{"id":707,"date":"2019-01-05T13:34:50","date_gmt":"2019-01-05T13:34:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/?p=707"},"modified":"2019-11-21T09:30:55","modified_gmt":"2019-11-21T09:30:55","slug":"choosing-a-new-theme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/?p=707","title":{"rendered":"Choosing a new Theme"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>New Year<\/strong>, <em>New Theme.<\/em>&nbsp; I thought it was about time I looked into new Themes for my website.&nbsp; It has been on my to do list for a while, but chocolate consumption got in the way&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n<p>Right now, the website uses one of three themes that Word Press provided as an option.&nbsp; It&#8217;s the Twenty Seventeen option that looks like this:<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/2017-Theme-300x212.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-708\"\/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Themes-300x212.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-709\"\/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<p>I want to explore what other FREE options are available out there, and what impact they&#8217;ll have on my website, if any.<\/p>\n\n\n<p>Here are some websites I took a peek at:<\/p>\n\n\n<ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/justfreethemes.com\/themes\/gallery\/\">https:\/\/justfreethemes.com\/themes\/gallery\/<\/a>\u00a0 &#8211; this site comes up with some pretty aggressive pop up boxes!\u00a0 \u00a0On first glance, I like the look of the AcmePhoto theme.\u00a0 The website allows you to view a live demo of each of the themes.\u00a0 This actually helped me decide I didn&#8217;t like AcmePhoto due to the light background, and the Powerpoint-eque style clapper board effect header.<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/colorlib.com\/wp\/free-gallery-wordpress-theme\/\">https:\/\/colorlib.com\/wp\/free-gallery-wordpress-theme\/<\/a>\u00a0Again, this website offers a demo for each theme.\u00a0 I initally liked Coral Parallax, but the white backdrop looked a bit stark for my liking.\u00a0 I&#8217;m actually likely the Comley theme.\u00a0 Seems to showcase the photographs and makes a statement out of theme.<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/justfreethemes.com\/\">https:\/\/justfreethemes.com\/<\/a><\/li><li><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n<p>But what should I think about before changing the theme?&nbsp; Will it break my website?&nbsp; I need to explore more.&nbsp; It looks like this website has already got it covered, with a 15 point checklist of things to do&nbsp;<strong>BEFORE&nbsp;<\/strong>changing the WordPress theme.&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wpbeginner.com\/beginners-guide\/checklist-15-things-you-must-do-before-changing-wordpress-themes\/\">https:\/\/www.wpbeginner.com\/beginners-guide\/checklist-<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wpbeginner.com\/beginners-guide\/checklist-15-things-you-must-do-before-changing-wordpress-themes\/\">15-things-you-must-do-before-changing-wordpress-themes\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ll go through their<em> 15<\/em> suggested points next.&nbsp; Wow, can&#8217;t get a life more rock n&#8217;roll than that&#8230;And so it begins.&nbsp; Step:<\/p>\n\n\n<ol><li><strong>Take notes<\/strong> on your current theme.&nbsp; Hmm.&nbsp; I have written a few blogs on changes I&#8217;ve made, such as font changes, and adding in widgets.&nbsp; However, I&#8217;m pretty sure I didn&#8217;t do this for every little thing.&nbsp; A lesson learned for the future.<\/li><li>&nbsp;Be <strong>cautious of sidebars<\/strong> &#8211; I know I&#8217;ve done a lot of tinkering here, as it is easy for a novice like me to feel like a genius when I&#8217;m customising my own website&#8230;adding in widgets to show <em>Tags<\/em> and <em>recent blog posts<\/em>.<\/li><li>&nbsp;Don&#8217;t&nbsp;<strong>lose tracking&nbsp;<\/strong> &#8211; had to Google this.&nbsp; Tracking the action of users helps determine how they use your website.&nbsp; Not something my site utilises yet with it&#8217;s one other reader!