Right, I’ve been postponing starting my blogs for weeks now and the last hurdle is not finding a theme that I like/struggling to build on from scratch/not knowing what to focus on when picking one to customize.
I think I got a pretty clear idea of what I want:
\- Very text-focussed. White background, black text, the ocassional picture/embedded video but no posts that are just a photo or video. Header image + possibly a vague background image on the sides but nothing too loud + no tons of loud sidebar things.
\- Blog first and foremost. So no need for those fancy screen-filling images to scroll through before getting to any contect.
\- Square thumbnails on main page (will mostly discuss one album at a time so makes sense for the images) with title of post included. I wouldn’t mind the first few having a snippet of text next to them but I don’t like blogs that have full articles beneath eachother on the main page.
\- Possibility for a few ‘pinned’ posts on the first page for some backstory/explanation of the concept.
\- Interface that works on a phone as well. (Doesn’t have to look fancy, just functional for reading)
\- No ‘endless scrolling’ on main page because personally I hate when I’m reading back an entire blog and I can’t remember at which page I stopped reading.
\- A decent archive-page would be nice, (Thumbnail based would be quite intuitive for the concept)
I find a lot of blogs I come across lack these and have me just going through page after page to see if there’s any articles I haven’t read yet. Come to think it, a ‘jump to next post’ button so people can read it chronologically wouldn’t hurt either (but no priority).
My attention span/energy isn’t top notch at the moment. Like 30 minutes of reading instructions or 20 minutes of browsing themes and I’m done for the day. (I’ll probably be done for today after writing this post)
So as much as I’d like to teach myself CSS/HTML/PHP and all that’s needed (I’ve made a start and done some customizing in the past but that’s a while ago) I’m not sure it’s realistic unless I focus solely on the information I actually need. I don’t have a lot of money and don’t plan to make any money from my blog but if paying for a theme will save me weeks of studying and can get me a theme that fits the bill I guess it would be an option too.
**In short I guess my main issue is: I want to get my blog started asap but there’s just too many ways to go about it and I need some kind of pointer where to start so I can take it one step at a time. Currently I go back and forth between comparing/customizing themes without knowing if they’re actually the best starting point and it’s taking a whole lot of (mental) energy without getting any closer to a useable theme.**
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