Having set aside some time to put together some new free designs my mind turned to the question, what do Upstart Blogger readers want in a wordpress theme?
Magazine style wordpress themes are certainly en vogue at the moment but I’m pretty sure there are still more people out there who would prefer a simple and clean two or three column blog theme. My personal preference is for web 2.0 style themes, large bold text, set in classic sans serif fonts like Helvetica. But then again, I’m a Mac user, so these themes, along with most web 2.0 designs, look great on my screen. Put them on a Windows PC, however, and they don’t look anywhere near as nice. Arial replaces Helvetica with nasty results and the anti aliasing just doesn’t look right.
Minimalist themes could be the answer to the anti aliasing problem, especially if the theme uses smaller text sizes.
Google analytics tells me that around 50% of you are Mac users, 40% Windows users, and 10% Linux. The results were surprising to me, especially the 10% Linux. It brought a smile to face that so many people were using an open source operating system. What all this confirms is that what might look great to me doesn’t necessarily look good to you.
So, what do you, the Upstart Blogger reader, want in a wordpress theme?
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I’m minimalist sucker myself. With that said I think the magazine faze currently taking place is bring people to think more about grid layouts and typography where they didn’t really care before. There are a few ok 2.0ish looking themes but for the most part I think it’s people messing around with things they don’t have a clue about and releasing things prematurely or half baked. More and more theme creators seem to be focused on getting 5-10 themes out every 6 months instead of working on 1-2 solid grade A themes.
I prefer magazine style wordpress theme,and i like your former designs which are all very impressing.
Not having the slightest bit of development skills (and still waiting to port over to WP), I’d be happy for a widget-enabled theme. The site I’m currently running will likely lend itself to a more static design, so good support for pages (ideally integrating them more than just a little list on the top navbar) would be great. I’d be running the site more like a CMS than a blog ultimately….
I think it all depends on the content. (‘Content is King’ right?) I think magazine styled themes are especially effective when they are used to cover a wider variety of topics and content types. Also, from an average reader. standpoint, magazine themes appear to be less like blogs and more like fully featured websites that deliver more content and at a faster rate. That leaves me with the Web 2.0 vs. Minimal argument. For me, these types of themes are one in the same when it comes to how the content is interpreted by the average blog reader. Both are quite obviously blogs and deliver content as such. Of course graphically there are generally major differences between the two but in most cases you can find a bit of Minimalist thinking in Web 2.0 designs & vice versa.
I think the challenge here is less about what style of theme is trendy and more about what types of content needs can be delivered in the best way possible. An example of this is Robert Ellis’ Aperio Theme (still under development) which is specific to a blogging photographers needs. This is also why I think the ‘Stripped’ theme is so successful. It is so clearly about delivering content straight to the reader with no distractions. That said; coming from a half music, half design background, I would want to see some type theme who’s content is musically driven. Maybe some type of podcasting theme could do the trick? Maybe that’s a terrible idea? HAHA. Thoughts?
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aL
What do I want in a theme? It all depends on the purpose of each website with the WP install. That alone dictates what style of theme I choose.
In years past, the only WordPress themes available were basic, minimalist, diary format layouts. As time went by, WordPress and theme designers have both matured and created some amazing things; now we have choices.
I’m a Windows man. However, I share your liking for designs which one might call “Web 2.0-style”. Arial can be okay at times, and there are sans-serif fonts other than Helvetica, many of which are available for PC.
If I write a blog, I want mainly my readers be able to read and everything else is secondary. Now, this is because I am not blogging for experience but for content. This means I do not want the sidebar to take over and be wider than the main text area. If I’d be another type of blogger I might want visuals to be at the heart, and I really don’t care so much about legibility. For this reason I think it difficult to say a WP design should be so-and-so, period.
There are a few areas which should be easy to find, no matter which kind of blog I write:
1) where is the article? (no kidding, some blog sites seem to be so dispersed, that I can’t even figure out which is the main article on that page).
2) Next to that is the comment link (if I have to search all over with considerable effort to find this link, I lose interest to comment, hence 1 commenter lost).
3) The RSS link, because you want to make it easy for your possible future reader to subscribe.
I’m big on usability, readability, and good design (colors, fonts, etc).
I use a Windows, but I’ve worked on designs with Macs before so I understand the differences and the similarities. I think minimalism works really great here and can be translated appropriately on all browsers and operating systems. But I wouldn’t go too small, otherwise you’ll just end up like any other personal blogging site: big on graphics and tiny on text.
Magazine themes do seem to be all the rage these days… Large type is fun, too.
In the end, I prefer the clean, lean and legible variety.
If only I had enough skills at present to design one myself ;-) But, since I don’t just yet, I would love a theme that displays photos better in excerpts and a single post.
And, footers can be fun places for content.
I noticed Futurosity had a twitter that he was working on a theme for designers and photographers. Hmmm…