On Wednesday I had sat down to do my power hour of focused blogging, I got distracted by a post on the pros and cons of custom vs. premade designs over at Problogger. I have been feeling I needed a cleaner layout as I am ramping up the monetization of this blog following Yaro’s Blueprint and John Chow’s free E-book. What I became conscious of later in the day was how little I had done that was going to monetize my blog and I had yet to resolve the template issue. I take Darren’s point that in the early days of your blog, it’s writing the posts that are important, finding your voice, the design can come later.
Did I take his advice? No. Yesterday after I had written my daily post I decided today was the day to change the template as I was about to install new plugins. I tested a few designs from Sadish designer of the elegant Misty look, which many blog themes seem to be based on. I then explored other options and settled on actually purchasing a premium template from Sadish. I am happy with my choice of NigaRila and the great support forum Sadish runs. I had a challenge with removing text from the header and within an hour or so of posting I had the answer. This is a great service, I also found that he supports his free wordpress designs too. Now off to install the plugins , write some pages, add resources and learn some new skills.