WordPress Relief

Choosing Your Theme (template)

When you first install WordPress you will find that the theme is, well, bare.  While some famous blogs like XKCD (also one of my favorite webcomics) choose to leave their blogs with the original theme, this sort of thing only works for people who already have TONS of traffic coming to their site.

The theme is the first thing that people are going to see of your site, besides the header text.  The reason is that for the most part colors jump out of the page faster for the eye than the text, except for the unfortunate minority of people who are either completely or partially colorblind (I am sincerely sorry about this, but this is the reality of the world).

You can seriously turn away people from your site if you have a theme that either has colors that clash, that is poorly implemented in XHTML & CSS, or that is just plain ugly.  I am one of those people that is picky about a site based on how ugly it is, or how poor the interface is.  My friend even has a site to feature some of the “worst of the worst” in web design that we come across: Who did this Crappy Website. (You don’t want to end up there, even if you just chose a theme from a list…)

When you are choosing your theme there are a couple things you have to think about (I will explain each later):

1. How proficient am I with XHTML/CSS?
2. What are my company’s colors?  What are my colors?
3. How do I want my page to be laid out?  Does the layout I chose make sense for my project?
4. What do I want my site to “say” to a user who is just seeing my site at a glance?
5. Is the template I chose readable?
6. Does the template work in all browsers that I expect my visitors to use?

Questions To Ask Yourself - answered

How Proficient am I with PHP/XHTML/CSS?

• First, the reason why I asked this question: If you like a template but want the color changed, or something moved, you need to know at the very least some CSS.  If you want something to be moved, you might have to know XHTML (if you are lucky) or PHP.

What are my company’s colors? What are my colors?

• I know that second question sounds silly, but really think about it.  You may LOVE the way a theme does its layout, but the colors are hideous.  Are you willing to deal with the ugly colors?
• Also, if you don’t like a certain color scheme, you should be pretty confident that there are other people who don’t like it either.

How do I want my page to be laid out? Does the layout I chose make sense for my project?

• This is important, because you want the most important information available to your visitors to be “above the fold”.  This means, that when the page loads, the important information should be available without scrolling. Think about it this way: when you search Google for a specific keyword, how likely are you to click one of the first 4 links on the page?  How likely are you to scroll?  How likely are you to go to the second page?

What do I want my site to “say” to a user who is just seeing my site at a glance?

• When someone sees a screen shot of your site, or they have a browser window open, or if they are searching for a specific thing on the internet they are going to scan your site quickly.  It is important to take this into consideration.  When someone visits your site, and they leave after viewing one page, this is called a bounce.  You want to prevent people from bouncing off your site.  The more they bounce, the less they read and the less money you can make with your site (if you have monitized your site).
• You want to figure out what the “feeling” is that you want from your site.  It might be serious, fun, exciting, happy, whatever.  You need to consider this feeling when you choose a theme.  When I choose a theme I might pick 10 different themes that I think will work, and then put them on the server.  I will make them active (more on this later), and then decide which one I like when my content is displayed in the theme.  Very rarely do I get it right the first time.

Is the template I chose readable?

• You may have a template that you think is perfect for your mission.  It might be.  But you need to make sure that the widest number of the type of people you will attract can read your site.  If the site uses fonts that are too small, or the background color is too similar or clashes with the text colors you may drive visitors away.  Would you go to a site that was un-readable?

Does the template work in all browsers that I expect my visitors to use?

• Most if not all template sites have a “preview” or “test run” of the templates they have in inventory. Look at your templates in different browsers (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari).  You might find out that a specific browser does not work well with your template.  This gives you two options 1) find a new template or 2) Fix it (requires XHTML/CSS knowledge).

The next thing you need to do is install your theme, and see if it looks right with your content.  If you use a host that does the 1-click installs like Dreamhost, then you will already have a bunch of themes installed fore free.  Keep in mind though, everyone who uses that host has those installed for free as well…individuality is a good thing to have on the web.

Next Article: Installing and Changing your Themes