Top Five Tips For Designing A WordPress Theme

Designing a theme in WordPress is no big deal if you could follow some of these simple tips to make life much easier to design a highly functional and comprehensive theme that will provide you with the ease of accessibility for maintaining consistency, incredible navigation options, space for commenting and removing unnecessary images.

1.) They Always Say “Default” Is The Best:

This is true when you are going to start, since default themes and predesigned templates are time tested and used by many users. Choose the one that is appealing to you, as you will be having more readers in your frame of mind visiting your website. Nevertheless, when you are using a default theme until you establish a ‘brand’ for you, you need to be cautious of technical glitches the might be encountered on your own designed theme.

2.) Keep A Journal For CSS References:

As a designer of a theme for your website, please find that keeping the CSS files and templates of your Word Press Theme creations is highly essential to revert to any technological glitch. Nevertheless, is good to keep them organized and sequential, just in case, if you require starting over again. This will save heaps of time and frustration on your side.

Wordpress Theme

3.) Maintain Consistency:

Consistency here is not about the number of posts or the time of posting, but is type and styles used for designing the themes for Word Press. Some of the areas where you can concentrate on being consistent are size of the images, type/style and size of Fonts used. This will make your theme on which the various pages are designed will give a more of a symmetrical and visually appealing to your readers. Otherwise, the readers will have difficulty in reading.

4.) Enable Comments:

Allowing others to comment on your website will be more appealing and is the key to invite more number of readers, as this will let you know what your readers want to read. This is a very good ethical practice that an amateur Word Press theme designer will have.

5.) Make Your Blog User-Friendly:

Good navigation is the best way to make your blog much more user-friendly that the readers will be able to do everything in ease rather than searching the nook and corners of your blog. One such instance to be cited, is the use of Twitter buttons or Like Page link to your Facebook account appearing in the top or in the bottom of each of the post is more welcoming than having one for the entire page, as this might turn out to be redundant with time.

Listed here are some of the best practices that you would like to contemplate more and abide by, while designing your Word Press theme.

Leave a Comment

{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }

Vivek Parmar January 12, 2011 at 2:35 AM

working on designing my theme. thanks for sharing these tips one thing i like to add offer better navigation in your theme

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Saksham Talwar January 12, 2011 at 9:40 AM

Better navigation is an important part. It will help us improve our pageviews greatly.

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Vibin January 12, 2011 at 7:56 AM

I like the 3rd point very much.Even You should be consistent in making changes to your theme.If you are editing your theme every week then it looks very awkward!

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Saksham Talwar January 12, 2011 at 9:41 AM

That’s true. Themes should be changed every few months or years. Although I will recommend to make small edits to add new features every now and then.

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Vibin January 12, 2011 at 10:00 AM

Yes,small edits can be done frequently.

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Shiva @ Webmaster Tips January 12, 2011 at 11:35 AM

Nice check list to follow when designing a theme, I am planning to redesign my blog’s theme (by my own) after my exams finish, Will be pretty helpful

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Saksham Talwar January 12, 2011 at 12:59 PM

Wow!! Best of luck for the theme design bro! :)

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Jasmine January 12, 2011 at 11:40 AM

Great tips! However, I am the lazy type, I would just grab a free theme and customize from there. Saves time, hehe!

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Saksham Talwar January 12, 2011 at 1:00 PM

He..he… Even I would love to do just that!! :)

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Lakhyajyoti January 12, 2011 at 1:15 PM

Great tips Saksham.Planning to customize my theme.Hope your tips will help me.

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Saksham Talwar January 12, 2011 at 11:03 PM

They surely will! :D

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prince January 12, 2011 at 4:38 PM

thank you for this nice post…

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Tess January 12, 2011 at 8:35 PM

For me theme plays a big part in a blog. And the way you choose or design your theme show a little bit side of what you are. Through this you can design your blog to be more appealing to the readers and it’s a good thing that we were able to design a theme that we want. So, thank you so much for sharing this! :)

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Saksham Talwar January 12, 2011 at 11:06 PM

Its my pleasure Tess! Theme design speaks for our site and lets our readers know our style and what we are. First impression is important! :)

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Christopher Roberts January 14, 2011 at 11:09 PM

“Enable Comments” – Essential! If you don’t do that you are really shooting yourself in the foot.

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Saksham Talwar January 15, 2011 at 4:44 PM

Yeah, a blog without comments doesn’t exist as a blog!

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Franck January 15, 2011 at 2:03 AM

Making a user friendly website is really one important point, because we all want visitors to come back…

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Saksham Talwar January 15, 2011 at 4:45 PM

You’re right Franck!

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Swamykant January 16, 2011 at 8:20 PM

It is good to use the default as long as you want provide basic features for your readers. But as ywe grow, it is better to tweak the themes. I have done something on my blog which given good results such as reduction in bounce rates, more subscribers and good Adsense CTR.

Nice post.. thanks for sharing the knowledge.

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Saksham Talwar January 16, 2011 at 11:14 PM

Tweaking the default theme is a better option. What do you think?

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Zohan @ ScreamingTips April 13, 2011 at 8:15 PM

Making user friendly website is essential when designing a template for website!

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Saksham Talwar April 14, 2011 at 12:26 AM

Yeah. A user friendly, easyily navigable and SE Optimized theme is the best!

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