Picking a Blog Template for Your Blog
After installing your blog, the next step is to choose your blog theme. Some call it blog template or blog layout. Due to how it works, a few bloggers refer to it as blog skin, although blog templates work differently.
Ideally, you should have a few posts on your blog before you can test different blog templates, because multi-post view can be different from single-post view. If you can’t wait to change your theme, do it anyway. You can always decide now and customize it later on if you don’t like what you see.
The Right Approach to Choosing Blog Themes
When choosing blog templates for business purpose, you should not do it based on certain features. Even if a layout is pleasing aesthetically, keep in mind this is business. You have to be serious about it.
Just like choosing your blog platform, you should do it based on your blogging strategy, instead of fitting your strategy into the theme of your choice.
The following are step-by-step on how to choose your blog layout:
1. Identify Your Goal
What are you trying to accomplish with the blog? If you already have a web site, you may want to match your business blog to your site design. Sure, you can customize it but with so many choices, you may consider finding suitable themes upfront to align with your goal.
Blog theme with larger and more strategic spaces are required if you want to sell advertising space. Perhaps a two- or three-column theme is more suitable.
Video may be part of your strategy. Choosing a theme with wider content layout is necessary to fit the video player into the blog.
2. Write Down the Requirements
Will you want to make money off the blog? Do you need featured post at the top of the page to highlight certain post or include something you want every reader to see?
How is the navigation? Do you need to put the menu options like about and contact pages in the horizontal navbar at the top of the page?
Do you have a company logo that you want to put on the header? How many sidebars do you require, and what to put on each column?
Write down a list of your requirement before you go out and start your quest.
3. Browse Theme Sites
Based on the requirements above, now is the time to browse different theme sites. Search on Google using the keyword [blog platform] templates / themes / layouts. You will see popular sites on the first page of the search results.
Often the theme sites allow you to filter the theme options to narrow down you choice. You may also use the search feature if you know the name of a blog template that you like.
The purpose of this step is to familiarize yourself with different options. Test run a few themes that you like most and look at the layouts and imagine what you are going to put on each section.
4. Search and Pick a Few Winners
After some time, you will notice a pattern and see what is possible with different blog templates. You may not see it all, but you should be confident enough to pick a few winners.
Investigate closely if each site matches the requirements you have in the first step above, at least you only need to make a few small changes.
Also make sure that the code pass the W3 Markup Validator. It isn’t a must, but it is a nice option to have. It is rare that you will get an error free page, but you should aim for as few errors as possible.
Note: The color of the background, the links, and other site properties are not important. You can change those easily if you know basic CSS, or get help from others to do it. Feel free to pick the themes even if the color doesn’t suit what you have in mind.
5. Check Customization Options
How could you change the background color? Does it let you choose different colors from the options menu, or should you edit the style directly in the stylesheet document?
Can you align the column easily if you want to make those changes? Does it support widgets? Do you require them?
Pay attention to the technical level required to modify the theme. Some templates are very flexible and can be customized quite easily, while others are more complicated. If the theme supports a lot of images, consider if you can customize them too, perhaps to change the image color to match the new theme color.
What to Do Next
Once you find a theme that suits what you need, it is time to install and activate it. You may want to customize the theme somewhat to fit the look and feel that you want.
Browse through a page and test to see if it displays just like what you want. Submit some comments to see how it appears on the page. When you reach several posts, notice how the posts are displayed on the main page and other pages.
Test the theme thoroughly, including the layout, sidebars, typefaces, alignment of graphics and so on.
Finally, blog template is just one small part of blog building. It is important, but you avoid spending too much time on it, especially when you are just starting out. You can always customize things later.
Most bloggers choose to change their blog theme after some time. For now, getting it up and running and building the momentum is far more critical.
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