Having your own custom theme/design for your blog is an exhilarating experience for most bloggers. But what sometimes seem mere modifications to make the design better become a real addiction.You can’t step on your blog without changing something around. If you have got even simple coding and design skills, I’m sure that struck you as it did to me and I’ll tell you some quick tips to remedy to that addiction.
1) play it offline or elsewhere
Instead of throwing it on your online blog, create a separate one for your tweaking and playing with the design. You could install another Wordpress installation under your root directory or if you’re on Blogger, create yourself another Blogger blog.
The one thing I’m sure you don’t want to is having search engines crawl that part of your messy playground putting it on search results. To prevent search engines from reaching you, on your Wordpress blog, go to Options tab within your dashboard, then to Privacy and check I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors.
Or you could simply just create an offline blog where you can play on your computer without putting it live on the net. Check out kyu’s quick guide on creating an offline blog.
This will prevent you from constantly touching your own site’s design!
2) limit your own site’s visit
The one thing that results into the urge of changing things around is constantly visiting your own blog. Checking every time whether someone posted a new comment, coming around to see whether everything is loading fine, standing by the side of your stats to know where you got a new hit. All this and any things that you could be doing, landing you on your own blog several times a day will ultimately make you feel things somewhere should be changed. Your design feels boring.
Give yourself some fresh air. Put an appropriate time where you should be checking your blog, perhaps only at night or at the start of the day where you would be doing all your blog’s chore and get away from it. If you are online, just visit other’s blog, leave comments there by interacting the most socially you can, leave your IM online so you can stop for a chit chat.
Subscribe to the most interesting blogs you can find and read them instead of reading your own every time of the day.
3) content pays more than the look
I won’t play into that part of the echo-chamber : content is king. You might surely know this by now. So don’t bother that much about the look of your site as you should with your writing. Instead of looking to improve the look around, try harder on improving your own writing. Write more killer articles, correct your grammar and typo error, make your content instead of your design stick out from the rest of the crowd. People come to your blog to read you not to check out the most rocking design ever. Would you do this?
4) Don’t tell others of your design/redesign
One thing that might bug you with your design is posting about it. OK, you told yourself that’s the last time I’m changing my theme but you do that fatal error of posting it to tell your visitors. There come more feedbacks and surely things that should be changed and there you go again biting your nail. “I should be changing it because X don’t like it, and yeah that too, because Y hates it”.
Every person has its own taste, be it colour or the look around your blog. Don’t change it for them since you won’t be able to satisfy every one’s request so better stick with something that’s working, something that is displaying your content correctly and that’s it.
5) Start from a minimalist stance
Using a graphics pumped design will always push you into turning those graphics to your own unique style. You’ll try putting them into your favourite graphics program and changing their colour to fit your taste or you would be thinking just another set of icons might work better.
If it’s the first time you’re choosing a theme and you want to make it truly yours, pick a minimalist one, blank on the surface but laid out with great mastery. Something like the Sandbox theme from plaintxt.org. Starting from a minimalist stance will allow you to craft your own design idea instead of just tweaking other’s work which in the end won’t make it being truly unique. Therefore pushing you into touching and playing endlessly with your candy-like design.
By the way, Scott from plaintxt.org is organising a great theme competition where you should be playing only with the stylesheet. No PHP coding or mastery required. And there are great prizes to win, starting from $500.
6) Realign instead of redesign
Don’t waste time looking for that endless colour combination or strolling across the web for that perfect icon’s collection. Consider a realignment instead of a redesign. Is your content getting the most exposure it should or are you instead leaving your visitors to glance at your header image? If you think things need to be changed, try changing their position. Moving your recent post where it might get maximum exposure. Creating another page to accommodate that excess amount of content like your about me section which is occupying the whole lot of space in your sidebar.
7) Don’t be selfish : make others benefit
Don’t leave those designs/theme/templates you’ve been playing with, stack up at the back. Release them to the community. Now you can freely do so by creating yourself an account at Wordpress theme’s viewer and uploading that Wordpress theme you’ve been modding. If you’re on Blogger, just post it on your own blog and provide the download link.
Releasing that design will allow you to learn more about design from things other might want to further accomplish with it. Pushing you to learn more. That will also prevent you from being selfish, looking and working at your own theme which is already superb. Instead help others who can’t or mostly don’t have the time to do such marvels.
Have you got more tips to share with us telling how to cure that theme and modding addiction? C’mon it would be great to hear from you, so please take a comment and tell us.
related reading
- The resourceful webdesigner’s toolkit.
- Best of Wordpress theme galore
- Download MyJournal : a light,white,3Columns minimal theme
- Download the Cloudy smilies
- Download the best black minimalist theme for your Wordpress blog : ColourFull Wall
- Most Comprehensive Listing Of Wordpress Themes And Some Helpful Tips
- 13 Steps to a Blog Redesign
Thanks for the link! How did you get your stumble button in your post? I am not so concerned with digg, but a stumble button is cool.
hi Char, thanks for your comment. Here’s the code to put in your post :
I’ve surrounded the button in a div that I’ve then made to float right. With some playing and trial and error with the margins and paddings, you can see the results
I first saw this on Andy Beard’s blog.
Do tell me whether that works.
A quick remedy to your theme modding addiction…
How to cure the constant urge of touching your own design. That mere addiction….
Very useful – and thanks for the suggestions about modding off-line – exactly the problem I’m facing as I decide to go for a rebrand …
Ooh – I’ve just spotted the welcome back note with my picture in your second column .. how fabulous is that (not the picture, obviously, but the technique)! You must have picked up the picture from bloglog, yes?
Do tell how you did it
That is exactly how I feel often, this thing you call mdding addiction. I just can’t get enough of it, it is so habit forming. I felt it becomes therapeutic for me. When I am worried or anxious, I do design codings almost all day, just to while away the time.
But you’re right, such addiction should be controlled somehow. It’s already affecting my blogs traffic performance as I spent more time on redesigns than on blogging.
Sure, do stick around, I’m preparing the tutorial that will unveil that to you and some other such spicy secrets. *hint* look above the name’s input box when posting a comment.
thanks indeed for your comment.
I think you do great job with the redesigns/designs work
perhaps you could think of having another blog just to host your designs stuffs and things. You could also be posting about it(designs,ideas,tips,tricks) in that other blog, if it’s therapeutic and helps to soothe you someway or another, then why stop? You got it right, perhaps control or focus it elsewhere 
so that this don’t affect your blogging topics and traffic.
hehe… that was really instructive! I was a modding addict too! I dunno how I got over it though! :*
[...] constantly tweaking it. Fortunately, I found that someone has solved this problem by writing A quick remedy to your theme modding addiction. I’m not sure whether I am relieved or horrified to find out that others have this same [...]
[...] A quick remedy to your theme modding addiction [...]
i have to disagree with the whole content is key over looks…. because what i’ve seen is that while looks may not keep visitors longterm, the fact is you have to get them to pay attention first and looks come first there