Comments on: The Perfect Blog Theme

By: MV, tech blogger

MV, tech blogger — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 12:52:12 +0000

I was thinking of the questions you raise in this post. It’s really hard to come up with the best theme. For me, the theme caries the personality of my blog… and I am not even finished with my blog’s theme… but I am still developing what I think is best for my readers.

By: Royce Tivel

Royce Tivel — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 03:29:05 +0000

My blog theme is a customized version of 2010 … that *doesn’t* get in the way of anything!

By: a collection of my thoughts.. this theme (mnmlist)

a collection of my thoughts.. this theme (mnmlist) — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 19:37:38 +0000

[...] at it’s core is the creation of content. The perfect blog theme doesn’t hinder writing, it encourages it. Mnmlist removes all distractions and complications [...]

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:35:50 +0000

To be fair, theme designers do it because whenever they don’t, they always get comments from people asking them how to add it.

By: David Pensato

David Pensato — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 23:31:49 +0000

Well said. I would really like to see Tumblr’s usability in that regard. Their bookmarklet is flawless.

By: Jeffro

Jeffro — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:54:27 +0000

Considering one of the long term goals for WordPress as stated by Matt in many public interviews is for WordPress to become invisible. Well, I’m wondering how much of that invisibility is the responsibility of the theme in use.

By: Ian Stewart

Ian Stewart — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:04:07 +0000

Manifest is a brilliant theme.

By: Ian Stewart

Ian Stewart — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:00:52 +0000

A bit of an addendum for those reading the comments (and everyone so kind to comment so far):

WordPress theme developers spend a lot of time adding options for moving sidebars, adding thumbnails, adsense, video, whatever. The list goes on. How much time is spent making blog themes more, well, bloggable? Blogability as a subset of Usability? How much time is spent encouraging the posting of content. Actual, real, web-logging? You can have all those other things, sure, but fundamentally, this is what blog theme design should be about, and what every addition to a theme should be in service to.

I don’t mean this as snark. I’m really, seriously, concerned about this sort of thing. It’s important. If you’re making publicly released WordPress themes and you’re thinking about this sort of thing I salute you. It’s what I’ll be thinking about for 2010 (and what I’ve been thinking about all along, I guess).

Also, yes, I have completely ignored non-text-based blogging here. The concept can be transferred to niche themes though.

By: Mark Dillon

Mark Dillon — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:43:05 +0000

I’ve tried accomplishing just this with my blog using Thematic as a starting point. You can gohere to see it. I don’t know squat about code so I don’t think I would ever consider releasing it to the public but at least it could [hopefully] serve as a source of inspiration for one or two people.

By: Stéphane

Stéphane — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:31:45 +0000

I did not find the perfect blog theme yet… but for reading, the most fantastic theme that i found on the web (and it is free) is call MANIFEST. Here is the link : http://jimbarraud.com/manifest/

By: Jeffro

Jeffro — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:04:28 +0000

I’ve been a fan of OneRoom ever since I laid eyes on it. I’m not sure what the back-end looks like but from the front-end, it looks spiffy and encourages me to read through the content just by the way it’s displayed.

http://web-kreation.com/demos/oneroom/

By: joshua

joshua — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 00:26:04 +0000

One nitpicky thing I dont like about many themes is that they hardcode in a “home” link in the header. If you use your wordpress install more as website (like most customers of our service http://page.ly) by creating a page called “home” and using then toggling Reading > Settings to set it as the homepage, it duplicates the “home” link in the navigation.

Themes need to be a little smarter and respond to the change in settings.

WordPress used in a website mode is becoming more and more common, the blog themes need to adapt.

By: FilterJoe

FilterJoe — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 18:30:24 +0000

Also – at first I experimented with hyperlinks that were not underlined, but several readers were unable to notice the links (color settings are different across monitors/systems and peoples’ eyes are different – and I very purposely chose a low contrast color combination). I wanted to make the underlines dimmer than they actually are, but couldn’t figure out how to do it. My ideal would be noticeable when you want to notice it, not noticeable when you don’t want to be distracted from reading something lengthy.

By: FilterJoe

FilterJoe — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 18:23:41 +0000

I don’t know if perfection is possible as everyone has their own ideas about this. I did design my own blog from the ground up to “disappear into the background and not hinder reading in any way,” and feel free to judge for yourself whether I succeeded:

http://www.filterjoe.com/2009/03/23/site-design-for-reading/

Note that I did use Thematic as my template. I placed (minimal) navigation functions to the right, and reading content to the left. If there was an easy way to make the navigation section a little dimmer, I would have done that.

Most of the feedback I’ve received suggests I succeeded, but occasionally someone comments that it is so different from the usual cluttered blog look that that in and of itself is a bit of a distraction.

By: Kishore Mylavarapu

Kishore Mylavarapu — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 17:02:24 +0000

A perfect blog theme always user friendly.It highlites the content than other things.There are very less such type of themes.
Making a post about Free Perfect Blog Themes will be surely benifitial to so many users.