Customizing Your Theme is Overrated
by jim on January 13th, 2010One of the great benefits of using WordPress is that it comes with so much free stuff. You can download a multitude plugins to extend the functionality of WordPress. You can download thousands of themes to change the look and feel of your site. WordPress itself gives you a window into that theme so you can customize every aspect of your design. All of this is possible without any background in software development and therein lies the beauty of open source software and the open source movement.
However, one problem that new bloggers often commit is that of overtinkering.
When you first start your blog, it’s often good enough to download a theme that pleases aesthetically. All too often, and I myself suffered from this, we feel that we should be tinkering with our theme so that it doesn’t look the same as every other blog that downloads that theme. What we don’t realize is that when you’re first starting out, the theme is less important than the content.
Themes are important, don’t get me wrong, but don’t over think it. People get their first impressions within seconds of viewing your site and as long as you have a professional looking theme that is easy to read, you will do fine. Wait until you have hundreds of visitors a day before you start playing with the theme. Wait until you have thousands before you start thinking about buying a theme.
You might be surprised to learn that all of my blogs use free themes. Most of your visitors will not know you have a common theme (you have to at least change it from the themes that come with the WordPress package, that’s too generic) and the ones that do won’t care.
If you’re curious what theme Bargaineering started out as… it was equiX, a free theme that is no longer available. Over the years, I tinkered with it (once it made sense to) to achieve certain goals and today it doesn’t look at all like equiX. Totally free.
Like this article? Get all the latest articles sent to your email for free every day. Just click "Subscribe" and enter your email. Your email will only be used for this daily subscription and you can unsubscribe anytime.
January 13th, 2010 at 8:35 am
Couldn’t agree more. I think as long the theme is “good enough” then you can’t do any better than that.
If you are running a blog design business/interior decorating service etc then you might need a different kind of look since it reflects on your business.
For financial blogs – it’s all about the content.
January 13th, 2010 at 4:22 pm
So is my theme “good enough”?
January 13th, 2010 at 8:08 pm
Tweaking is like heroine… once you start you’ll never stop.
January 13th, 2010 at 8:09 pm
or heroin, take your pick.
January 13th, 2010 at 9:22 pm
You should get a sense of when it’s good enough because you’ll start tinkering just to tinker.
January 14th, 2010 at 8:55 am
I love tinkering with my theme at the beginning, but I slowed down since. By the way, Moolanomy started out with the Mimbo theme (free). I am certain that visitors would not recognize it as Mimbo since I rewrote over 50% of the theme since then.
January 14th, 2010 at 9:38 am
Content is king! my first year and a half or so I used a free theme on my site as well, and it did just fine. I’ve since moved to a premium theme, and am glad I did, but mainly for aesthetic reasons. When you’re first starting I think creating great content is key.
February 19th, 2010 at 8:27 am
[...] to give your new website a design by choosing a WordPress theme. While most can probably agree that having a premium theme from the get-go isn’t essential (there are more important things like creating good content, testing and optimizing ads and [...]
August 30th, 2010 at 4:00 pm
Jim,
I agree with yah. I’m waiting to get more visitors before I consider the purchase of a theme.
You said that free themes have worked well for you. But what about themes like Thesis? Thesis is supposed to be SEO-optimized.
August 30th, 2010 at 4:23 pm
Nevermind, I see the Thesis review article.