Call me an old fuddy-duddy …
July 15, 2007 by Lillie
I have been planning for some time to change the theme on my blog. After all, I’ve used the default theme for over a year – it must be time to be a little more creative.
I spent last week reformatting my hard drive, upgrading my computer and many of my programs, and restoring all the data. While that was tedious and time-consuming, with the help of the great tech support at Dell, all went smoothly.
Then I got to the blog … and ran into problems. Although other people said it look fine in their browser, it looked awful on all three of our computers. The sidebar overlapped the text, and the sidebar was ugly.
I spent lots of time spent getting advice from my Web host, searching the forums and documentation at WordPress, and getting a little help from my friends. Thanks for everyone who gave me advice and encouragement!
Finally, I decided to install the new theme, thinking maybe the problem was the theme. I tried half a dozen themes, all of which I thought I liked until I actually installed them. I didn’t like any of them as well as old default theme, but I wanted it look like it had before I upgraded.
As I was going back and forth between themes, I couldn’t get widgets to work in a three-column theme I tried, so I went back to the default sidebar. I still wasn’t happy so I decided to go back to the original theme.
Voila! With the default sidebar instead of the widgetized sidebar, my blog looked just fine. So I went back to the old-fashioned way of editing the theme to modify the sidebar.
I am adding some new plug-ins … but guess I’ll stick with my old look. I haven’t changed my hairstyle in a zillion years, either, so I guess I’m just an ole stick-in-the-mud. 
[tags]WordPress, themes[/tags]
Lillie,
Glad you’ve got everything worked out to your satisfaction! Your blog looks great! May you have nothing but smooth sailing from here on out!
Jeanne
No worries, Lillie! We still love you!
Don’t just give up on changing your theme! This is my first time here and I’d appreciate it if you updated it a bit.
When I first got here I thought, oh no, an old site. So on first impression I thought,, Ugggg!
There are so many great themes out there that you can test out that might revive your site, bring you new readers, etc. It’s pretty easy to do. Just make sure you download or copy all your custom html in your sidebar and apply it to your new theme.
Also, I’m not sure if you care about SEO at all or getting more traffic but this theme is hurting you more then it is helping. Want some tips to help you increase your sites traffic?
1. Use a theme that displays your sidebar on all pages, not just the homepage.
2. Update the page titles so they just display the post title. So for instance this pages title would just be “Call me an old fuddy-duddy”, removing the redundancy of your blogs main title and increasing the keyword density of each post title. Search google for “wordpress seo title tags”
3. Use a related posts plugin so each post will link to a few others and help your readers to easily find other great posts on your blog. This will also increase the backlinks of each of your posts and push them higher up on the se’s. It will also help spiders spider your site.
Those are just a couple of things I would do.
Best of luck and keep up the great work!
Regards,
Jeff
Thank you, Jeanne!
Thanks, Robert. All the experts say to “be yourself” on your blog … so that’s what I’m doing.
Jeff,
Thanks for taking the time to give me such a detailed evaluation of my site on your first visit. I really appreciate it!
I really haven’t done anything to get traffic, and right now I can’t devote any more time to the blog than I do. The blog isn’t monetized, and I don’t need it to get freelance business as I always have a three- or- four-month backlog of projects waiting for me. So the blog is pure fun for me.
Maybe one day I’ll get serious about SEO and even try to make some money. But for now, this blog is just a way for me to connect with other people and talk about my passions.
Thanks again for your excellent advice. Even if I don’t take advantage of it, I’m sure some of my readers who blog for more than pure enjoyment will benefit.
I have been manually listing related posts so readers who are interested in a particular topic can find more. I did install a related-posts plug-in … but that’s one that didn’t work for me. When I can spend some more time playing around with this stuff, I’ll try it again. I just can’t take any more time away from clients to play right now. I’m still playing catch-up from my computer upgrade and blog problems.