Planning your content first can help you choose the right theme.
Note: A theme sets the look and feel of your site. Although all themes in our Theme Showcase fundamentally work the same way, themes can have significant differences regarding specific layouts, options, and functionality.
One of the first things that most people do with a new site or when freshening up an existing one is spend loads of time looking at themes. Once they choose a theme, it’s not uncommon for folks to spend considerable time and effort customizing it, all without planning for content. If you’re in that group, I hope you’ll reconsider your approach.
You see, content should come first.
Are you a blogger, a freelancer, or a business owner? Do you love tinkering with design and want your site to look just so? Explore our different WordPress.com plans — some, like the Premium plan, come with advanced customization options and unlimited premium themes.
This is a good thing for everyone to remember, not just first-time bloggers. A site with ho-hum content — or worse, no content — will keep people from coming back, assuming that they find your site in the first place.
Content should drive the theme, not vice versa. What good is a pretty site if no one looks at it?
Why do so many people work on their theme first?
Most of us are visual thinkers. Others may just overestimate the importance of how a site looks and underestimate the importance of what it says.
But there’s another reason. Writing can be hard work.
There have been times that I’ve played with themes as a procrastination method when I was unsure what to write or self-conscious about sharing my writing.
Spending time looking for themes and customizing them are ways to feel like you’re working on your site (and you are) without doing the hardest and most personal work: creating content.
The good news? Having a plan can guide you even during those times when your muse has left the building or your internal editor is hollering at you that your writing isn’t good enough.
So let’s put a plan together!
Measure once: define your scope
Maybe you’re a brand-new writer or perhaps your blog’s focus has shifted over time. Or maybe you haven’t changed your theme in a while and want a new look.
No matter which group you’re in, you should spend some time thinking about what you want to write about — and what you don’t want to write about — before picking a theme.
Let’s say that you want to write about travel. Specifically, you want to write about places you’ve been, places you want to go to, travel tips, and travel gear. However, you absolutely do not want to write about the ins and outs of frequent flyer programs because who can keep all of that stuff straight?
Congratulations! You just created the beginning of a content plan.
Hint: Use the Reader to browse other blogs on the same topic you want to write about to see how others organize their content.
Next, think about how you want to organize your content. Consider how you might use categories and tags to help visitors navigate your content or discover your site in the Reader.
It’s helpful to create a basic sitemap at this stage.
Tool tip: I used Creately, a free online tool, to make this sitemap, but you can use a pencil and paper. It doesn’t have to be fancy.
A sitemap serves as a visual representation of how your content is organized and how each piece relates to the whole.
Measure twice: decide on basic presentation
Now that you have an idea of what you’re going to write about and how you’re going to organize it, let’s talk about how you want to present your content. Here are a few things to think about, using our travel blog example for reference:
- Will your content be text-heavy with essays about your travel or image-heavy with pictures of places you’ve been?
- Is there specific content that you want to draw particular attention to, like a travel tip of the week? If so, how will you do that?
- Are you planning to use widgets to showcase content, link to your social media profiles, or encourage people to follow you? If so, do you want to add them to a sidebar, footer, or maybe both?
- Speaking of sidebars, do you want one? Are there any other layout options you need, like multiple columns?
- What general colors or style are you looking for? Perhaps a glamorous look for today’s jetsetter or a retro vibe invoking the golden age of travel?
- Are there design elements or features that will help your visitors more easily navigate your site to find the content they’re looking for?
You may find that sketching a basic layout, or wireframe, is helpful.
Tool tip: Like the sitemap, this wireframe example was done using Creately, but again, pencil and paper work just fine.
Using your plan, it’s time to get working on creating content. You just need a bit of content to get started, so don’t worry about having everything set before you pick a theme.
Hint: If you need some inspiration, we’ve got you covered with daily prompts or our free ebook, 365 Days of Writing Prompts. Once you’re off to a good start, consider using an editorial calendar to help keep you going.
Write a few posts or pages and upload a handful of images. Then, using your sitemap, set up the categories you listed. You can add some tags, too, if you’d like.
Once you have just a few pieces of content in place, you’re ready to go theme shopping!
Using your notes on presentation, check out our Theme Showcase. Use the filters at the top to narrow down the selection. You can also choose to include free themes only, premium themes only, or all themes.
Hint: Browsing our layout and design category or reading how other people chose their themes might give you a few ideas, too.
If you have the WordPress.com Business plan on your site, you also have access to our premium themes.
Next, pick a few themes that come closest to the layout and style that you’re looking for and have the features you need. You should be down to a handful of themes at this point, so spend time poking around each demo site, then choose the one you like best.
So that’s it!
You should now have some new tools in your toolbox to help you build or update your site using a theme that will fit your needs.
We’d love to hear from you! Leave a comment and tell us how you picked your current theme or which tactics you used to plan your layout around your content. Or, if you’ve been inspired to make some changes, let us know how things go!
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Good advice.
It’s important to make your site visually pleasing, but it is more important to make your posts easy to read or view.
Unfortunately I’m told my posts are easy to read.
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Hi! I’m so glad to read about themes, as I am currently thinking about changing mine and refreshing the whole look, but I’m lost.
Some of the themes are quite tricky to get them to look similar to the showcase, and usually you have to do a lot of customization, but I don’t want to activate a theme that is still halfway through… So I’m undecided still.
This has definitely helped giving me an idea of how to plan the change and choose a theme, which is a great first step. Thanks!
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Hi there! If you’re browsing for themes in our theme showcase, you can click on the theme, which will pull up a page with instructions on how to set up or use many of the features of the theme. You may also want to check out our themes support forum here: https://wordpress.com/forums/forum/themes
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Thanks! Yes, that’s what I use, but sometimes it’s more about how taking the time. It would be great to have an option to save a theme and the changes made to make it look nice before activating it – I’m assuming there isn’t that option yet, since I haven’t seen it (apologies if there is and I’ve missed it) The forum is a great tip as well, thanks!
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Most of your settings (widgets, fonts, and things like that) should come back again if you activate a different theme and then revert back to the one you started with. One precaution: if you have custom CSS, you should back that up before you activate a new theme.
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On another forum we have been discussing creating a private test blog and trying out changes on there before pikemen ting them on our live sites. You could export your blog and then import it into the new one or copy and paste a few posts. I will be trying out this theory soon on my site http://www.wraptweaving.com
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I would say try twice, cut once. Even for a well established popular blog there is still something new to try. Content is important yes, as well as trying different themes and widgets while writing content. I’m one of those who spend a lot of time customizing a theme and I change it every week because I want to experience what effects different layouts and colors have on readers.
Thank you for this post, I’ll use the hint of diving categories in parent and sub-categories 🙂
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Measure Twice, Cut Once , and stil short.:)))
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like it!
glad that I’ve thought about it before set my own blog.
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I feel your writing reflects your personality…so while designing the theme. We should keep in alignment the theme and writing interwoven to give a blog your own unique perspective about things.
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Interesting ! Never really gave it much thought except that it ought to be clear, easily accessible and visible.
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Good insight.
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I know it took me a long time to find the right theme because I couldn’t find one that had the majority of what I wanted, so I settled on the best I could until a new theme came along that seemed better. I like the one I have now.
For my secondary site it was easy since my needs weren’t as big and the look of the theme matched my intended presentation perfectly.
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I am concerned about my photos loading on mobile devices so I have kept my theme very plain for speed. Maybe I don’t really need to?
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Hey there! It’s a great idea to keep mobile users in mind. There can be a happy medium though, so don’t feel like you can’t have images or have to strictly limit them. 🙂
You might want to take a look at this support page on optimizing images for the web, which helps improve page load times: https://wordpress.com/support/media/image-optimization/
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Thank you!!! As a newbie, I appreciate the advice and I will use this on my blog! I get weird comments on my page from people that I think are trying to sell me stuff for blog optimization and I think they are probably scammers. I appreciate the helpful advice from a real resource. Have a great day!
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Glad to help! You might want to check this page out too for some help with unwanted comments and spam: https://wordpress.com/support/unwanted-comments/
Happy blogging!
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Thank you! I’m starting my new blog and your advices are really helpful.
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Is there a way to find other sites that use a certain theme so you can see it in action?
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Each of our themes has a demo site that can give you a good idea of what it looks like in action. Many of our themes also have some examples of other sites using the theme, like this page for Reddle: http://theme.wordpress.com/themes/reddle/
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Thank you 🙂
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Another way to find examples is looking the forum for the specific theme, specially for premium themes; the older or popular the theme, the more examples you may find.
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I’d be interested to know what the theme is behind The Daily Post. I can’t find mention of one in the HTML.
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Hi Bill! We use a custom theme for The Daily Post. 🙂
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Pity. It does some things I wanted to do.
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True that!
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Good piece of information. Thanks for the share!
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this is one great post!!!!
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Thanks! This is really helpful, as it is something I constantly think about and struggle with! 🙂
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Good advice, this will really help me, as have only started blogging regularly and any help with using time more efficiently is welcomed. 🙂
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Thanks for sharing with us.. Such a useful information..
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Helpful 🙂
thank you!
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Ithis would really help me , thanks
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Thank you Wendy for the useful information on adding spice to our blogs or sites rather by means of the themes we make use of on our sites. To say the truth most of us are new to this whole business of the internet. We have got a long way to go on matters theme customization and all that .You could be of much help if you could be generous enough to catch on this matter
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I’m glad you found my post helpful! You can pick up more tips and useful information by checking out some of the other posts here on The Daily Post, or by browsing our support articles and forums, here: https://wordpress.com/support/. 🙂
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This is very helpful to me. I m so glad that you have shared your wisdom on this topic. Many thanks!
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Thanks Mary! I’m so glad it was helpful! 🙂
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Just started my blog and I’m pretty pleased with the basic theme I chose, even though I gave little thought to it. Would anyone be interested in taking a look and letting me know if there is som flaw I have overlooked? Thank you so much! http://kangaroocrafts.wordpress.com/
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I like it. It’s clear and there’s nothing distracting. But I would add some photos to your my creations page as well as having the etsy link. You have a lot of lovely items!
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Good point! I’m considering adding a gallery there that links through to popular items but it seems time consuming so I haven’t gotten around to it quite yet. Thanks for taking a look!
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Peace,Wishes & Lots Of Happiness.
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Great advice Wendy. I like to change my theme every few months – do you think that is a good idea?
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Hey Steve! There’s nothing wrong with changing your theme to give your site a fresh look every now and again. My only thought would be to be careful about changing it really frequently using themes that are drastically different in look and navigation since that might make it hard for your visitors to feel “at home” and familiar with your site and how to find content they’re interested in.
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Cool thanks. Usually my changes now are much more subtle. It has changed quite a lot from the original layout as in the past year I think I have “grown” into my blog 🙂
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Growth is good! Sounds like you’ve taken a good approach in going from broader changes to fine-tuning. 🙂
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Great advice I guess it is the technical bit which I find hard to do. I guess I may need to do a basic course on the technical side of blogging.I have worked hard trying to do the best I can but still my sites are very dull.
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Hey there! We have some resources to help you get started. Learn.wordpress.com is a great place to get a solid foundation in the basics. Createyour.wordpress.com is another good one to check out.
And, under the perfect timing heading, we’re starting up a two new free Blogging University “101” classes on Monday Sept. 15. Here’s a link if you want to check it out: https://wordpress.com/dailypost/2014/09/12/bloggingu-september-registration-final/
Happy blogging!
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Thank you Wendy, in the past I did sign up with “101” and tried hard to do the daily challenges I still struggle to attract viewers to my posts. I am working hard to figure out how I can help myself by identifying what it is I am not getting.
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Building traffic on a blog is often a long-term proposition. The most important thing you can do is create content that appeals to your target audience. You might want to check out some other suggestions here: https://wordpress.com/dailypost/category/traffic-growth/ There’s also a free e-book you can download on growing your traffic that should help too: https://wordpress.com/dailypost/postaday/ebook-grow-traffic/
Happy blogging!
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In my seven years of WordPress blogging, I’ve sometimes been obsessive about studying the themes and choosing the right one.
I continue to struggle with defining the scope a blog and then having the discipline to color within the lines.
I decided I wanted a brand new blog, a personal blog. I want to eschew the heavy subjects of politics and economics that have bogged me down and made readers’ eyes glaze over. I want to talk about everyday life in the more mature stages. I plan to make the environment and global climate change a frequent touchstone.
I decided I finally want to heed the advice to use a simple, elevate theme that with no distractions from the content, which will be words and photos. I narrowed the short list to Syntax and Book Lite. And the winner is: Book Lite. You can see it in action at http://everyday.me
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Oops. First thing I have to do is get the blog url right. It’s http://everydayblog.me The title is “Every Day” and the subtitle, “Old Men Should Plant Trees.”
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Hi John! It looks like you chose a great theme to keep the focus on your words and photos. 🙂
You bring up another good point, which is that it can be a good idea to have more than one blog if you want to write about subjects that are unrelated to each other or if you’re trying to appeal to distinct audiences.
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