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Modifying Free WP Templates
Filed Under Blogging News
So, you want to change the look of your blog, or you want to start a new blog. You want your blog to look unique, you don’t want just another Wordpress looking blog, so what do you do?
Do you search through the thousands for free wp templates and find one you like? Then use it hoping no too many other bloggers are using it?
Or, do you pay for a template that others may be using? Surely fewer bloggers will pay for a template and your blog will be somewhat unique.
Or, do you pay someone to build a totally custom template for you? This would probably be fairly expensive, but it would certainly make your blog unique.
I have been asked about creating custom blog template by some customers, and answered the wp template question on my Online Tech Guy blog.
My answer is, use a free template that has the look and features you want, and then modify it if necessary to fit your specific needs.
All of my blogs use free templates with changes I have made specific to my needs.
This blog is a free template with changes I have made to the side bar, header and main page. These changes are not hard to make if you understand where to make the changes and know a little PHP and html.
My internet marketing blog is also a free wp template, with modifications made to suit my needs.
Many of the sidebar changes can be made using the Widgets in your WP admin area. You can do a lot of great things using the “Text” widget, by adding html and Javascript.
Making changes within the actual template PHP files can be a little more tricky. But, there are some really cool things you can do, and you can display any information that is in your WP database anywhere you want.
If you are not comfortable making those changes to the code of your template, I suggest you hire someone to do it. Okay here is a selfish plug – you can hire me 
Here are just a few examples of some of the blogs I have modified to make them look unique.
These two blogs use the same template, and look somewhat alike. But if you look closely, you will see there are distinct differences between the two.
I am considering offering a blog customization service, where I will customize blogs for a fee. What do you think? It would be less expensive than a custom built blog, and would give free wp template blogs more of a custom look.
I would appreciate your thoughts. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think. In return, you will get a keyword targeted dofollow link back to your site. Comments are moderated and a “I think that’s a great idea” comment will be removed. So, please leave a comment that will add value to the discussion.
Mike
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Even if we use any one of the wp themes, we should customize it using different layout and widgets research.
I’ve gotten much better over the past year and a half at modifying my wp-themes … both free ones, and those that I paid for.
When I first started, pretty much all I could do was change colors. But once you get a bit more comfortable with editing php in the theme files, you can really pretty significantly customize just about any theme out there.
Two of my favorite theme designers Justin Tadlock and Nathan Rice, also offer some pretty good customization tips on their blogs (their name .com)
Todd
Great job on the two sites you mentioned. One can easily see that they use the same template but still as easy to find the things they differ on. I think it is great that you are planning to offer wp theme modification, I’m sure some people are having trouble with fixing how their blog looks like.
And yeah, I’m with you on that “text” widget. I think that’s one of the best widgets in a WP theme.
yah I agree with them. There are too many WP themes. If you want to be unique, you should customize the templates like header or footer. In that way, Your WP are unique
when it comes to design and layouts. Thanks for sharing your blog.
There are indeed an abundance of good, free templates for Wordpress. Modifying them to suit your specific needs is a breeze – even for someone unfamiliar with PHP. Your offer of a free Wordpress theme modification service is exceptionally generous. You will certainly make lots of friends but may find you have no free time left…
It’s really hard to find a truly unique WP template – there are too many blogs and not enough templates. The only way you can be sure you have a unique template is … design one yourself! And it doesn’t need to be fully original, you can always “fix” one of the free ones
hi . that was such a great post. Thank you for such information. It is Very helpful post . I like the information about templates . this is really very helpful for creating sites.
thank you..
I have been using the Thesis theme on some of my blogs. It was touted as a theme you could work with without knowing any code. Well, they keep upgrading, and you have to learn how to do special functions php stuff. I don’t seem to need to make these sorts of changes to the free themes that I use.
Thats grt, Thanks for the info. Hope you bring such useful info for us in future also
Thanks again.
hello,
Thats great information. thank you for support , the information provided by you is of great use. carry on ,
Thank you…
These tips sound great and all … but what about those that are barely computer literate, like me ? Suppose I wanted to make the changes myself … is there a single software that I could use ?
Hi, Before reading this i just thought that we can edit the theme.. thanks for the information provided plz… continue, sharing…
hello thats great
These tips sound great. thank you for sharing the information…
I think if you provide a small fee for customization for blog sites, you will do well. It is very hard to customize if you don’t know what you are doing. Going through the php script gives people headaches. If you are good at what you do, provide the service and make your money! I like the way you made this blog, it’s simple but shows you understand what you are doing.
