Choosing a WordPress Theme: The horror of it all!

While I am more than a little grateful to all those who share their expertise in creating “complimentary” WordPress Themes, I am NOT grateful for the inconsistency of coding and time wasted trying to repair a bad design/coding job.  It amazes me that some will even put their names on the designs.  IF I were a customer I would think twice before hiring them.

One Bad Theme is:  Notebook

This was my “most favorite Wordpress theme: and because of this and my persistence and determination “not” to give up or give in because we needed to tweak it, a friend/colleague and I wasted four (4) days trying to fix it to just “do normal things” like bulleted lists, have consistent spacing in the sidebar, etc.  It was not even that we wanted to do anything fancy.  I am a reviewer and I wanted a simple, clean, crisp and easy to get around theme.  I even tried visiting the “coder’s” site as her name and site were so boldly placed on the theme, however, what I found at http://www.php-princess.net/ was the message:

—– copied from website http://www.php-princess.net/ —–

Bandwidth Limit Exceeded

The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later.
——————————————————————————–

Apache/1.3.34 Server at http://www.php-princess.net/ Port 80

—– end copied from website http://www.php-princess.net/ —–

I am of the belief… “Things Happen!”  However, this notice was on the site five (5) days that I am aware of.  God knows how much longer it was there. 

I then wrote to the WordPress “Notebook” themes designer.  I am still awaiting a response.

While I chose this theme (Notebook) to publicly criticize, there were many which had coding inconsistences.  The designs were phenomenal, but the coding had problems.  Of course this would not be a problem to fix for those who are experienced in PHP and CSS.  A backend coder I am not, but I will thank them for helping me to learn so much more about both scripting languages.  Enough so, that I am no longer afraid to roll up my sleeves and try to fix a CSS and PHP theme.  In fact, I want to learn more about CSS.  Coming from prior careers in computer typesetting and production word processing it should be a piece of cake once I put my mind to it.

So, I hope you will be patient while I customize one of the original WordPress Themes that comes with WordPress — WordPress Default Theme.  WordPress Default is one theme, that starts out being correctly coded and designed!

Posted by Roz Fruchtman / BlogViewsByRoz.com