wp may be giving the wrong impression re customizing themes
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Some friendly feedback here.
I’m new to WP, I’ve been playing around with what’s possible and not possible to do re customizing themes.
The information that’s given – “you can’t edit themes” – may give new WP users the wrong impression, even though it’s technically true.
For many (maybe most?) bloggers, a customized header plus widget sidebars will do the trick. Add in the minimally priced CSS upgrade, and that’s all the customization most people want.
When I read in several support posts in various categories that “you can’t edit themes”, I was very disappointed. I’m trying to leave Blogger, but I don’t want to download and use WP’s software, and I also don’t want to use themes exactly as-is.
As I started tinkering with one of the more flexible themes, I felt much better. The more I worked on it, the better I felt. Now I see I can make a good-looking, personalized blog using a WP theme.
I’m a careful reader and pretty good at studying tools before using them – but I still had the false impression that themes were not customizable, period. I might not be the only new user to get this false impression – and it might put people off WP unnecessarily.
Thanks for listening. :)
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Not a problem. Nice to see someone actually work through their thoughts around here instead of listening to “Here’s what I need. There’s no way I can have my site without it. Everyone wants this. We all should have this. No, I’m no pushy but you still have to do what I say to do” which we get on occasion around here.
Most of the threads that state “Can’t edit themes” are probably found from before we had the ability to customize the CSS. And from a certain someone who we probably need to get them to clarify their statement. :whistle:
A lot of the questions raised about modifing the themes concern what would entail actually editing the theme files. Just within the last week, we’ve had two requests on how to modify the comment link, one request to display the comments on the index.php page under the posts, over a dozen requests to add in javascripts that would have to added into the actual php files, add in additional sidebars, etc. All those would entail editing the actual theme files and that can’t be done.
The FAQ that’s stickied is actually fairly old, has been modified many times over and is on the list to be rewritten. Someday…
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“Most of the threads that state “Can’t edit themes” are probably found from before we had the ability to customize the CSS.”
Ah-ha. That makes sense.
This confusion about customizing themes might be more important now, as I think increasing numbers of people will be leaving Blogger. I was waiting (and waiting…) for the “upgrade” (ha!) and now Blogger is worse than ever, especially if you have your own domain name.
Anyway, thanks for reading my comment in the spirit in which it was written. Happy New Year.
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I meant new users of WP. As a Blogger user, I used CSS all the time. Nothing very advanced, but I picked it up as I went along.
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Agreed and it’s true but that would be the same issue you would have over at Blogger or other blogging sites.
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laura: it’s great that you are one of the rare people who actually searched the forum before posting! as drmike pointed out that the “can’t edit themes” are posted prior to the availability of css upgrades. also should you or anyone else has doubts in future, another good place to consult is the http://faq.wordpress.com
if that fails, someone in the forums should have the right answer. if that too fails, it’s feedback time…
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Returning to the original topic, personally I’ve found that even without the CSS option, I’ve been able to create a WP site that works nicely for me. I had picked up a lot of CSS on my own working with the old Blogger, but even so I was never as satisfied as I’ve become with WP. The more that I follow what other members talk about here in the WP.com forums and just tinker around myself, the more I’ve been able to learn. WP is good!
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During my 9 months here I have learned some html and I will be learning some css and a lot more besides in the upcoming year. I have the option of customizing headers and using sidebar widgets to alter the appearance of my blogs as frequently as I want. The only thing I don’t like about the appearance of our blogs here is the adsense ads that wordpress itself runs on our blogs. I was counting on having free ad-free blogs and that’s not the case. But despite the ads I’m still a happy camper here.
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Mod hat time: I just went ahead and deleted the spam topic posts. Please remember all you need to do is add teh ‘modlook’ tag to teh thread. :)
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