Wordpress theme debacle
I’m a big fan of wordpress and I love the fact that there are so many freely available themes to choose from. But, recently I’ve actually tried for the first time to find a theme that could work for my blog until I have the chance to create a custom theme.
That’s when I discovered that while the plethora of wordpress themes are a good thing in theory, it can be a real challenge to find one that actually works well. Since I didn’t want to sift through the thousands of themes out there on my own, I started with this article on 83 beatiful wordpress themes from Smashing Magazine. But, as I sorted through the list, I grew more and more disappointed. I found a handful that I sort of liked, but then when I actually tried them out, I haven’t yet found one that I feel is just right.
I am pretty picky, I’ll admit, but why can’t all of these great wordpress themes “work”. So many of them have missing pieces like separate templates for “pages” instead of posts or improper handling of comments, or not including a spot for links. To really fine tune things, I think I’m just going to have to build one myself.
So, I’m back to the old default theme for now. It may be plain and overused, but it is full featured and works great on all counts. Hopefully a new custom theme will be coming soon.
UPDATE 4/30/2007 — Through a little HTML and CSS tweakage, I’ve now created my own custom Wordpress theme out of the Wordpress default theme. This will continue to evolve but for now, I feel better at least knowing it’s a little bit unique.