<\/li><li>&nbsp;<strong>RSS feeds &#8211;&nbsp;<\/strong>another one for Google&#8230;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wpbeginner.com\/beginners-guide\/what-is-rss-how-to-use-rss-in-wordpress\/\">https:\/\/www.wpbeginner.com\/beginners-guide\/what-is-rss-how-to-use-rss-in-wordpress\/<\/a>&nbsp;state an RSS feed is &#8220;<em>a type of web feed that allows users and applications to receive regular updates from a website or blog of their choice<\/em>&#8220;.&nbsp; I think RSS is something for me to explore in the future, particularly if I want subscribers, or achieve actual unrelated people reading my blog.&nbsp; But for now, it isn&#8217;t something I use in this blog. *<\/li><li><strong>Backup<\/strong>.&nbsp; &nbsp;Obvious, but to date, not something I have done or know how to do.&nbsp; &nbsp;I just watched this video on YouTube&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T5kRgBzg61Q\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T5kRgBzg61Q<\/a>&nbsp;about migrating websites, which is useful to know.&nbsp; But it also briefly covered doing back-ups.&nbsp; It recommends using <strong>All In One WP Migration<\/strong> plug-in, which is free and mostly positive reviews.&nbsp; I&#8217;ll give it a go now.&nbsp; That took forever.&nbsp; Somehow, the site has almost 3500 files and after half an hour, only 75% of the site had exported.&nbsp; However, I now have a backup.<\/li><li>Activating&nbsp;<strong>maintenance mode&nbsp;<\/strong>while changing your website theme.&nbsp; It essentially looks like another plug-in will be required to do this.&nbsp; A good idea if you have a high volume of visitors to your site, and you don&#8217;t want them to think your site is broken.&nbsp; &nbsp;Again, not a concern for this site!<\/li><li>Test&nbsp;<strong>all functionality and plug-ins &#8211;&nbsp;<\/strong>this is going to be the challenging step.&nbsp; Check widgets, formatting, displays and just that everything functions as plans.&nbsp; I have already noticed just by updating to the latest version of WordPress that some font formatting tools that I had previously installed have disappeared.&nbsp; I can easily imagine how changing a theme can do some damage if not careful.<\/li><li>Test&nbsp;<strong>all the browsers&nbsp;<\/strong>you have access to, helping to ensure the new theme behaves consistently across all of them.<\/li><li>&nbsp;Make&nbsp;<strong>third party&nbsp;<\/strong>items still look alright after a theme change, as they&#8217;re highly customisable.&nbsp; Way above my novice website, so not something I&#8217;ve activated yet.<\/li><li>&nbsp;Let&nbsp;<strong>users know&nbsp;<\/strong>once your site is up and running again, so they can alert you to any problems, and hopefully have a bit more patience with any issues.&nbsp; I&#8217;m sure my husband will be keen to spot any faults.<\/li><li>Make&nbsp;<strong>plugin choices wisely.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong>Every progressive plug-in has more capability than its predecessor.&nbsp; Don&#8217;t clutter or confuse yourself with too many plug ins.<\/li><li>Take&nbsp;<strong>small steps while making changes<\/strong>, as it&#8217;ll be easier to identify problems.&nbsp;&nbsp;That said, I&#8217;m not sure there is an option to change a small amount of a theme.&nbsp; I think it&#8217;s all or nothing&#8230;<\/li><li>Test the&nbsp;<strong>loading time&nbsp;<\/strong>of the new theme.&nbsp; I have clocked the Gallery section of my website takes a while to load using the current theme, and is particularly slow when using my mobile.&nbsp; If a new theme can improve this, that&#8217;s a winner.<\/li><li>&nbsp;Monitor&nbsp;<strong>bounce rates.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong>So, if you notice more people navigate away from your site since the new theme, after viewing just one page, maybe the theme needs second thoughts.<\/li><li><strong>Listen to improvements and suggestions&nbsp;<\/strong>for changes in the future.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n<p>Flip&#8230;that felt like 400 steps!<\/p>\n\n\n<p>*Typical.  My one other reader uses RSS&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New Year, New Theme.&nbsp; I thought it was about time I looked into new Themes for my website.&nbsp; It has been &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[34],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=707"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1345,"href":"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707\/revisions\/1345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smudgeonthelens.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}