If you’ve checked the site in the last two days, you may have already seen the new theme that 404 Tech Support is sporting. In the time since I activated the new theme I’ve been doing some tweaks and getting in depth with how WordPress themes work so that I could get it to behave just as I wanted. Here are some of the resources I found useful from start to finish for finding and perfecting a new theme.
First of all, 404 Tech Support is now using the free StudioPress theme from DailyBlogTips. I was reading an article titled 88 Clean and Fresh WordPress Themes or something like that and out of the entire list and their screenshots, StudioPress is the only one that really stuck out to me. I mucked around with the idea for a little while and previewed it on my site. After my usual indecisiveness, I activated the theme to get some feedback from another person whom I really trust. Once activated and with her input, I really started liking the theme. I made a few tweaks to get things how I wanted and get it in fighting shape and I’ve been really pleased with the look. It seems to have a much less generic look than my previous theme and improves compatibility across browsers and resolutions. There were only a few adjustments to make involving rearranging widgets and such, but the theme was pretty much ready to go.
There are plenty of articles that come out weekly on the latest WordPress themes, but one great resource is wpthemez. That site has quite a list of themes and allows viewers to submit and vote for their favorite themes. This provides you with some feedback regarding a theme and how it might work out for you.
I was overall pleased with the new theme but wanted to make some specific behavioral changes so that the page would change whether it was on the front page or a previous page. For those specific tweaks, I found some very helpful information from WordPress Hacks. Also, the documentation for WordPress with their Codex helped clarify many functions regarding conditional tags and the template hierarchy. These certainly made for some interesting reads and eventually allowed me to derive the behavior I wanted and opened my eyes to some new things to try.
I hope those resources help you with your site if you’re looking to revamp the design or you’re looking for some particular functionality. Please let me know any feedback you have about the new redesign in the comments and I’ll try to improve where I can.