It’s taken me months to figure out why my blog theme doesn’t present things quite the way I’d hoped:
I went and activated the wrong theme.
What I was after was the WordPress theme “Ever After”…
What I ended up getting, because I wasn’t paying attention when I made the switch, was the theme “Forever”. They might ultimately mean the same thing in the fairy tales, but as themes they are vastly different. By 280 pixels, to be precise.
So here I was, grumbling about how small the photos and the fonts were…turns out I’d kissed the wrong frog and was living with a 3-inch tall amphibian, no prince in sight.
So I may be switching over one more time…because I get all sexy-eyed when I see the massive size of the photos on the theme I really wanted.
They’re both wedding blog themes, isn’t that funny? Perhaps, like my friend Sue—who is celebrating her first anniversary over on http://lostnchina.wordpress.com—I am secretly, really, married to my blog.
You can preview your blog in another theme, before actually changing it!
I know, I’ve done it half a dozen times with Ever After, still trying to make up my mind whether to go ahead or not. It’s great for photos, but the paragraph font is huge, so not so great for posts of more than 500 words, and I tend to write a lot…
You know, I wonder if in some way we bloggers are all married to the blog, prince or frog. I’m glad your relationship is lasting!
Haha, that’s too funny. At least you figured it out! I think the wedding themes look great. I’ve been theme hopping lately and I THINK I found one that’s gonna stick (fingers crossed). It’s a little work to get everything ironed out, but worth it to put at least one mental battle to rest.
Hey there! Fellow WordPress blogger here…love to hear you chat. I have a question for you. what happens to all your “stuff” when you switch themes? Does it mess anything up? I would love to hear about your experience with this…
Cheers!
Jennifer
Posts and photos stay, but if the photo sizes are very different, and you switch from a large photo theme to a smaller one, your pictures might get squeezed into the narrower margins of the new theme. The height doesn’t change, just the width.
More likely to get jumbled around are your widgets, which you may have to reset. If there aren’t as many widget areas on the new theme (or they have moved from footer to sidebar) they often vanish, and you’ll find them in the unused widgets area of your Dashboard-Appearance-Widgets page.
The theme I want doesn’t have a sidebar, so I will hav eto figure out whether I need these side buttons at all, and where to put them…at the bottom of the page, or under a menu heading. Also, I think I will lose my banner.
I’ve been tempted to switch themes to get the larger pictures as well but I also like the one I chose – very simple, clean, minimalistic. I might wait a full year and then consider changing it. Good luck with your switch!
Thanks! Switching themes is certainly easier than moving the whole blog from being hosted by WordPress to being hosted by someone else! I just have to figure out what to do about my widgets (which will have to go) and whether I can live without a banner…
I’m procrastinating but will have to get things ready to switch soon, because once I get an idea, it drives me crazy until I’ve tried it.
You do have a lovely theme, I tried a minimalist theme before this one, Manifest (unlike yours, NOT customized) but I wanted bigger pictures if I was going to give up widgets and buttons.
great post! we are always second guessing the theme on our blog and hoping that one day the perfect one will come along!
It’s a bit like that, isn’t it? It’d be nice to know from the outset what I want, but I had to spend a few years blogging and using themes to actually figure out which things matter to me.
Until this blog actually earns its keep, I shy away from getting a customisable Pro theme and a proper host.
This is such a funny post. Finding the right theme could be harder than finding the right prince……Good luck to you this time!
Glad it amused you! Yes, I already found the right guy…walked past all the namby-pamby princes and married the evil warlock…the perfect match!
Now to get a theme that understands me…