The new design for the case study blog has gone live and in this post I’m going to look at the 3 stages I took to do it. And here’s the before screenshot of the blog.

1. choosing the theme
2. installing the theme
3. setting up the theme

1. Choosing the Theme

With the amount of Wordpress themes available and the quality of the themes, picking one to use can be easier said than done. But I was after a premium theme that would take my blog design to the next level and give me greater flexibility. This also meant that I would most likely have to be willing to pay for a theme.

I didn’t mind that if it means I’m getting a quality theme. The old theme that I used was a Brian Gardner free theme, but I have long been an admirer of his Revolution themes that are premium customizable themes for $79.95 (US).

The decision came down to knowing what I wanted and being able to find exactly that from a source I already knew in Brian Gardner. As soon as I found his site I knew that one day I would be using one of his premium themes and planned for that. Now maybe I’ll start planning for him to do me a customised one…

After a bit of deliberation I decided on the Revolution Pro Media theme for now!

2. Installing the theme

I was a little bit apprehensive about installing the theme because there’s a lot more to it than an ordinary free theme. But the Revolution Themes have their own instructions and a set of tutorials and a support forum so there was no need to worry.

The problem was going to be how do I install and then fiddle about with the theme to customise it, without driving any visitors mad? I looked at various methods like local hosting and plugins, but these gave me permission problems and compatibility issues that I didn’t want to waste time on figuring out. So I decided to use a simple plugin called the maintenance mode plugin. It’s really easy to use and as you can see from the screenshot it does what it says!

Installing the theme itself is just the same as any normal theme the only difference being once installed there is more to do. The Revolution Pro Media theme has it’s own options page for a start, and also a lot more files in the theme editor to play around with. I found it easy to use and adapt to what I wanted, but that was mainly because of the support forum and the tutorials.

3. Setting up the Theme

To say this theme is customisable is an understatement, it’s a brilliant base to build a unique and quality site from, and it’s been written with this in mind. I on the other hand have had very limited knowledge of HTML and CSS so I have kept it fairly classic, but it’s also so incredibly close to what I wanted to do in the first place that I was happy to just tweak a little. Here’s the after screenshot showing what the new design looks like, to compare with the before shot.

As I’ve said above the best and quickest way to set the blog up and get it running is to use the tutorials and the support forum. If you are wanting to do a little more they even have a list of approved designers to help customise it for you.

It’s a work in progress in my eyes and at some point I will do more with the header, but I am really pleased with the results so far. I’ll just take one thing at a time and the next thing is a Newsletter.

In the mean time please feel free to visit The Photographer Blog and take a look around at the design.

UPDATE: Since writing this post Brian Gardner has discontinued the Revolution Themes, although he has archived the tutorials, information and forums for the themes it is unclear when this will stop. He has said at some point the support and upgrades will stop. I am a little disappointed at this as I had not long purchased the theme, but that is life and I move on! With no guarantees of how I could update it for future Wordpress installations I decided to cut my losses and stop using the theme. Changing instead to the Thesis Theme by Chris Pearson that you can view on the case study blog – which I am extremely happy with! Thesis Demo Site — See the Thesis Theme in action!

Mandy

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Installing a Premium Blog Theme

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It’s come to the stage where I can just carry on blogging as usual on the case study blog, or I can really show what I have learned about my journey with digital photography and take it to the next step. Well I am going for the next step option!

Over the next couple of weeks I will be making some major improvements to the blog,  which will include completely re-designing the blog, adding some new features and updating the administrative side. So you can see why I need a couple of weeks.

Shopping List…

I am going to need everything from a new theme to even changing the passwords on the back end of Wordpress. So here’s a little look at what you can expect:

• New premium Wordpress theme. I want to use a premium theme because they give better quality than the free themes, and I don’t have the budget yet for a custom one.

• Adding a free weekly newsletter that readers can subscribe to.

• Expanding on the categories and posts to include: more how to articles, new projects and inspirational photographers.

• Upgrading all plugins and even Wordpress if the compatibility with my plugins is ok.

• Buy a DSLR!

