Find a New Theme

The Internet is a highly visual place.  That being the case, it’s a good thing for every blog to get a virtual new can of paint at least once a year.

This can mean changing up or decluttering the sidebar, it could mean doing more features or series, or it could mean either finding a good new free template or buying a template from a good designer.

In either case, a fresh look can do a lot to attract people to the good content that you already have going.  And the newest version of WordPress gives you an easy way to test drive new looks.

If you’re a self hosted blog, all you need to do is to upload the theme you’re interested in (place it into your wp-themes directory) and you’re ready to give it a try like the demo sites.

Simply go to your Design tab on your Dashboard, and you’ll see all the themes that you’ve uploaded.  Now, it used to be when you clicked on one of the themes that it changed your whole blog.  That’s not how it works anymore.

Now when you click you actually can test drive the theme before activating it.  It will show you your current content (down to your latest post, comments, etc) running under the new theme.  Keep in mind that the new theme might put things in different locations, so don’t panic.

So, now you can check out the theme before you run it.  Make sure that before you activate you put any important scripts that you have in your current theme into the new one.  I’m thinking of us that have Google Analytics in our themes (although now I have seen plugins for WordPress that take care of Google Analytics).

Need help with a new theme?  Just ask!