere. Instead, you could easily bling up that section of your blog, especially after receiving a bit of inspiration. That is exactly what BlogDesignBlog has done with their 37 ways to design the comments form article. The post features 37 different comment forms each designed in a different way. From horizontal fields to checkboxes to various colors and design elements, there should be a comment form within this article that sparks your fancy. At the very least, it should have you questioning the look and style of your own comment form.

With regards to the article, did you notice how many of those comments forms didn’t have a CAPTCHA image or a stupid question that humans had to answer in order to have their comment published? Keep it simple and I bet the number of comments on your blog goes up rather than down.

Based on that list of 37 comment forms, did any one of them stand out at you? In your own eyes, what makes a good comment form?

Hat tip to @nathanrice