They now have more than hundred and thirty themes to choose from. Last night, I read a very good post, that made me think a little deeper about the themes.
I moved here to wordpress.COM from having had a self-hosted wordpress blog before. The main reason for the move was this daily post challenge. Â I’m still happy with that move as I’m still hanging on to my daily blog post.
I do like change, every now and then — sometimes just for the sake of it … a fresh look of my blog, and I like to think that the theme might reflect a little bit of me. Five, six years ago, I would have chosen a theme full of graphics … flowery backgrounds et cetera … now I’m back to the minimalistic, clean look. Perhaps that says something about me, I don’t know.
Since I moved in here in May, I’ve probably checked out each and every one of the hundred and thirty themes they have. Lately, I’ve noticed that I keep coming back to two: The current Mystique and Clean Home. Both of them have enough customization possibilities to keep me happy. By now, I know them inside out and it’s easy to apply a personal look and feel to them.
As soon as a new theme is being released, I check them out. Â If they don’t have any customization at all, I just disregard them. Two things are important to me when I choose: Font and layout. I’m not a huge fan of Verdana. You can always make your actual posts in a different font, by typing in a little snippet of code each time, but in the long run I get fed up with it. Like this: This sentence is written in Verdana, 11px and the color is Crimson. I could do this each time I posted, if I felt like it or if I felt that it was that important. Well … I don’t! This blogging business is something I do for fun … it’s not a job. Having said that, one would perhaps think that it’s strange that I pay all this much attention to the details! Sadly, when a new theme has a lot of graphics … when it’s too far out for my taste, I tend to miss out on all the other possibilities that theme has to offer.
When they released Twenty Eleven, I was really impressed and I really had only one hang-up about that: The navigation bar. It’s pitch black.  I don’t like too much high-contrast [not too little either], and I don’t intend to pay $30 (!) a year for the pleasure of changing the color of the nav bar! 🙂 After all, I moved from self-hosted to free, and like I said in my post about email clients: I refuse to pay for something I can get for free elsewhere. Okay … I know I could get rid of the navigation bar entirely and put those links in the sidebar — that’s always an option but I kind of like having the bar.
Secondly, I don’t like themes where the main column is really narrow. Many of them are, and I don’t know why. I don’t think many people in today’s society have screens that are 800px. There is, at least, one theme where you have a really good choice: Under the Influence, but I have other issues with that … minor ones.
There’s a guy who has done an amazing write-up about how to get the most out of each theme. Here’s the link:Â http://wp.me/tD4e If you’re interested in this type of stuff, that page is a gold mine!
colderweather2011 
Thanks for the info. I don’t pay enough attention to themes and I barely fool around with any however, I don’t really like the look of my blog and have thought about going back to Blogger because it is much easier to navigate.
Well check out the link.
Blogger have done amazing things with themselves lately, and they were the «elsewhere» I mentioned 🙂
Thanks for the info. I don’t usually have the time to think about the themes since I seem to take 3 hours a day just to shoot edit and write my piddly 100 words a day. But now that I have an expert guide I will take a little time to play.
I’ve always been interested in this type of stuff … ever since I realized I was able to learn HTML … AND I have the time 🙂
I like to change how my blogs look. think that is why I liked Multiply. I knew enough to change the background, graphics, colours, and font. I always look at new themes here. And have probably looked at all the themes here some time or other. At the moment, I am satisfied. At the moment!
yeah, I think it’s fun too, every now and then. Multiply was cool that way — you had almost unlimited possibilities, but I was ticked off by the owners approach to it. Yahoo will always be a mystery to me … why they shut down something that good.
I’m with you on the width of the main column. That’s why I chose Chateau (recently), the post column is wider than the previous ones I’ve used. And I love that it’s centred (or nearly centred) with very little on one side and all the rest on the other. Very unusual. Very clean looking too. I went off what I’d been using before.
I miss you over on my blog!
Hi Rebekah,
As you know I have the Twenty Ten theme, I also look at any new themes that happen to came up. I have looked at many in Preview mode only with my blog, I haven’t actually changed my blog theme.
I haven’t as yet found one I really like. For example, Twenty Ten has a column width of 640, I prefer the 640 width as I do have a lot of video’s on my blog, and personally I like the bigger video’s, as yet none of the newer themes comes close to this width. It’s all personal preference I feel.
I think it’s wonderful though that we have so many options available, as everyone tastes is different of course. As long as I can read the contents of the blog without any trouble, I have been onto blogs where it is very hard to read what the person has written.
I like this clean look, it’s sharp! I changed mine a few times early on, but once I got what I have now (including the header picture that I took)…just hate to change it now in case that’s what some remember my blog as!
As a person who likes to shake things up a bit, I enjoyed this post! I have no idea how many times I’ve changed my theme. I like experimenting and “rearranging the furniture” from time to time. One feature I always look for is the customizable header–I use my own phototgraphy, and now with twenty eleven, I change the header photo whenever I want without changing anything else–continuity in the blog and abitilty to rearrange according to my whims. I think it’s great! BTW, I really like this theme…lookd great, easy to read. I’ll preview it on my blog and see how it goes.
Again, thanks for another great blog!
Thank you, Cecelia. So many of them have the custom header/background. Sometimes I do the header too. There are themes, where you can make the photos in the header turn into a slideshow! [Modularity Lite].
thanks for the link. appreciated.