Theme Changes

Written by blogboy from http://www.bloggingfornoobs.com/ on April 28th, 2008 | 1 Comment

The question of whether you should make theme adjustments is always a difficult one to answer.  It is even be harder to do and not negatively affect your onsite readers.  That being said here are my thoughts.

• Limit major theme changes to no more than once a month.  Anymore than once a month clearly defines you as a noob.  A complete theme change is sometimes necessary especially as you are learning, but should be done with caution.

• When building or choosing a new theme make sure that it is easily tweaked later on.  Having a CSS class that will allow the quick insertion of more banners or advertising will save you countless hours of work down the road.

• Work out all changes before hand on a test blog with actual posts and pages.  I prefer to run a local server using Apache, mySql, and php management on my windows PC

• Make changes when the fewest people are reading your blog and with a very clear head.  A pot of coffee by your side while making these changes isn’t a bad idea either.  Only make the changes to your real blog after you know they work perfectly on the test blog. Upload the entire theme under a new name if it is a variation of your current theme.  If you need to switch back to your old theme quickly, because the test blog and the real blog had some difference or something got distorted in the FTP transfer having your old theme will save you a lot of time, panic, and cursing.

• Make minor tweaks as necessary, but keep them small and do them one at a time.  As noted before always have a backup of your current theme or you can really screw yourself.

With these tips in mind you should be able to make changes with the smallest possible impact on your readers.  Good luck and never stop improving the functionality of your blog anytime you can.

Tags: advertising, Apache, Blog, coffee, CSS, FTP, functionality, mySql, noob, php, Theme