How Often Do You Change Your Blog’s Theme?
This morning I was playing around with the Aquarium theme that had been displayed on this site for most of the past year and when I made some key coding changes, the theme did not “behave” in a manner to show my changes.
Specifically, I entered the coding to separate regular comments from trackbacks/pingbacks and, instead of separating them into two neat categories, nothing showed up. I double-checked my work and confirmed that the steps I followed were correct. Clearly, there was something within the Aquarium theme that was blocking the coding changes from taking place.
Instead of looking for the problem, I decided to swap out themes. This was the last thing I wanted to do with a week and a month coming to a close on the same day. So, I pulled up the trusty (if not bland) WordPress 1.6 theme, made some color changes, and what you are seeing is what I’ve decided to go with for now.
I had planned to make a theme change after the first of the year anyway, as a refreshing of a blog’s appearance is nice to do from time to time. I have noticed that I am not the only one who changes themes on a regular basis, but I was wondering how often other bloggers make a change and the reasons behind these changes.
My questions for you today are:
How often do you change your blog’s theme? Why?
By the way, if you want to separate comments from trackbacks/pingbacks you can snag that code from several different blogs. I visited Michael Martin’s Pro Blog Design to find the information I needed to make what I believe is an important layout change for my readers.
I’ve changed mine one since I started it in July of this year, and the change was very recent. The only reason I changed it was as I gained some experience, the original theme I choose was limiting, so I wanted a more flexible theme that would render consistently across various resolutions.
I don’t plan to change it anytime soon, as I worked really hard on it. I created most of it myself. The next change will occur when I can pay someone to professional develop a theme for me.
The new theme is good Matt, but it’s very difficult to read the light gray text on the white background in this comment form.
Glblguy — Thanks for pointing out the readability problem, Glbl. I corrected the issue and it is now readable.
I saw that you had updated your blog theme recently — it looks great. I may eventually spring for a paid theme for this blog as I would like to use one that complies with my needs. I wonder how much a good, customized theme would cost? I guess it depends on the amount of coding required.
love the new look! I still have my blog’s theme set as the default it was when I started it. Thinking about a change to introduce a more eyecatching design, just need to read up on how best to do it!
Thanks, John. It is rather plain, but playing around with the header colors and the font color makes a difference.
I hear you regarding making a change — I like to familiarize myself with a theme before uploading it. Some themes are not what you think they are after installing.
I hope you find a theme that you like.
My blog has only been up a few months, so I haven’t made any large changes. There’s just no need to swap a theme that often.
I make small changes all the time though. There’s always something to be tweaked!
And I’m glad the code worked out for you. Thanks for sharing the page with your readers.
Michael, thanks for sharing the code. I’m happy to organize my articles better by separating comments from trackbacks/pingbacks.
One reason for changing a blog’s theme is when it becomes outdated. So many themes are not widget ready or there are other problems where the theme developer hasn’t kept up with the most recent WP changes.
Ack…technical stuff….Noooo!
I’m really more the type to keep a design as long as possible–I went two years without changing my last website design. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it–although I really would love to figure out Wordpress and migrate my blog to my website one of these days. But every time I find some “easy” directions and they invariably start talking about MySQL, my eyes start to cross. I think it’s a medical problem.
Jennifer, the techie stuff can be daunting, but WP isn’t as difficult as you might think.
True, you have to have some knowledge of MySql and how it works and be able to update your blog from time to time when WP issues a new version. In the end, WP offers a robust platform, plenty of nice looking themes, great plugins, and a good way to build SEO.
There are times when my eyes cross too, however!
I just changed mine recently for a reason similar to glblguy. My new theme is more readable and friendlier to plug-ins, ads, and other enhancement. Although I liked the blog theme when I chose it, the old theme had a weird gray background that was just impossible to match.
Laura, I like your new theme. Sometimes the older themes haven’t been updated to keep up with WordPress changes, rendering them ineffective or at least not as user-friendly.
Well, I finally created a new design for my norcalcars blog so I would guess that it will be a few years before I consider changing it again.
Most of my blogs have custom templates so there is not much incentive to do the work over again.
The theme of your current blog was nice.. i like the simplicity and neatness, but most of the bloggers really change their blog themes depend on how they remember to change it, the blog theme really depends on how content of the blog , so, when the blogs approaches like info about entertainment, offcourse the theme should have a lot of fancy colors and stuff. But, simple theme and informative content like this blogs is the best for me.
cheers,
soy wax
I used to change my blog most of the time, when i can find time. I think most bloggers really do change their blog most of the time when they know if their is a nice template for their blogs to have it.
Panama
I usually avoid changing the theme because it will make frequent visitors to the blog feel odd. That how I feel it should be. If there’s a need to, I will try to stick to the original design and layout and make the changes minimal