Three Qualities of a Theme Perfect for DIY-Modding

This guest post was written by Herbert of Digital Media Break, where he writes about the latest digital technology. If you have WordPress knowledge and are interested in writing a post for Hack WordPress, please contact us.

There’s nothing like the feeling of knowing your website’s theme is unique from everyone else’s. Usually, this reassurance is accompanied by a four-digit bill for a professionally-designed page. This isn’t the most realistic or feasible solution if you’ve already got background knowledge in HTML and CSS, are willing to learn, or just can’t cough up the change (I know I couldn’t). So, you stick to the free themes that everyone else has - except you’re going to put your own spin on it. You’re going to modify the colours, the logo, the footer, add DomTABS, and make it totally amazing. For free. Sounds good, right? I’m right behind you, but let’s not dive headfirst into this.

Before choosing your colour schemes, your logos, or researching how to modify Search.php to fit your own needs, you’re going to need to choose a theme. This is arguably the most important step - as the theme defines your blog’s/website’s functions, layout, and abilities. If your chosen theme has these three qualities, I know you’ll be satisified:

1. Author’s Support

No, you don’t need a one-on-one e-mail session; theme authors are usually too busy for that - so they set up support forums and an introductory modifying readme. If the author of your theme didn’t offer up a readme or support forums, try Googling when troubleshooting. If there are no results anywhere in the world, reconsider the theme - do you know enough HTML and CSS to modify it on your own?

2. Layout

Many people overlook the layout - but it can actually make a huge impact on your site. Not only is the site’s layout a reflection of yourself (let’s hope it’s not too cluttered or messy), but it’s also something that is extremely difficult to change yourself. Check the layout - are the sidebars wide enough to fit advertisements into? Is there an advertisement banner in the header? Does the theme have too much stuff in too little space? If you’re feeling iffy about the theme already, take a breather and reconsider - is the theme worth it? Ask yourself - what kind of layouts work best, and with which kinds of sites?

3. Sustainability

Believe it or not, the best-looking themes probably will end up having you do a lot more work. For example, the best-looking Magazine themes, which typically incorporate a lot of graphics in the front page, make use of WordPress’ Custom Fields to display them on the front page. The images must be to a specific dimension, and must be uploaded to the correct folder in your theme. Can you imagine doing that - for all your posts from now on? Do you have the resources to do so? Does your theme automatically resize your photos for you, or will you need to learn how to use Paint.NET or Photoshop?

I can personally relate here - I used to use the Mimbo theme by Darren Hoyt. It was just two images: one for features, and one for the latest featured post. I’d probably change the latest featured post on a weekly basis, and I could use Photoshop to crop it easily. My generous Internet connection allowed me to have quick access to my FTP folder, and I was satisfied. However, I got really sick of the murky Mimbo colours, so I switched themes to The Morning After by Arun Kale. I realized that the Latest Post function, although beautiful, incorporated graphics, and just looked horrendous without the picture. The problem was - with every post, you needed to upload a 470×175px picture to your ftp folder, as well as a 48×48 thumbnail of your picture for the “Recent Posts” sidebar. That’s two pictures for every post. Was the trade-off worth it?

Not in my opinion. After a couple of weeks of redesigning, I scrapped everything and started from scratch. For two days straight, I was tinkering with the three-column Copyblogger theme. No custom fields, no different categories - the theme is the going back to my simple roots - and I like it!

Once you start, don’t stop.

Once you pick your theme, you can’t re-choose. It exhausts both your time and mind to search for themes - so once you find a suitable one, stick with it! Instead of second-guessing yourself, do your research and choose your colour schemes. Fix up your logo. If you’ve got second thoughts, wait until you’re through finishing altering your theme - and if you realize you can’t sustain it, then scrap it and go for a makeover.