Newbie Lesson Learned: Themes

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When I first became a Premium member, I was all excited about the large library of themes available and they all looked so beautiful that I could not really decide which one to pick so took a long time scrolling through all of them and picked about 31 themes. By picked, I mean I favourited it by clicking the little heart icon.

Then I had to pick the one and only one that I like the most to apply / activate the theme. By that time, I had about 2 to 3 blank pages created. When I preview my website, it looked nothing like the template view! I don't know what happened, I don't why either. I spent hours and hours trying to figure it out. I even went to search the Knowledge Management database.

Then I finally figured it out...these themes are like life - you don't always get things the way you wanted it or things that looks pretty on the first glance, but when you have it, it's just totally different from expectations! Not all the pretty themes work for my website, some of them even made my website looked gibberish!

Lesson learned: before you select any theme and totally fall in love with it, first create a framework of pages that you intend to have including sub-pages, then rearrange the sub-pages under the main pages, apply the theme and see if it all works out fine. At this point of time, it's best that you would have installed a few more themes (and I really mean a few more!) because you'll probably find more than 50% of your favourite theme doesn't work for your framework of pages!

P/S: I hope the pointer above saves you many hours of futile search for the answer of why a theme doesn't work on your website - it just doesn't so move on...helps to keep the expectation in check too.

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Recent Comments

11

Thanks for the tips.

Thank you Jenlam ^^ im now learning how to build my Websites;)
wish you all the best!

Sawadeka Bigky! Wishing you all the best in WA!

Thanks for sharing this! It's true though, the theme depends on how you work it to your creativity.

More like how you let your creativity work with the limitations of the theme! :)

Nice share :)

Great post. Another tip is to make sure that your Theme is compatible with the current version of WordPress. There are themes out there that haven't been updated for years, and no longer appear as they once did.

I never knew that. I thought all themes will be just like how it was shown on the template display! So I wasted hours trying to figure it out until I accepted the fact that it just won't work and moved on to other themes...sigh...that's a few hours I'm never getting back!

True, but it's also another mistake you'll never make again. When you're viewing a Theme, there is a little comment on the icon that says "This theme is compatible with your version of Wordpress" or "This theme is untested with your version of Wordpress"

Problem is, it did not indicate any incompatibility at all so I really had to apply the theme one by one to see if it works. When I finally found one that works, I started writing my contents and realised the fonts are too small (not something I could control or change, trust me I spent some time trying to make a bigger font too!). So I had to change theme. The new theme has bigger fonts but the sub-pages are overlapping fonts with the menu on 2nd line - so I had to remove the sub-pages...it's really a roller coaster ride but glad to report all is fine now! Yay! :)

Glad to hear you found your solution.

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