The hardest part about starting a blog, after you get past finding a topic that you actually feel comfortable writing about for an extended period of time, is choosing a theme. Themes are extensions of our blog, and choosing the right one can be a major factor in your future blogging success.

Since Wordpress has always been my favorite blogging platform by far, and I have looked for more themes than I care to admit I thought I’d share some of the resources that I have come across and help you make the first really hard decision of your blogging career.

Selecting A Theme


[Dark City]

There are only three really important things to think about when selecting a theme: structure, personalization and utility. The hardest part is always finding a theme that balances the three of these pillars.

Structure. This is the choice between 1, 2 and 3 column. The choice between a classic multi-post arrangement or a “Hemmingway” style theme that focuses on one or two posts per page.

As for how many columns you should choose, that is entirely dependent on what you want out of blogging. If you are only interested in core dumping your personal thoughts and interesting links, there is nothing at all stopping you from doing this from a one column theme. In this case might I suggest trying out Lose My Mind. It is simple, clean and should be all you need for a link blog. Then again, if links are your thing you might be better off taking a look at a tumble log like Tumblr. It’s blogging without all of the cruft.

The next structural decision you will need to make is how you want your readers to interact with your posts. If you plan to have multiple updates a day, your best decision would be to go with a classically structured theme. That way users that hit the site later in the day can just scroll down to see earlier posts. Some of us, however, are only interested in featuring one or two post — whether this is because of infrequent updates or just design sensibilities, you may want to look into a theme that does more individual highlighting. Might I suggest Hemingway or one of its hundred variants.

Utility. When considering whether a template provides the utility that you are looking for, remember the following: blogs are about content. A lot of times we get caught up with complex themes that drown out the impact of our text. You want people coming to your site to look at what is written on your page, not at your slick new AJAX shelf.

This same process should go into choosing the widgets that you install. Do you really need 15 sidebar buttons? Put widgets that really add value for your users and don’t distract from the real action on your blog, the text.

Personalization. This is the hardest point because it is all about personal taste. There are so many Wordpress templates out there now that it is entirely possible that you can use a template right out of the box and never manage to see it used anywhere else. However, for the most part there will always be something you will want to change. Here are a few simple customizations to consider.

  • Sidebar layout
  • Masthead
  • Typeface
  • Paragraph Spacing
  • Color Scheme

Almost all of these things can be changed with just a little bit of CSS magic. Now that we have an idea of what we are looking for in a template, where can be find samples? Good question, here are some resources where you can find a world of Wordpress templates. I have roughly organized them for easy perusal.

Resources

[Hemingway]

General

  • Wordpress Theme Viewer [link]
  • 83 Beautiful Wordpress Themes [link]
  • Top Ten Best Wordpress Themes [link]
  • Three Column Themes [link]
  • One Column Wordpress Themes [link]
  • Four Column Wordpress Themes [link]

SEO

  • Beautiful SEO Themes [link]
  • SEO Templates [link]
  • Pilkster [link]

Photo Blog Themes

  • Nishita [link]
  • Photo Blog Themes [link]
  • Photopress Theme [link]

Magazine Style

Web 2.0 Roundup

There is a world of options for anyone putting together a Wordpress blog, if there were any closing tips that I could they would be these.

  • Choose a theme that makes your text stand out.
  • Don’t clutter your theme with useless widgets.
  • Make sure your theme supports your stable of plugins.

Finally,

Themes are like a marriage, choose wisely.

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