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.
- 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. - 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. - 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. - 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. - 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
WordPress.Com Goes Mobile
With the popularity of the iPhone, BlackBerry devices, and other web-capable smartphones, it’s easy to take for granted the fact that millions of people read blogs on their mobile phones. However, not all devices are capable of displaying full HTML. And even those that do, not all screens are large enough for comfortable viewing of web content.
With this in mind, WordPress.com has recently launched several mobile functionalities, namely a few mobile-oriented themes, and (limited) dashboard access from mobile browsers. WordPress.com will automatically detect whether a reader is using a mobile browser, and assuming you have set your site to display a mobile theme when viewed from a phone–activated by default–the reader sees a predominantly text interface, with any header image miniaturized for small screens.
For mobile browsers capable of full HTML, there’s an option to switch to full view. Commenting and limited navigation features are also available on mobile view, making the viewing experience as functional as possible. As for the mobile dashboard, this mostly just involves stats, posting and bookmarking. This is simple enough for those times when you absolutely have to blog about something, but don’t have access to a computer.
This is one functionality I’d like to see built-into self-hosted WordPress installations. While you can usually enable mobile viewing and posting thru plugins, having this out of the box would surely be one good way of expanding readership and giving you a wider array of options when mobile-blogging.
A Proofreading Tool For WordPress
You’ve just finished typing up a great post for your blog and you’ve made sure all your links work. You’ve also made sure to break up the text using various heading sizes so the readers can easy scan through your document. Now you’re ready to click the publish button and send it out to the world. But wait! Did you proofread your post?
And I don’t mean scanning through it using the spellchecker to make sure all your spelling is correct. Did you actually go through and make sure your sentences make sense? Did you use the proper instance of every word (there, write, etc.)?
Proofreading Is Important
While spending a lot of time reading blogs, one thing I often notice is poor grammar. It can make the best post in the world seem less credible. Luckily, there is an awesome tool for WordPress that can help you. After the Deadline is an easy to use plugin that will scan through your post and look for any spelling or grammar mistakes. If it finds any, it will underline it with the appropriate color.
Here’s a screenshot of the plugin in action:
As you can see, it’s easy to use. Simply click on an underlined word and it will give you recommendations.
It doesn’t catch everything, but it definitly helps find things you normally would overlook. I highly recommend using it on your WordPress powered blog. If you blog with WordPress.com, you already have the tool built in to your blog. You just need to click the green check mark to start using it.
Avocado Theme for WordPress
Green is the in thing today. We do want to save the Earth and the human population from a radical change in climate. The Avocado Theme reflects this philosophy, both with the green-themed color scheme, and with how the editorial and design team of Performancing strive to be green in the way we live and work.
The Avocado Theme uses a three-column layout with rounded corners. The green-dominated background and sidebars are highlighted with orange headers and icons. The theme is optimized for use with WordPress 2.8 and above, and supports various features like threaded comments, post classes, image captions, galleries, and drop-down menus.
We have included in the theme ZIP file the Photoshop file and font used for the header, should you wish to use the header image for your title or logo.
The Avocado Theme is a classic theme release from Performancing Themes for WordPress, and is another collaboration with designer Sophia Lucero, who has likewise designed other themes, like Too Newsy and Rubidious.
Download Avocado Theme
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.
The Pros and Cons of Auto Tweeting Blog Posts
Back when I first started using Twitter in 2007, I had become fond of tweeting updates whenever I had a new post on my personal blog. I also tweeted everytime I made a post on several network blogs I edited and contributed to. After a while, it became tedious, and I decided to use one of those WordPress plugins that automatically updates your Twitter status when you had a new blog post.
The concept is pretty simple–the updates could actually go both ways. The plugin will automatically tweet the blog post title as soon as you hit the publish button. You also have the option of consolidating your tweets for a day, and publishing these as a blog post (which I personally find tacky).
For a while, I thought having these updates on auto-pilot seemed good. But when I realized I, myself, ignored automatic update notifications from my Twitter friends most of the time. Unless you run a Twitter account solely to provide updates to your readers about new posts, you most likely run your Twitter account to communicate and connect. And I think it’s best to use this to really talk engage with your readers, rather than blindly update them when you have posts elsewhere.
I guess it’s similar to how I’m not so cool with the idea of cross-posting between Twitter and other microblogging services, such as Plurk. It gives the perception that you’re not actively engaging with your Twitter friends and contacts. It makes it seem they’re not important enough to spend a minute copying and pasting (and shortening) URLs, and typing a few words to introduce your text. It makes them wonder whether you’re actually logged into your Twitter account to read replies and messages, if anyone wants to respond.
Manually posting Twitter updates when you have a new blog post is better, in that you can personalize the message that comes with the link. Sometimes, a blog post’s title is not self-explanatory enough, unless you’re an expert at writing headlines. You can get readers more interested in your blog post if you include a catchy tagline or blurb using your own words, or as an excerpt from the blog post.
Furthermore, when you write about the new post in your own words, it makes it more conversational, and it helps you connect better. For instance, rather than just tweet:
The Pros and Cons of Auto Tweeting Blog Posts – http://shortenedurlhere
I can perhaps say:
What do you think of automatic tweeting blog post updates? – http://shortenedurlhere
By asking a question, my friends and followers can pitch in. Or perhaps I can write something more retweet-worthy, so both my tweet and blog post get better traction.
People easily get tired of automatic tweets. But if you make your Twitter followers feel important by personalizing your tweet, then that helps in winning them over. Instead of getting a lot of zombies to read your posts, you get real people liking and loving what you write, reacting to these, and possibly helping spread the word.
When you’re in a network environment, with dozens and dozens of blogs and contributors, it can get unwieldy. In these cases, it might be easier to do automatic updates, but only if you intend the Twitter account as an update mechanism to alert readers of new updates to the network or to that particular blog. Otherwise, you can perhaps ask each contributor to be active in linking to their posts on their own Twitter accounts.
Have you tried auto-tweeting plugins? What has your experience been, so far?
pMetrics Plugin Updated for WordPress 2.7
Folks who use the Performancing pMetrics plugin for WordPress might be experiencing glitches with WordPress 2.7, due to some incompatibilities. Because of this, we’ve upgraded the pMetrics Plugin to version 1.1.
