5 Basic Tips on Customizing Your Blog Theme

After choosing the appropriate blog theme, it is another tech experience altogether working through all the customization functions. Below are the basic tips on how to customize your blog theme and a simple explanation of certain terms:

1. Deciding on blog color scheme - Although the blog theme has a basic color, e.g. white background, the hyperlink, text, side bar, widget, footer, header, margins etc can be customized. Make sure that there is not too many colors in a blog and also that the color goes with the header image (image right at the top of the blog). Try to choose different shades of the same color unless there is something distinctively different that warrants a color contrast.

2. Hyperlink appearance - Even something like a hyperlink (link to another url) has customization options to consider. One, how the link appears when the mouse is not hovering above it (i.e. different color from the rest of the text), two, how the link appears when the mouse is hovering above it. For simple design layout, I prefer to have the link having a different color from rest of text (but that color still falls within the blog color scheme) but not having a different color when the mouse is hovering it, just underline will do.

3. Font Size - Again, a good design will mean strategic use of font size. Different font size convey different level of attention required and for the average web visitor who has surfed many sites already, he or she can't process if there are too many font sizes; it will just come across as messy and hard to read.

4. Favicon - This is something that appears beside the url and on the page menu bar. The favicon needs to be converted to .ico format and you can download free software for the conversion if you are choosing your own image rather than those that come pre-installed.

5. Uploading your own header, favicon, logo - For those less tech savvy like me, downloading a user friendly (again free) program will enable easy transfer of files from your computer to the server. You will know that you have to do the ftp yourself when there is no download button when you are selecting your theme customization option (instead you will be asked to upload your image to a directory that is located on the server)

So the above will get you started on customizing the blog theme of your choice and try to get some rest because it can be quite a lot to explore!