10 Tips to Design Great Wordpress Themes

Most bloggers have fun changing blog designs for free wordpress themes . Others design and create their own wordpress themes - this includes buying wordpress themes from professional blog theme designers. No matter which option you choose as a blogger, it is always better to have some knowledge on designing wordpress themes so you can interact in the theme designing process and the right blog design for your theme. The information provided here will be useful not only helpful to bloggers looking to re-design blog themes but also those looking for some blogging tips.
Here are 10 tips that can help you design great wordpress themes:
Decide how much you want to change the design: It is better to limit changes to your current blog design to a minimum so that you can keep intact the brand image already gained by your blog. See whether it is really worth to go for a complete revamp of your wordpress theme or do you want to save some of its valuable elements. Your decision should depend on your answer to this questions: What does my blog gain from changing to a new theme? Sometimes, in the case of personal blogs - simple alterations of the design can do the job at a much lesser cost. But this may not be possible with business blogs where the need is to create as ideal brand image. In such cases, it is worth spending some money to hire professional wordpress theme designers to do the job.
Check your blog design for readability: Readability is very important and for this reason you should ensure the correct selection of fonts, background color, whitespace etc.
Choose the right color scheme and stick to it: The colors should have better contrasts and should impress both you and your audience . The colors should match with the logo used in the blog and also the idea behind the blog. Finalize these colors and stick to it. Do not change the colors too often.
Highlight your most popular blogs: A good way of promoting your blog is to highlight your best work. You can showcase your most popular content on the right sidebar or any other place where it can be easily seen. Your layout should be designed in such a way that the highlight appears prominent.
Decide where your ads should appear: You have to include spaces for banner ads, AdsSense ads and paid text links if you want to make some money out of your blog. So you should decide before-hand where these ads should go on your layout and also the banner size. The ads should be cleanly placed, they should not be sprayed here and there as this can irritate your audience.
Use subscription facilities and make it prominent: To increase subscribers, you should highlight links to subscription options like RSS feed and email on your blog. Decide the location of these links so that they are prominent on the layout.
Decide whether you are going to show full posts or Excerpts on your front page: The advantage of using excerpts is that your content will not be penalized by search engines for duplicate content, if the same content is on your home page. The disadvantage of using excerpts is that the user needs an additional click to view the full content. You need to decide this before designing the layout.
Optimize your theme for better load speed: Slow load speeds can annoy visitors. To increase the load speed, you should minimize the number of PlugIns, images, widgets, video, etc. You should strike the ride balance in this regard, you dont want a dull and lifeless blog either.
Check your code for validation: Most blog template designers don’t care to check whether their code gets validated. Valid code can give better chance of providing the audience with error free visits. You can validate the code for your web pages using validating tools available on the web. In this way you are not only checking whether your code is error free but also seeing that it meets industry requirements. Validating your code can also improve search engine rankings for your web pages.
Be unique: Choose unique styles for Logos, banners and icons if you want to stand out from the crowd - especially if it is a personal blog. Business blogs can also be unique but it should be in line with the style and feel of the home page. However, do not mess too much with the template and style followed by most other blogs in blogosphere - as this can only confuse the visitor.
Design your Unique templates and be on top. Happy Blogging!
Do you design your template?