Looking For A New WordPress Look

Okay. After some on-off discussion with a famous local blogger (ahem), Iâ€™m decided to test around with new templates, so donâ€™t be surprised for the next few days to see some changes every now and then as I test a few new looks.

I just struck me a few days ago that Iâ€™ve had this template (Golden Grey by William Pramana, just in case youâ€™re reading this after Iâ€™ve changed the template) for exactly one year, so I think itâ€™s high time to ring in some changes.

This template was chosen from Alex King, who organized a template design contest some time back. You can look through his website to see all the winning designs, but in the advent of 3 column designs and WP2.0, some of them look a little dated, partly due to them being widely used by other bloggers across the world.

So Iâ€™m testing. Looking around for new skins. Itâ€™s a time consuming process, and time isnâ€™t something I have in abundance, so wish me luck, guys. And if anyone can recommend a site with lots of templates to choose, feel free to send them my way.

By the way, I got this off Digg, this website gives their version of top ten WP plugins. Interesting, but you may want to check Darren Rowse’s list here.

[tags]Problogger, Darren Rowse, Alex King, WordPress, WP2.0, blog, blogging, digg[/tags]

12 Comments

Nicktay

June 29, 2006 at 4:44 pm Reply

Just check the WordPress plugin page, there are some nice themes there. I found mine there 🙂

Edrei

June 30, 2006 at 7:19 am Reply

Well, to anyone using WordPress, I would have one advice about the usage of themes and plugins. Use what you need rather than what other people tell you that you need. There is an awful lot of plugins out there and while it may be overwhelming, a lot of them are focused for certain types of bloggers (an example would be why would a personal blogger require their blogs to be dugged)

I wrote this before for Problogger before, be careful of blog bloat. Adding too much things to your blog only help to clutter your blog making content unreadable. In the techno-centric community out there, 30 seconds is all it takes for a person decide whether it’s worth reading or not. If the nitty gritties take precedence over the content, then that’s not exactly a good thing.

So as a tip, make sure you work though your sidebar functionalities such as having certain funtions appear only in single posts and main index but not other pages rather than having them appear all at once.

Make use of your pages to remove unnecessary stuff from your sidebar such as archives, categories and non-essential links.

You can find lots of plugins at http://wp-plugins.net and lots of themes at the http://theme.wordpress.net

Just take what’s closest to what you like, then mod it all the way till you’re satisfied with it. Don’t be afraid to touch the code, thats there the best parts are and use only the plugins you would need.

My idea for plugins that I use is located here though

lucia

June 30, 2006 at 9:41 pm Reply

yes it is indeed time consuming choosing themes. when i wanted to move to wordpress i remember i spent so much time choosing one… esp. with me being so fickle… i decided on one today, then next day change my mind… everyday change mind!

i went to the wordpress theme viewer itself (as recommended by edrei) to choose the themes. some of the ones i picked can be found on my old blog:
http://jogalong.blogspot.com/2006/03/my-new-wordpress-blog.html

good luck to you, simon on choosing a new theme – looking forward to the new design!

JÃ¼rgen (Jay) HÃ¶sch

July 6, 2006 at 2:47 am Reply

Hi Simon!

You might try another approach in finding a new design for your blog. Don’t just test other templates – write down how you’d want certain things to be displayed – and then search for a template which fullfills your requirements. If you need some help altering style-sheets feel free to contact me.

With the best regards

JÃ¼rgen