Choosing the perfect theme (template) for your blog
I have been asked how do I make my blogs look the way they look, because not one of my blogs has a common template. I like to be myself and a blog, even if it’s used for business, it’s a personal thing.
One of the benefits of hosting your own blog is that you have more options when selecting your blogs’ templates, more commonly known as “themes” There are a lot of “free themes” websites online offering literally thousands of free themes available for immediate download.
But, how to choose the perfect template?
In order to choose the perfect template for your blog, you need to ask yourself some questions:
1. Type of use. Is this blog for personal or for business use?
2. For personal blogs, ask yourself: what are my beliefs, what are my favorite colors, what do I want to “talk” about, what is my style, what kind of images I like, what are my hobbies, what are my passions, etc.?
3. For business blogs, ask yourself: what is the industry, what colors are related to it, what images represent my industry or field, what is our slogan, what is our vision, what is our mission, what do we sell, etc.?
Once you do that, go “fishing” for that “perfect template. You can do a search online for “free wordpress themes” or “free blogger themes”. I have a few favorite websites… you will have to forgive me if you are a blogger user, I’m a wordpress user so these sites offer free wordpress themes and I honestly don’t know if they could work in blogger.
My favorite websites for free themes are:
* http://myfreewpthemes.com/
* http://www.freewordpressthemes.com/
* http://www.themesplice.com/
* http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/
Next, download 3-4 themes that you like and that fit your requirements, then try them to see how they “feel” to you.
Trying the themes is as easy as going to the “appearance” tab, and clicking on “add new theme” then click the “upload” link, browse for your downloaded theme on your computer (you don’t have to unzip it, just upload it like that, wordpress will unzip it for you.) and once the new theme has been uploaded to your wordpress dashboard, you can “preview it” if you like what you see, click “activate” and voila, you have installed a new theme to your blog.
The last step you want to do to your theme is to add some widgets and plugins to make it more personal and functional for you, depending on your own preferences. There are plugins for virtually anything, if you need a contact form, a twitter publisher, subscribe options, you name it, it’s there! If you have something in mind, go to the “plugins” tab and do a search for what you are looking for, most certainly there will be several plugins for whatever it is you want to do.
About Mariangie - She lives in Puerto Rico where she works full time as an Agronomist, owns a home based business since 2004 and is the proud mother of 2 bright kids (and 2 cute cats).
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