We all know the drill here. This is what was covered in previous posts.
- Budget
- Web service
- Topic
- Terminology
- Domain Names
- Title
There are a few questions one must ask themselves before deciding what theme you wish to use.
What will you use blog for?? Will be for personal use only?
Selling Adspace is one way to make some money. Please don't attempt to do this until you have enough readers, unique hits, or page views.
If you plan selling things like 125 × 125 ads on your blog, you will want to make sure your theme is suitable for it.
Another to take into consideration before choosing a theme is what software or platform you will be using to create your blog. Some themes just hate Frontpage. I know, I have tried several of them and it is a futile effort.
Deciding to use a single column , 2 column or 3 column theme also needs to be decided upon.
Overall, try to find a theme where the column for posts is around two-thirds of the page and the two sidebars add up to around one-third. In general, for three columns, my users preferred a column on the left and a column on the right with posts in the middle, versus two columns on the right.
Choose simplicity over complexity. You can evaluate the complexity by walking your key scenarios. Do your eyes know where to focus when you first pull up your blog? How tough is it to find a particular post? ... etc.
Very few think about what other people are using for their home computers. Screens vary in size from home to home.
So that brings us to, “How wide should your theme be?”
What looks great on a wide screen may look average on a smaller screen, or be unusable on an old dinosaur CRT
Most of the theory on web site screen resolution suggests that you shouldn't go wider that 800 pixels. Most of this theory is old, and almost every Internet user has a screen that at least has a horizontal resolution of 1024. So is it safe to go with a theme that is 1024 wide?
Probably.
Start with a two-column theme . If you don't know where to start, start with a two-column template for your blog. Three column templates have more moving parts and are trickier to create a clean reading experience.
Hope this has clarified a few things for you. Feel free to ask questions or let me know if I need to add a few things or if I missed a few items of importance.
Till next time, Success to Everyone online and off.
