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5 Factors Of Effective Wordpress Themes
f you're blogging on the Typically, Wordpress themes come
Wordpress platform, I'll in 2-column or 3-column formats,
bet my entire life savings with widths ranging from 500
that the first thing you ever did pixels to 960 pixels wide. If
was try to install a new you're blogging for non-profit
Wordpress theme. I'll bet my purposes, a 2-column theme can
future earnings that even today look more compact and
you're still occasionally reader-friendly. Since you have
changing themes and wasting a lot less images of products or links
of time doing minor modifications to other sites to display, you
that when summed up merely can focus exclusively on the
distracts you from blogging content without leading readers
itself. away from your site.
Yet, it's easy to understand why On the other hand, if you're
themes beg for so much attention. blogging for profit, you may want
With the correct theme, you can to consider a 3-column Wordpress
accommodate all the nifty little theme that will be able to
widgets and codes, and may also accommodate your Google Adsense,
mean better search engine Chitika and Text Link Ads codes
rankings and tons of fresh comfortably without squeezing
traffic every day. everything in the content area.
3-column themes allow room for
So what factors do you need to expansion, but in the event that
consider to make this whole you've filled up all available
theme-hunting business easier? space with ads, then it's time
Here are five important ones: you removed the non-performers
and use only the advertising
1) Theme Width and Columns services that work for that
particular blog.
stronger branding purposes, yet
2) Use of Images and Icons replace images and icons with
links and text, or just not use
A theme with images and icons can them at all unless absolutely
look good, but it rarely necessary.
increases your web traffic or
subscriber base. In fact, most 3) Compatibility with Plugins
"A-list" bloggers have plain
vanilla themes with a simple logo Another time-sucking activity is
on top. Reducing the amount of installing plugins that improve
images also means faster loading the functionality of your site.
time and less stress on your There's a plugin out there for
servers. This vital aspect of almost everything you want to do
server load become apparent only with your blog, but while most of
if you have tens of thousands of them are free and easily
visitors a day, but it's worth obtainable, it's not always easy
designing for the future. to install the plugins and insert
the codes into your Wordpress
A image-laden theme also theme.
distracts readers from the
content itself. This is the If your theme is too complicated,
reason why blogs like Engadget it may be a headache to even
and Tech Crunch use images insert that one line of code you
intensively in the content areas need to make a plugin work. This
to add value to a post, but the is often the case with advanced
theme itself is simple and rather AJAX-based Wordpress themes that
minimalist. have too many files and heavy
coding. I've always preferred a
Ideally, a theme should allow you simpler themes that stick to the
to use your own header image for default Wordpress theme as much
as possible, so I can cut back on this automatically without
the learning curve and just get modification to the code or use
on with my life. of a plugin
Remember that the purpose of your (b) All your blog content titles
blog is to deliver timely, use the H1 tag, with the main
relevant content to your readers, keywords used instead of
Any theme that preserves or non-descriptive text for better
improves the reader experience is SEO relevance
good, any theme that subtracts
from the experience is bad. (b) Your theme has clean source
codes, and if possible all
4) Search Engine Optimization formatting is linked to an
external CSS file which you can
A lot can be said about search edit independently
engine optimization, but at the
end of the day if you have 5) Plug-And-Play Ease of Use
content worth reading eventually
you'll get the rankings you Can the theme be installed easily
deserve. However, that doesn't on an existing blog without
mean that you don't need SEO; it having to move things around? Can
merely means that as far as the same theme be used and
optimization is concerned all you customized easily on your other
really need to do is to make blogs? These are some additional
sure: things you may want to consider
when theme-shopping, especially
(a) Your tags are formatted if every minute of downtime on
properly, with the name of the your blog may mean lost revenue.
post first followed by the name
of the blog - some themes can do While it's hard to make
comparisons due to the sheer just a theme. Instead of spending
amount of free and paid themes your time installing them, it may
out there, it's still a good idea be wiser to outsource the task
to have a test blog site. Test and focus more on your readers.
any theme you plan on using, and Alternatively, you may also want
make sure your test blog is also to consider buying
fitted with all the plugins and "plug-and-play" themes for a
miscellaneous widgets used on reasonable price. Dennis De'
your real blog. The last thing Bernardy of ProWordpress.com has
you want is for your readers probably one of the best themes
start seeing weird error messages around, but if you're short on
on your blog. cash there are certainly cheaper
alternatives.
At the end of the day, a theme is
About the Author:
Gobala Krishnan is the guy newbies come to for a crash course on blogging for fun or profit. He's also the creator of the Instant Wordpress Themes package where you can get beautiful themes for $1 each.
Read more articles by: Gobala Krishnan
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