and on the scale of world events it matters not a jot. Yet trivia is quite harmless as momentary relief and so I’m taking these few moments to be picky in a minor protesting way. The subject being WordPress themes.
When I first joined 11 years ago, WordPress stood out as offering much better choice of web templates, compared to Blogger, with some very nice designs. It still does except …
the ability to take free themes and choose font and colour etc has now become so restrictive. I used to enjoy scrolling through the myriad palettes and literally trying them on/out in the ‘try and customise’ section. But looking at some of the newer themes this option seems to have been removed and they are being offered as one restrictive free one with customization only available on premium and above.
Fair enough you might argue, as WP is a business but what I find most irritating is the cumbersome try outs of themes on current blogs. Gone are the days when it felt as though I could go into a virtual changing room and literally ‘try on’ a different theme. The process of temporary transformation was quick and made the decision making process accurate.
It is quite the opposite now with the ‘preview and customize’ mode on the newer block (full site editing) themes. It just shows what the blocks will look like but does not preview my blog with changes so I have no idea of how it will look until after commitment i.e. Activate. This I’m loathe to do in case I cannot return to the previous theme.
I have 3 blogs and pay for having ads removed on all of them. On two I also pay to have a unique web address. All three themes that I use I’m completely satisfied with – they are:
Toujours – here at PoetryPix
Penscratch 2 – My Japanesque Garden
Revelar – Qi~ways
My worry is that these older, versatile themes will gradually be withdrawn and/or not updated. It’s called being retired, akin to what happens to replicants! And for sure, any older ones, being CSS heavy, will be retired until only Block themes are an option. I don’t mind blocks and have used them from the start – it’s the rest of the changes I’m complaining about here.
To round up this picky post, I do not know who the designers are for the latest batch of five themes but frankly the background colours and fonts remind me of playgroup artwork – my personal opinion only of course. I wonder if they make the free version so undesirable that we are being ‘nudged’ into upgrading to premium etc so we can customize to something much better looking (oh the cynic in me is never far away!)
If you want to comment, I would be interested on what themes you use, whether you have tried the newer ones, or attempted a change etc
P.S. This blogger gives some good information on themes and changes “Who do you blame for your blog not working?”
Please note: No windows were broken in the making of this post .They were just props to enliven the prose.
PoetryPix 
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