Free Theme Problems
Free Is Not Always Best, When It Comes To Themes
Ok you will possibly have read in my diary update about problems with a theme I was using on 2 of my websites, yes I know, I should not put all my eggs in one basket !
But being a Taurean star sign, I do not relish change & am always most comfortable with what I know, or what I think I know.
Anyway I had spent about 6 months working on this particular theme, constantly hacking the style sheet, taking bits out & putting other bits in from other themes. Hahaha yes I know, not the prettiest way to do things, but not being a coder, it is a method that works for me!
The trouble is I’ll spot a theme somewhere and maybe like a particular feature that is not already built into the theme I am using, I then set about hacking both themes & building one good one out of the two. Most of the time it is either the header bar or the sidebars that I am not happy with, I guess I’m getting just a tad fussy in my old age hahaha.
Anyway I had stumbled upon a very handy little toolbar about a week ago, I cannot for the life of me remember who pointed me in the direction of this toolbar, but whoever it was thanks! The toolbar is called SEO Book just register and it is free to download, however it will only work with FireFox & is of no use to anyone that does not run a self hosted blog or website.
After installing this toolbar, & reading a few instructions, it was time for a test run, so I typed in the web address of one of my websites, loaded the page and proceeded to run a few checks. All was looking good until I came across the X-ray button (it deep scans your page), well you could have hit me over with a feather, I was gob smacked! The damned page had no headings showing what so ever, save for the main website title in a H1 tag as it should be, but the 10 post excerpts down the page were all just plain text with no headings at all. Now just think of the negative effect this is going to have on my SEO efforts for this website..?
BluMag Theme
Now having picked my chin off the floor & regained some sort of composure, I decide to check my other website to see if it is the same ?
Sure enough it was exactly the same, so now I’m thinking it must be this toolbar gadget I’m using, must just be the way it displays, but NO! I then remembered I had just finished this website & had installed a completely different theme as it happens, so now I load this website’s front page & damn it displayed perfectly, all headings were exactly where they should be, all the way down the page & on all 10 post excerpts.
iNove Theme
This then proves there is an error on the other theme and all heading tags are being stripped out for some strange reason. Now probably like you, I am thinking maybe it’s my hacking of the style sheet that has caused this, but no I had an original version saved on my laptop & within a few moments had it uploaded to one of the sites & installed.
Well I was shocked to see exactly the same problem on the original theme, how could someone design a theme with such a major flaw.
So I have now spent the last week removing the old theme from 2 websites & finding replacements for both, yet again some tweaking and hacking has been necessary, but I’m pleased to say all appears to be working just fine now! Does this little episode prove that a free theme is not always best…? You tell me….?
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Posted by Steve (Admin)
on Dec 15 2011. Filed under Blogs Design.
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