Makeover

I’ve been wanting to change my theme for some time now. It takes a LONG time (for me anyhow) to find a theme that I like to start with and am confident enough to change. I’ve installed quite a few themes, had a bit of a play and just given up. Using the theme test drive plug-in is an absolute godsend.

I even mucked around with a theme framework but gave up on that because it was too hard. After all the playing around I did, I still wasn’t convinced that it was a long-term good thing to do for me. I probably just don’t understand how they work or there isn’t enough documentation to support them – the free ones anyway. And that’s quite understandable because I know from experience that documentation takes time and effort. (Upon looking at the above website I note that they’ve now got documentation for creating a child theme which wasn’t there earlier. Still, I didn’t want to create a child theme, but use someone elses.)

I did contemplate paying for a premium theme but I didn’t even find one of those I liked enough to shell money out for and the more expensive (to me anyway) themes like Thesis just isn’t warranted for a hobby blog like this.

Anyway, I finally settled on this Blogwerx theme. I’d found it a couple of months ago, played around with it and moved on, but after unsuccessfully mucking around with theme frameworks I went back to it. I’ve changed it a bit and I still have the three column layout with the content on the left and sidebars on the right. I like this layout because if something stuffs up with loading in the sidebars at least the content is available due to the order of the page loading.

I even used the widgets this time, and made a new widget area for my Reviews and Giveaways section because I can’t show BlogHer ads there due to their ads policy. I was very proud of myself.

Now that I’ve implemented this new theme hopefully I’ll be more motivated to get back into the content side of things. If my blog was seven years old (and not five) I could blame the seven-year-itch for wanting something new and exciting to happen and inspiration to hit me in creating some exciting content. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way.

I’d like to know what your favourite WordPress themes are, or even if you care about them. In the meantime I’ll stick with this for a while.