WP Wordpress Themes – Choosing A Great Layout Is Top Priority
When it comes time to start sifting through the 1,000+ themes on offer with Wordpress, choosing a great theme can be a problem.
This article will hopefully give you the guidance needed to make the right decision & enable you to choose the best theme for your blog.
Many of us tend to focus on the aesthetics of a theme rather than the functionality, when trying to choose a top theme for our blogs & unfortunately this isn’t always the right way to go.
The trouble is, we as humans are naturally drawn to what looks nice & very often are oblivious to the underlying structure of a theme and whilst colours are easily changed, the basic structure of a theme can be a nightmare to try and alter.
Costly Change Of Heart
This is not so much of a problem when choosing a free theme, a change of heart simply means a little work in changing the theme to something different. But for those of us that have decided to actually purchase what we see as a quality theme, a change of heart can mean money down the drain.
Benefits Of A Great Layout
Lets examine the structure & layout above to see what if any benefits there are to using a theme with this layout;
1. Header area, this should need little explanation and to be fair I would say the only concerns here should be the ability to use your own header image, the inclusion of site search & possibly also the RSS subscription button.
2.Many people appreciate the ability to include a 468 x 60 ad banner in the right hand side of the header, the reason being that if you are not using an actual photo or image, but are just using a pattern or solid colour, then the right hand side of the header tends to look a little bare & is a waste of valuable screen space.
3.The first thing in the content area. I am not a great fan of sliders to be honest with you, however I do think that a featured article box or latest post box can work very well indeed & even if it does not extend the full width of the content area, it can often be centralized so there is minimum space wasted either side of it. Should you choose to opt for a slider as opposed to a static box, please bear in mind the increase that can happen in site load time, as these sliders are invariably written in Java script!
4 to 9. Content boxes will now make up the remainder of the content area, there are numerous layouts to choose from here, but my personal favorite is a magazine style as shown in the diagram above & is used on the theme of this site.
10.Full width top sidebar. This is an area in which I feel a lot of themes fall short, my personal preference here is a sidebar block of 320px wide, this allows for 10px padding either side & you can still use a 300 x 250 AdSense block or indeed you can comfortably house a 4 x 125 ad block without any worry at all. From my own point of view, nothing looks worse than a lack of symmetry on a site or the fact that certain items seem squeezed into place.
11.Left hand sidebar should be available in a variety of sizes ranging from 120px to 180px +10px padding. Whatever size you set the left hand sidebar at, the right hand side bar should equate to the full width (300) minus the width of the left hand sidebar, so if the left is 140px, the right would equal 160px + the 10px padding either side = 320px.
12. Right hand sidebar should be available in a variety of sizes ranging from 120px to 180px +10px padding. Whatever size you set the right hand sidebar at, the left hand side bar should equate to the full width (300) minus the width of the right hand sidebar, so if the right is 140px, the left would equal 160px + the 10px padding either side = 320px.
Note: The above figures would be different if you choose to have inner padding between the two sidebars!
13. Full width bottom sidebar. Again this is where many themes lose my vote, for the simple reason that the bottom of the sidebar area is the ideal place for adding all those latest visitor type widgets from Blogcatalog, MyBlogLog or even Facebook. Having the additional area of 320px is ideal for such large widgets.
Footer Box 1, 2, 3These are also good areas for your latest visitor widgets or indeed any RSS feeds you may be pulling into your blog. Also anything else that you find difficult or inapropriate to put in the sidebars can be tucked away in the footer area.
Finally the copyright area which often also includes some form of site tracking or analytics.
There we have it, that is what I see as a great layout, for the simple reason it covers all eventualities. I have found nothing more frustrating than trying to fit in a particular advert block or widget & discovering that my themes sidebar will not accommodate it, no matter how hard I try or how much I shuffle things around.
Well I hope this article has helped and has shown you some of the more critical elements we should consider when trying to choose a great theme. If you have any questions then please feel free to use the comment box below, especially as we have just installed the sem-dofollow plugin, which essentially converts the comment boxes to dofollow instead of the default nofollow that Wordpress sets!
Related posts:
