If you are a blogger, how often do you find yourself tinkering with the layout of your blog? I’d have to say that it something that I think about but rarely do. Last week was an exception though, I did change something. Actually, I added something. It’s a visual widget and it is sitting on the right hand column of my blog. It looks like this:
Me as a widget.
Now if you read this blog, you recognize the photo. What it is doing over there is functioning as a random post generator. Click on it and it will take you to a post from the past. I was thinking about creating one of these after reading about a WordPress blog post about generating traffic for your older posts. Within that post they mentioned PicMonkey which is the on-line photo editing site I used to create my image. It was super easy to use. So with my new photo on my desktop, I headed to a post from this summer by Rarasaur where she explains, using screen shots to help, exactly how to put a random post generator in place.
With that in place I am free to obsess over the theme of my blog. This one that I have now is OK, but my biggest complaint about it is that the pictures aren’t all that big, even when you click on them. Problem is, I haven’t found a theme I like better. And let me clarify that I would be using a free theme. Wordpress does offer several for photographers that are beautiful but have a price tag attached. My blog is a low budget operation, meaning I have no budget for it. I had a conversation with a blogger about the size of my images on this blog this week, she writes 16 blogs and here are the two themes she suggested along with a link to examples from her blog. The first is Able and the other is Nishita. Also, just in time for this post, WordPress had a post about choosing a theme that I’ll be looking at again for ideas. So perhaps I’ll be changing my theme in the coming weeks.
Is there a theme out there for photography that you really love? Let me know about it in the comment section. Feel free to give my random post fetcher a try, let me know what you think if you have a moment.
Cheers!
Photography Journal Blog 
How clever!!
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Thanks!
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Thanks for the links to my blogs. One thing I’d like to mention in that when picking my themes, I try to think of what will showcase best what I’m trying to do. I love the black background for photography blogs (like Nishita) as I think black or dark backgrounds show off photography best. However, if you plan to write a lot of text, like I want to do on my America blog (Able), I think a light background is best. I don’t know about you, but I have trouble reading a lot of text on a dark background. And some of the black background themes have such tiny text!! Some other great photography blogs are these, in my opinion:
http://stevemccurry.wordpress.com/
http://bluebrightly.wordpress.com/
I have more favorites but I don’t want to put too many links or my comment will go to spam.
By the way, I like the visual widget and may have to check out Rarasaur’s instructions for that!
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Thanks, I was about to approve another comment of yours and leave you a note that I was leaving links to your blog. Thanks for the additional links to other sites, I will check them out. I do agree that I will go with a light background. This blog started originally on black and I did not like the text on black, so I made the switch to a light background. Following Rara’s instructions for the widget is super easy. Thank you very much for helping me with my theme issue.
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You’re welcome. I know what you mean about the black background and text, but if your blog is mostly photography, I love the black background for setting off photos. I have experimented a lot with themes, having 16 blogs and almost all of them different, but I still have a lot to learn. I was really interested in the WordPress post the other day about transforming your blog’s looks with custom fonts! Except I think you have to pay for that. I like to use all the free themes too; there are plenty of good ones.
Here’s the post about the custom fonts: http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2013/12/10/custom-fonts-examples/
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I did see that post you are including a link for, it is interesting, but I’m not really willing to pay at this point. Just me being cheap 🙂
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Yes, I haven’t been willing to pay yet either, but that’s not ruling out that I will someday. 🙂
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I agree 🙂
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D’you know, I’m constantly thinking that I must update my blog, but never do…New Year’s Resolution. Love your widgety thing!
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Thanks, glad you like the widget. I think changing my theme is going to be an in-between semesters project for me.
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I tweak every now and then and I’ve changed themes 3 times, which is why I stick to free themes. I’ve thought of buying the upgrade to get rid of ads on my blog though.
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I’ve considered the upgrade to get rid of the ads, but then I also think that readers these days are savvy enough to know what they are interested in and just ignore ads that are trolling for them.
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I’ve used the Nishita theme before. Now I use “The Expound Theme” which I’m quite satisfied with. During the last two years I’ve changed the theme around 4 times, maybe 5…?
The random post generator is a good idea. Perhaps I’ll add one to my blog as well?
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I know you have changed your theme several times since I’ve first visited. You stick with the same “branding” as it is popular to call it these days though. In my opinion, that is just your personality showing through, which is a good thing and since you have stuck with that, I can recognize your work regardless of the theme. Also, if you add a generator like this, since it will take you to a past post, maybe you can use an old gravitar as a visual widget? You’ve had several distinct ones, so that would be cool.
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That’s a good idea to use the avatars / gravatars.
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🙂
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I am always looking through the free themes for new ideas and recently changed mine twice in one week. I had Able activated for a few days and liked a lot of things about it but interestingly the one thing I didn’t like was the picture size. The medium was too small and the next size up was too big to fit on the screen without scrolling. I was happy with Truly Minimal for quite a while and now I am using Fontfolio. So far, so good! The home page took a little getting used as it shows all posts as images (great for a photo oriented blog though) and I like the individual post pages because the image size is what I was looking for. Good luck making a choice!
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Thank you, and I had noticed you had cycled through several themes lately. That is interesting what you say about Able, I’ll have to take a closer look at that.
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Im always tinkering with mine, Ive just swapped from Hatch to Triton Lite which is free and fab! 😀
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I don’t think that is a theme I had really looked at yet, so before I switch, I’ll come over and take a closer look.
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Great tips, Amy. I’m saving your post in the event I follow thru. Love the links you provided.
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Thanks, I was hoping that folks would find the links helpful, just in case they were thinking of making a similar change.
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Love this! I’m going to have to try this…when I have time to play around…
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I’m sure you would come up with something quite lovely and creative, just like the rest of the content on your blog. You don’t have to or anything, but if you are interested and end up trying this and blogging about it, I would love for you to come back and comment again, leaving a link to your creation. Just a thought…I know you have a very full life 🙂
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I like your widget. I read Rara’s post and had good intentions but….
I used to use Bueno and switched to Quintus which I passed over a bunch of times. I’m mostly happy with it. Large verticle photos I feel post too large so I always go back and shrink them to 80% but other than that I like it for a combo of writing and photos (I’m also anti black background for text)
I always want to tinker with my blog but it takes me soooo much time to get it all how I want it I usually try to content myself with messing with the widgets and leaving the big theme changes for when I’m really sure what I want!
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Thanks, I’m glad you like the widget. I’d been thinking about making one for awhile. It didn’t actually take too long, but it does usually take me awhile to switch themes. That is why I am sort of researching it now, and then I’ll carve a chunk out of some day and sit down and make the change. I’ll come and look at your theme again before I change mine. Thanks for your thoughts 🙂
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Great idea! 🙂 I have visited all your links and have saved the information. Thanks a lot for sharing!
Love, Dina
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Hi Dina, I’m glad you found the links interesting 🙂
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