In my case, as much as possible, I just try to search really hard for those wp themes that suits my taste and ready for adsense. But I have a problem with one of my wp blogs. It has almost 200 visitors a day, yet it only has one or two clicks. Very frustrating indeed. I tried so many free themes that are adsense optimized already, to no avail. I wish you can help me with this problem of mine. This particular blog is about pets.
Mine, in some of my WP blogs, I usually change the color scheme of the images used by the theme that I use to fit with the ‘personality’ of the purpose of the site. Usually I’m doing this by using the colorize option of the Hue and Saturation feature of PS then I changed a bit the header image.
I use free wp theme for all my blogs too and I always customize those theme almost 65% from the original, so it will look diffrent…
I usually only modify them just enough to be functional and noy look like a carbon copy of someone elses blog
I agree that it is good to use a free template and then to adapt and modify it to make it look and feel slightly different to others
WP templates,adding it on your own WP is good.but add also other free features available via internet to improve your technique.
Thats great information. thank you for support the information provided by you is of great use
This is what I have done for almost every blog I have ever setup. Why reinvent the wheel so to speak when you can get a nice one and polish it up to suit your style.
The only thing I modify is making them do follow… and once in a while adding things here and there.
I think it is a great idea for you to set up a service doing limited WP free template modifications for a fee. The amount of people setting up WP blogs as an alternative to designing a complete website for their business is growing vastly and the demand for a service like you have described would be huge. Great job thinking outside the box and coming up with a great solution to a growing need in this economy.
Excellent post, there are actually a lot of free templates for Wordpress. We could easily modifying them onthe fly… Thanks a lot
I usually only modify them just enough to be functional and noy look like a carbon copy of someone elses blog
I have been thinking of changing the look of blog, and I was making enquiries to find someone to do it. As you said, they are very expensive. Your offer is great. will get back to you.
it is a nice a nice post and keep it up and working more harder then harder and i wish u best of luck in your future. And remember i take bundle of experience from ur this post and nice work done enjoy lot off and working lot of.
Very nice post. There are actually a lot of free templates for Wordpress but my advice is to modify them to make it look like your own. Also there’s no point re-inventing the wheel, using what is available freely to you is much more convenient and useful. Cheers.
Hi,
I have been using the Thesis theme on some of my blogs. It was touted as a theme you could work with without knowing any code.
Great job on the two sites you mentioned. One can easily see that they use the same template but still as easy to find the things they differ on.
Thanks.
If you don’t know what you are doing. Going through the PHP script gives people headaches. If you are good at what you do, provide the service and make a money! I also admit and like the way you made this blog.
something that a lot of us tend to forget, make your blogs ‘do follow’ ! I believe that it encourage comments and more traffic to the blog as well. But i am aware that a little bit of control/moderation is needed to prevent spammers flooding the blog with garbage.
Cool cool. i have a very nice blog about office design and refurbishment. But well i fear that spammers can attack my blog. It seems so easy for them with this plugin’…
well you can also implement anti-spam software on your site to control spams. I dont know on which platform your blog is implemented on but if you’re using wordpress then akismet could work well. have a look http://akismet.com/ Good luck.
What my personal opinion is this is wt most wp theme developers doing. it is easy to change a template by just altering the sidebar graphics and jst other few elements. However i dont know this is legal or not.
“So, you want to change the look of your blog, or you want to start a new blog. You want your blog to look unique, you don’t want just another Wordpress looking blog, so what do you do?”
I think everyone wants to come up with unique-looking templates for their blog. Thanks for the tips.
“My answer is, use a free template that has the look and features you want, and then modify it if necessary to fit your specific needs.”
Using a free template is definitely a key in coming up with blogs that stand out. Are there any more tips for coming up with creative-looking blogs?
If you want your WP theme to be unique you must be creative in modifying your WP themes. There’s lot of WP theme that you can download but it’s more nicer if you make your own design for your site. =)
Its really amazing and alwary try to create creative wordpress template but if your want more functionality then its not possible
Hi this is great information on free word press templates… It’s always important to get the template right so so that all the billions of blogs out there don’t look the same.
Many thanks for your support on this
Yes I do agree with you. I am using wordpress for 6 months. There are too many WP themes. If you want to be unique, you should customize the templates like header or footer. we can upload the banner also so that your Wordpress will be unique. Thanks for sharing this post.
Nice to hear. I am a good fan of wordp ress. I love it. Its great features allow me to create pages easily. And now these templates will make wordpress more beautiful effective.
am using wordpress for 6 months. There are too many WP themes. If you want to be unique, you should customize the templates like header or footer.
I generally use free wp theme for all my blogs too and I always customize those theme almost 65% from the original, so it will look different.
as being web designer, i would like to appreciate your take on by doing slight modification we can change look of blog as we want.
