Thinking about Changing Themes
I originally had a change of theme scheduled for the month of April along with a nice contest to boost readership and interaction on my blog, but since there are so many contest way bigger than any I would be able to organize at the moment, I decided not to go ahead with that idea.
However, I am still thinking of wanting to change my theme, going from a 3 column layout to a 2 column one, taking advantage of the change by decluttering and reorganizing sidebars in order to make popular posts and key information easier to locate.
Yesterday I spent quite a few hours trying to make my mind up about which theme to use. I must say I am quite fond of this one, MyApril Reloaded, because of it´s clean look, and even though I absolutely love the flower header, it kind of seems out of place and not really adding anything valuable to this blog.
I have been playing around in the sandbox with Stephan Miller’s Multiple Widget Theme which has all these great features, like the widget set up to use in the header, a control panel to easily change all colours and fonts, and even adsense hasn’t been forgotten, just adding the userID will publish it above the posts. It is the perfect theme really. And if you want to have a multifunction header you don´t have to touch too much php code, since you can use widgets to put whatever you want there.
When commenting on his theme, Stephan was helpful in pointing me to a really cool site to find nice colour schemes, but that only seemed to complicate things. Too many schemes to choose from and in the end, after a few hours trying to decide on which colours to use for my future theme, I threw in the towel, thinking I should better contemplate a bit more before making another change in themes.
Thing is, the goal I have with this blog is changing lately as far as where I want it to go, and I want the theme to be more representive of what my blog stands for. I am getting nice feedback lately and watching stats go up is really cool, but it makes me wonder what visitors are expecting when arriving at this blog.
I know most only enter to drop their entrecard, but when taking a closer look at my stats, the percentage of people coming back is going up, as well as the number of people that find my blog through search engines and other sites, which means some of the linking I have been doing is starting to work and some of what I am doing with this blog seems to be attractive enough to revisit.
So before changing anything, I believe it is important to find out what people expect when coming back to this blog, and what better way than asking you, my dear reader?
What is it that makes you come back here
and
what is it that you would like to see on this blog?
Popularity: 30% [?]
My name is Mirjam and I welcome you to my blog about personal growth and the things I think about. I´m on a journey of improving my life and I hope you will drop in often and participate. Thanks for visiting!
Now this is daring. Are you cringing yet in anticipation of the wild and crazy ideas that may come your way.
Seriously, what makes me come back is the writing. It’s your content that keeps me coming back. What would I want to see on here? I don’t rightly know. But you should love it. It should reflect you. Not reflect the you that you want to project but the real you. I am going to guess that they may not be the technorati way, but it is the human way. That’s my 2 cents worth. Have fun
Jim - Just a Guy’s last blog post..Blog Storming
not cringing yet
Interesting comment … “reflect me, not the one I want to project” … that got me thinking 
Thanks for the feedback!
Anytime I get some one thinking I smile. Thank you for the smile.
Jim - Just a Guy’s last blog post..Net Neutrality Makes For Strange Bedfellows
I really like your new theme!
Any with regards to your questions, i have to say its your great content and the way you say it. It’s just dead easy to read/understand.
What make me come back - probably the same reason
1990 toys’s last blog post..Do anyone remember the Slider burger?
Finding the right theme is can be fun if you have nothing else to do, but to tell you the truth, the perfect theme is only perfect for a few months and then you start seeing issues and start looking for a new one. Yes, I am even considering another for my blog. And on my other blog, I switched from creating one to buying one. Time.
To tell you the truth, I created my theme on a laptop with the resolution set to the max. When I look at it on other computers, the font is bigger than I expected. I actually started with something like yours in mind with two left sidebars, but with the size of the fonts on mine, it didn’t look right. It’s my first theme. What can I say, my first theme.
Stephan Miller’s last blog post..A Bunch of Random Links
Hey Stephan
for me it was the first theme that I found that offered more features and a seperate control panel to play around with the colors. Really liked it but after playing around for a few hours I just could not get the right feel about it.
I completely understand your comment on a theme being right at first and than after a few months this feeling coming up of needing to change things. The more time you dedicate to your blog, the more hickups you start to find and the more critical you become, or atleast that is what is going on in my case. I would love to be able and spend money for somebody to make me a custom design for this blog, maybe in the future when Project Wonderful brings me more than 2 cents a day
Meanwhile I am still stuck with this theme and first thing is first, having to figure out why it does not show correctly in IE5 and 6
I agree, themes are important but I look for content. I will visit an ugly page with good content before I go to a flashy page with no content. Remember individual users can set their browsers to display in a certain way so that your hard work at making your blog “just right” can be overridden. Keep focusing on good content and you cannot go wrong.
francetales.com’s last blog post..Elliott Sptizer hires a high class escort!?
Good to see you around again
I understand what you are saying, but I still believe a theme is really important no matter how good the content is. If the theme is a complete turn-off most first time visitors won´t even get to reading any of the content… so it should atleast be good enough, attractive enough to have them not run out the door;)
Spending as much time as I have the other day, trying to get a feel that I wanted in Stephan´s theme, in the end I decided to take it slow and just change when I come across something I feel okay with, meanwhile trying to improve on other areas like, as you mention, the content;)
Thanks for you comments, very helpful
Drop us a shout if you need any help customizing your theme Mirjam!
I’d be happy to help.
Carl - Thatblogsite.com’s last blog post..My Experience: Why You Should Backup Often!
cool Carl, I might just take you up on that offer!