Blogger Q Answered: Is it worth changing themes to fit additional widgets?

This question was submitted by Irene Saiger of Bamitbach: Sharing Food and Memories with Friends and Family

While reading this, some things you might think about are:

Is your existing theme helping you out at all?
Is your sidebar wide enough to fit widgets that you need or want?
Have you recently changed your theme and want to share it? Please do!

Bamitbach

Q.
Is it worth changing themes for additional widgets?

A.
Thanks for your question, Irene!
If your existing theme doesn’t support what you want or need to do with your blog to make it more functional and useful, then yes, it’s worth changing themes.
If you like the clean look of Misty Look, which is the theme you’re using right now on WordPress.com, consider getting your own hosting at Hostgator and setting up Thesis Theme (aff links). If you take a look at Thesis’s basic structure, it is nearly identical to Misty Look. You can widen the main column or the sidebar or both, or you could add an additional sidebar for more widgets.
With Thesis, you can display a video, set of rotating images (such as pictures of your recipes that link to the individual recipes themselves), or even a signup box in what is called a “multimedia box.” The theme is incredibly versatile and if you are WordPress savvy, you can pick it up rather quickly. There are also TONS of Thesis tutorials out there. If you need help with Thesis, let me know. I can certainly help you or refer you to someone else.
If you want to stay with WordPress.com, however, try searching for a new theme with the search criteria of “white.” When it filters the list, look for one with two sidebars so you can have additional widgets, or at least one with a wider sidebar. You might also try adding an image to your header to make it look lovely, interesting and delicious, as it is a food blog and foodies love to see pictures of food!

I appreciate your question. If you have follow-up questions, leave a reply in the comments.

Did I Leave Anything Out? Do you have suggestions for Irene?

Regular readers – if I left something out or if you have any further suggestions for Irene, please leave a reply. Much appreciated!

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seospidy@Internet marketing

we should update our blog with latest themes it makes our blog more interactive adding widgets and pluggin is key to successful blogging. :)

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Daniel Sharkov@Marketing product reviews

Of course if you want to use a specific widgets, then changing the blog theme will be a good thing, as there are widgets that can be of a great importance for the blog's success. After some modifications you might even get the blog to look similar to what it was before the change. Instead of buying themes, I would prefer getting a free one and customizing it, as spending for example 50 bucks on a theme seems a bit too much to me.

Stanford Ohs

Valuable information and excellent design you got here! I would like to thank you for sharing your thoughts and time into the stuff you post!! Thumbs up!

Udegbunam Chukwudi@Make Money Online

Funny. Lack of enough space for my sidebar widgets was one of the major reasons why I kept switching themes until I found the one, I'm presently using.
.-= Udegbunam Chukwudi@Make Money Online´s last blog ..Make Your Blog 10x Faster With W3 Total Cache Plug-in =-.

Dana

As your suggestion, I also suggest to move into self hosted for first step and then customizing the theme always become the best choice instead directly buy a new theme.
My recent post Theme Junkie Great Discount: 50% Off

bizchickblogs

The Twenty Ten theme is awesome!!! We can't download it yet for regular Wordpress.org CMS, but it is available on the beta release of Wordpress (3.0.?) and like you said, on Wordpress.com blogs.

Dev | Technshare

good question!! Irene..!
I don't think changing theme is good idea to fit some additional widgets. What if I started changing my blog's theme just for some additional widgets, then no one will going take me serious.. !! So, i think it's better to change the widget instead of theme.
Thanks for this great answer Tia. Great work :)

Thanks!

David

I have a couple of Wordpress.com blogs and a couple or more Wordpress.org blogs. One of the reasons I moved from Wordpress.com (having originally started with Google's Blogger before that) was to take advantage of the huge range of plugins and widgets that were available on Wordpress.org.

There were other, perhaps more important, reasons I moved to Wordpress.org, namely the ability to run Google Adsense, the greater number of themes, and the feeling that everything was under my control to do with as I wanted.

Since then, Wordpress.com has moved on and some of the newer blog themes are looking good. I have started using the Twenty Ten theme made by the WordPress team forhttp://photographworks.wordpress.com and I like it but for the fact that I cannot change the black band under the header image without changing the CSS - and to make that change I would have to pay the yearly fee to Wordpress.com.

That is the downside to Wordpress.com, but the upside is the ready-made community, which is why I still maintain the blog - lack of widgets and all.

My recent post Both Ways Around The Roundabout: Traffic In India

Liane

It's always a personal choice of course. But this is where good judgement should come in. On the onset, one should already have an idea of the functionality that he/she needs for the new blog.

Of course it's inevitable to make new decisions too. I guess the compromise is that the change always has to be for the better :)
.-= Liane´s last blog ..How to Make a Blog Post Go Viral in Facebook =-.

Hi Liane!

Thanks for stopping by. I think blogs go through many changes before "growing up" and becoming what they will be. And there are always new and better ways to make a blog interactive, so I think it's OK to make changes that (1) improve readership (2) enhance communication and (3) encourage interactivity.

Jorgen Sundberg

I say no, never change the theme for the sake of a widget. There will be lots more widgets coming out and you don't want to change themes all too often!
My recent post 7 Benefits of Personal Branding for Solopreneurs and Self-Employed

Thanks for your reply! It's hard to say without being specific on widgets. I agree you that there are a lot of widgets; I don't think it's necessary to wait around for "someone" to develop one that fits your blog. The right one can probably be found already.

That said, Wordpress.com widgets are lame and no javascript is allowed anyway, so widgets for Wordpress.com blogs are limited.

Spyros

I personally think that we should not go about changing themes every once in a while. A theme adds to the uniqueness of a blog and taking that away is like killing some part of your brand.
My recent post 5 Reasons Why You Need to Outsource

I agree with that. But it all depends on how established your brand is to begin with.
My recent post Blogger Q Answered: Is it worth changing themes to fit additional widgets?

Jessica

Some themes are just easier to use than others. A good theme will allow for widgets easily, as well as allowing for layout changes when needed. I'm thinking about getting the Frugal theme, which totally customizable from the theme options panel. For those of us who don't know PHP that can be a big help. Thanks for this post!
My recent post Learning How to Walk

You're welcome! I'll have to check out the Frugal theme!! lol And be sure to let me know if you do pick it up. If you become an affiliate and I decide to purchase it, I'll buy it through you since you're the one who told me about it. :)

Cheers,
Tia

kristinglas

This is good info! Thanks.

You're welcome!

Jennifer Brown Banks

I'm not a blogging or widgets wizard, but I believe in the old adage, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
I've seen people with very simple blog/web sites attract a large following, and I've also seen folks with very elaborate set-ups and fancy themes, not have a good, consistent following.

I think it all depends upon your goals, target audience, and stylistic preferences.
I'd say for sure, don't change themes to have more widgets if it's not necessary, unless there's a bigger plan.

Thanks, Jennifer.

You're right that before one even considers widgets, audience and purpose should be taken into consideration!

I think it's more about flexibility in this case. If a theme doesn't have a re-sizable sidebar (like the one above), it's not possible to accommodate certain widgets that might be desirable (such as advertising spots or social media gadgets).