Expert List Building Blog

The very first time you visit the WordPress themes directory (why not call it a catalogue -sounds less imposing huh?) CONFUSION rears it’s ugly head!

“Oh my, HOW MANY themes are there I have to look through?” Aaaaargh!

So let’s try to make sense of all this eh? Making sense of things was my job when I was a teacher – now I make sense of things coz I enjoy it!

First of all – let’s ask the question that no one asks, what is a theme anyway?

As a beginner I thought that a theme was a colour scheme or design. So I just looked through themes looking for blue -my favourite colour

O Lordy!

A theme is not a colour scheme, although it will have a colour – a theme is the basic container and structure for your website (blog)
A theme is a template; but it’s more than a template – here’s a quote from WordPress (http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Themes)

“A WordPress Theme is a collection of files that work together to produce a graphical interface with an underlying unifying design for a weblog. These files are called template files. A theme modifies the way the site is displayed, without modifying the underlying software. Themes may include customized template files, image files (*.jpg, *.gif), style sheets (*.css), custom Pages, as well as any necessary code files (*.php).”

Clear as Mud?

A science teacher I remember with fondness used the phrase “clear as mud” to let people know that an explanation needed “working on”…well I hope the quote above helps a bit but let’s keep on a bit to make it clearer.

An Example and a Checklist

The best way to help choose a Theme is to give a checklist you could look through to help you

Shape and Structure of Your Theme

• Do you want a 2 or 3 column blog
• Do you want the posts and comments on the left or in the middle?
• Do you want a graphical header?
• What Colours do You like?

The Colour – now is the time to break out your colour charts / magazines / colour pickers and anything else that has examples of colours you like

Typography

Your words, your precious words are the whole reason you have a blog so you must choose the typeface with care.

Do you think Georgia is Gorgeous?

Or is Book Antuqua better?

Do you admire Arial?

Or is your type Times New Roman?

And choosing the same or different typefaces for the headline, subhead and body copy is a whole other problem – which we’ll look at another day

And then you need to consider the font size of the type you have chosen.

Typeface does not equal Font!

The typeface is the style of the lettering and the font is the – let’s see where the word “font” comes from…

Font means the mould where the ink goes in a printing machine. Each typeface has several font sizes. So most people are talking complete nonsense about fonts when they mix the two words up. Never mind!

Recap: to choose a theme that suits you best you have to think through columns, headers, colours and typeface.

It has to hang together to showcase your blog posts and express your character and the brand of your business.

I’d love to know your thoughts about choosing themes and please share this post with your buddies!

Resources

http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/

http://jontangerine.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typeface

Technorati Tags: font, Typeface, wordpress, wordpress theme

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts - Try the Search Box!