How did you choose your blog’s Wordpress theme?

Posted by Angel

When it came to deciding on my Wordpress theme (and this applies to themes not on Wordpress too), I was torn between having two sidebars or one. What I noticed on most of the top pro bloggers’ blogs is that their themes place the main content to the far left, with either one or two sidebars to the right. John Chow has one, Kumiko has one, and Pro Blogger has one, although his is to the left.

I decided that I wanted my content to be people’s primary focus, so I chose a theme that had the content to the left. I decided on two sidebars to the right, as Desi has at the moment. My reason for doing so is that I think two tight, compact sidebars look better than one wide sidebar. It also means that the right hand section of my blog won’t become overly long.

If I write a short post and have a really long sidebar, when people click on the post the window will be pushed down, which looks ugly. It’s fine if you have dozens of comments for every post you write, but I’m not going to be in that position for a while yet.

All the colors of the rainbow

I found my Wordpress theme, along with hundreds of other themes, at the Wordpress Theme Viewer. I wanted a theme with a white background. White backgrounds instill calm in a reader, whereas by using colors behind the text that people read on your blog you can affect their mood, and not always for the better. It makes for uncomfortable reading when you come across a blog that has an all-black background. White is neutral, peaceful and happy.

I made some edits to my theme to make it look more like how I want it to. This sort of task is one of the most lengthy for me because it’s often a case of trial and error. I’m not always sure which part of the CSS corresponds with the template. Having the Firefox web developer addon helps because you can mess with the CSS without touching the real file.

Your Wordpress theme should be one that you can feel proud of every time you look at your own blog. It’s not something you will change, maybe ever, so it needs to be something you are 100% happy with.

What decisions did you make in choosing your theme?