How to choose a Theme for your blog: Complementing the Type of Content

It is very common and rather normal for blogging beginners to be highly perplexed when it comes to selecting a theme for their blog. There are a plethora of free as well as paid options. Each theme has it’s own set of advantages and disadvantages. Many experience bloggers would agree in unison that choosing a theme with simple design cues can go a long way. Let’s see why.

Why is theme selection important?

WordPress and other blogging sites are used to create various types of websites. Hence different markets have to be catered to by different themes. Your blog theme should correctly complement the type of content of your website. For example, a theme for a photography blog should hold a larger housing area to fit pictures and not too much for textual content.

It is easier to judge the mind of a man by his questions rather than his answers.Several themes used in WordPress are mated with tons of customization options. But when coded improperly, the presence of so many options can make it cumbersome to change themes or use other plugins for the new theme. Chances are, you will be forced to get locked into that theme or will have to pay some experienced developer to help you switch. It is also observed that, some themes that do look the part take a huge toll on your website’s speed. Slow websites are disliked by everyone, especially Google, which prefers to give higher rank to faster websites. Keeping your theme design minimal and simple helps you achieve maximum performance while maintaining a high degree of sophistication.

Quick loading times

Keeping your designs simple will always result in smaller file sizes. In the world of computing, it is a universal fact that smaller loads faster. Furthermore, by keeping a simple and smooth running code, you won’t be calling a ton of JavaScript files and various other content that increase the number of transfer protocol requests made by your site. All this combined results in an invariably better and more pleasant experience for your visitors.

Easy to build upon

If you keep your site’s design simple, it is very likely that the same will apply for its code. A site with a minimal layout, one or two page templates and simple typography is a lot quicker to code and design than one with six or seven sections (each with different template designs), unnecessarily complex typography, and a live background that needs a much more complicated slicing and coding. However one must be cautious of creating a site that may look to be simple but in reality is very complex. Emphasis should be to keep the coding as basic as possible.

Content is easy to traverse

With the reduction of complex decorative elements in your site’s design, it is more likely that it will be a content-driven website. Content that is incorporated to the frontline of a website is easier and more likely to be thoroughly seen by its visitors. It is normally expected that a very few visitors will read through all the content of your site. Hence it’s a highly viable option to make content easier to scan for that limited audience. By putting your content front-and-center, you make it easier for that audience to do the same. That will leave them in the perception that your site is more user-friendly than the rest, making it more likely for them to return in the future.

Trouble-free Navigation

Simple designs often don’t have any bits of unrelated information. This directly aids in improving navigation as such sites have lesser pages and sub-sections. Also the design will be comparatively uncluttered, making it a breeze to navigate around the site. You should always try to incorporate all navigation options within one main navigation menu. It should be made consistent throughout your website. Drop-down menus are a strict no-no for this purpose.

Task Details	Progress	Vital Task
Create pretty table design	100%	Yes
Take the dog for a walk	100%	Yes
Waste half day on twitter	20%	No
Feel inferior after viewing Dribbble	80%	No

WordPress and other blogging sites are used to create various types of websites. Hence different markets have to be catered to by different themes. Your blog theme should correctly complement the type of content of your website. For example, a theme for a photography blog should hold a larger housing area to fit pictures and not too much for textual content.

Trouble-free maintenance

With a highly simplified code, troubleshooting is cakewalk. When you have a stylesheet with over 500 distinct attributes, it will take you a pretty long duration to figure out what is wrong and where is it wrong. Always try to look for methods to simplify your code right from the starting point. Steps like combining CSS properties with definitions can make your sheets much shorter and simpler to debug. Combining the JavaScript files can also aid in simplifying your overall code to a great extent. Take full advantage of automatic programs that are able to get rid of any unnecessary markup from your stylesheets or scripts. They also work for any other files you decide to upload (must be done before uploading them).

Summing it up

Many first-time website designers incorporate an excessively high number of decorative elements that in reality serve no useful purpose. It may not be necessary to remove every element from your designs but removing at least some of them can often make your site appear cleaner and more refined. Always try to regulate the amount of non-textual content present on your website to a bare minimum. Designers also tend to only focus on the frontend of their designs and often ignore streamlining their code. Some simple-looking sites can be a horrible mess in the backend. Try to ensure that the markup for your site is as simple as the content you provide in it.