Nice post! Very helpful for a newbie like me. I am just starting to promote my site and these infos give me ideas on how should I do it. It will really help me as an affiliate marketer. Please continue posting informative blogs.
That’s a great idea! “Rebuilding” themes from an existing will be much easier compared to creating from scratch. Of course, originality and uniqueness is very hard to achieve on this.
I like to take pre-existing WordPress templates and modify them to make it my own. Starting from scratch is a big ordeal.
If you use the Wordpress Default Theme, you can change the color of the header using the Custom Header option. Depending on your needs and sense of aesthetics, this may be good enough to make your blog look different from everyone else in your niche.
well actually i have been thinking of changing the look of blog, and I was making enquiries to find someone to do it. As you said, they are very expensive. Your offer is great. will get back to you.
well i generally use free wp theme for all my blogs too and I always customize those theme almost 65% from the original, so it will look different.
Well Mike if you are going to offer blog customization services for a fee, then you should be pretty good in your art because everyone who wants to just make a website and start earning ASAP, then your services would not be of much use.
You also need to advertise yourself efficiently like making a website separately that would offer only blog or website customization services and linking that website to this site so that you may get traffic out of this website too.
AND MAKE SURE TO MAKE YOUR NEW WEBSITE FULL OF ATTRACTIVE TEMPLATES AND ALSO CHANGE THE TEMPLATES OF THE WEBSITE EVERY WEEK SO THAT PEOPLE OR POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS WOULD KNOW THAT YOU ARE TALENTED.
Good Luck !!!
It would be indeed very great if you can modify your WP templates as they will be totally helpful in making your site stylish and impressive.
One thing to remember if you’re going to customize the look of a free theme by alterting the code…make small changes and test it as you go. Every little change I make I check and make sure its working properly. Just one missing / or > can completely blow your whole blog up.
I generally use free wp theme for all my blogs too and I always customize those theme almost 65% from the original, so it will look different.
WP templates,adding it on your own WP is good.but add also other free features available via internet to improve your technique.
just be carefull when you customize your wp themes. I hate when I loose > or an / in my template that makes the layout be broken.
This was the hardest thing for me when I first started using WordPress – modifying the theme. Seemed no matter which theme I chose, there was always something I wanted different.
Getting in an playing with the php files was so scary at first, but a necessary evil.
I have no doubt that there are plenty of folks out there that would really, REALLY appreciate having someone modify their theme for them (and save them the major headache of learning).
I’m fairly new to blogging/wordpress and have tried and failed to customize a wordpress called marangal. It worked out fine for most of the pages but i wanted to set up a seperate page for blog posts but this created a problem with elements showing up twice due to parts of the code in various php sections.
Thank you this, i’m sure if i give another go with the information you have provided i’ll get there in the end and have things fully working!
Thanks
I am working on blogger but want to learn more about wordpress before going to migration for my blog. So I think this may help me to learn more about wordpress customization. Thanks for this one
Thank you for that interesting post. I have been writing blogs for a long time, and did not mind about those themes. I should start customizing my blog site to get more readers. And I want to try the sites you mentioned. I just realized my page needs to be organized. It would be easier for me then.
Linda
internet stock trading
Changing themes for a blog is not a big deal but to figure out what sort of a theme suits your blog is a big drama because that part of designing also works for your blog popularity
Your idea seems to be good…
Having current updates in the blog make your blog special one,than changing the themes and all..
Appearance have least consideration..
I’ve modified my fare share of templates. It’s fairly easy. Just pay attention to file dimensions, names, sizes, etc.
nice one! very very informative… i would like to change my template as well, i guess i would have to be very very patient choosing from thousands of temp online huh?
we can start with a theme that we like and easily modify the parts you want to change, wow thats great
This has been one of my problem as I am not much of a designer. I just usually opt in to premium themes that are easily customizable.
I think your blog customization service would be successful. You just need to really nail the niche down. My problem has been focusing on too many things at once. I have done blog modifications in the past and they have been really successful. The only problem was the time commitment. If you focus on only one or two things it becomes your specialty. You can knock out jobs quickly.
Modifying free wp blogs are a great idea to create your new theme, what I do is always modify the basic wp theme, i find it easy to do with all my landing page blogs..
Hi, Both the websites, which you mentioned shows that you have used the same templates, it is still easy to find the things that they are distinct from each other, I am surely going to try some tricks with my blogs today, my biggest issue is understanding the php’s and codes, lol, still working on that…
Brilliant , any WP blogger needs to learn how to modify their own WP theme. Thanks
Very easy way to convert the word press theme, continue such blog posting which are more usefull.