Nothing like giving myself a large workload, but I feel held back at the moment so it’s definitely the right time to do it.

Exciting times…

I’m very excited about this because it’s all about the new way I am seeing my blogs, and this one in particular. I have been talking about this in more depth in this post. Up until now I have been putting off any improvements I wanted to make to the blog. Until I had written more posts, or the blog had become bigger, or any other excuse I could think of to stop me from stepping outside of my comfort zone, and trying something new. I’m sure it will be a learning curve and I suspect it will be steep, but that’s all part of the fun, and the achievement. I’ll be talking about it all here.

Mandy

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I am up to that part of the case study when I need to find a theme for the photographer blog. Now I really enjoyed doing this I love design and it was great seeing all the different types.

Now there are lots of decisions to be made when deciding on a blog theme the first one being, am I going to pay for a professional design or am I going to look for a free theme. I’ll give you one guess which one I am going to pick….yes I am going for the free theme! There are some very good arguments for starting with a professional theme and how to get one, and you can listen to some of them here at a podcast by Yaro Starak talking to Darren Rowse about blog design.

But after considering what they had to say I have decided to go with a free theme to start with, and then progress to a professional theme a little later on. Although I realise there are always compromises to be made with a theme that is not designed to my specifications, and some free themes are better than others. But that decision was partly because of the quality of free themes I found, but I will go into that a little later I want to tell you what I was looking for first.

What is important to consider when picking a theme.

I had a fixed idea in my mind what I wanted, design is individual to everyone and what one person likes another hates. So I focused on what I like in design and what my blog needed, rather than worrying whether people will like the design.

I started by writing down what I wanted from the design for the blog, and even made a little sketch as a guide to see how different elements of the blog would fit together. Of course that brought up a lot of questions:

• Which colours to use and how many
• how many columns, left or right
• what do I want above the fold (area you see when blog loads) and is there enough room
• how was my layout going to look, where will the navigation be
• what will pages and single post look like
• will it work cross platform
• want it to look simple, stylish, modern and easy to navigate
• will photos look good on it

I wanted to make it easy to read. When reading, peoples eyes are always drawn to the top left and this is therefore a very important space on a blog, and I should consider carefully what I put there.

Where to look

If you put a search in Google for wordpress themes you get tons of answers, too much choice in fact. I started my search at the Wordpress theme viewer site, but I did do some graphic design for a while and I tend to spend too much time just looking at the themes and not deciding. So I had to remind myself to stay focused and not start nosing at all the themes. Anyway nothing jumped out at me so I moved on.

The next site I looked at was the free wordpress theme site which again has a huge selection to choose from. Also Performancing has a theme site as well with some really eye catching ones, the best feature being it has a theme switcher where you can pick a theme, and see the theme live on the site itself which is a really useful tool and good fun. It’s nice to see what they look like live, it can be hard to tell from a generic test site, with ‘this is a test site’ everywhere.

I noticed that Brian Gardner’s name came up on the last two sites I visited, he is a wordpress theme designer and has had a lot to do with the themes on wordpress themes and performancing theme sites, and he has a very impressive portfolio. I really like his designs they are clean and simple and very effective. He does it professionally but he has got some themes that he makes available to the public for free which is great. So I’ll pick one of his free themes to use and when I look to change it to a professional one, I will be going back to see what I can do with his revolution theme which I think is brilliant!

Which theme am I going with

I am going with one of Brian Gardner’s themes for the photographer blog, morning paper from the performancing theme site.

The only problem with talking about themes and what to look at when choosing one is (besides the fact I’m completely themed out looking at them all!). I have realised how much I want to change this one. It has a few glitches and doesn’t work great on the pages, so I think I have convinced myself to apply what I have been talking about to build a blog, and not leave it neglected. It should be a simple case of choosing a theme, red book again from the performancing theme site by Brian Gardner (bit of a fan) and uploading it to my host and then choosing it in the presentation tab in my wordpress admin to change it over. Famous lasts words, I’ll try to do it as quick as possible but if you visit and it all looks a bit strange you know I am eating my words!

Thanks

Mandy

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How To Find A Good Theme

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