Now I know I said that I would be talking about plugins for my second Blog Tools Review, but truth be told there is one aspect of maintaining a blog that I should cover first: Themes.

What’s a Theme?

A theme is to a blog like makeup is to a person.

- Me

What does that mean?  It means that themes allow you to personalize your blog, just like makeup allows you to change your looks and express yourself (if you’re into that kind of thing…).  Themes typically encompass everything that has to do with the visual look and feel of your blog.  They are often created by the online community, and most are free to use, usually only requiring a small mention of the theme author somewhere on your blog (can you find the name and author of the theme used on Folaji.com?).

Are Themes really that important for my blog?

The answer, simply put, is no (you thought I was going to say yes, huh? gotcha!).

Although themes allow you to give your site a professional and inviting look, they are in no way a substitute for content.  Now don’t get me wrong, themes are a very powerful tool and can be very useful, but if you think that all you need on your blog is a good theme to attract visitors, you are mistaken.

Think about it for a second.  Say you are in a book store and you see this book with a professional looking cover.  You walk up to the book, take a peak inside and find that there is no text.  In fact, there are no pages in the book at all, its just an empty shell of a book with a cool cover.  Would you buy the book?  Would you suggest it to a friend?  Well, your blog is the same way, it can be the most beautiful blog in the world, but if it has no content, people won’t visit it.

Now Themes aren’t a bad thing, just remember that they shouldn’t be the only thing your blog has to show for itself.

So, how do I set my theme?

Blogs typically come with a default theme, which is usually very dry and fugly (click here to see WordPress’ default theme).  Luckily, most blog engines have built-in tools that allow you to select and install themes with little to no work on your part (allowing you to focus on your blog’s content, which is what you should be doing).

If your blog is hosted on your own server, then chances are that your particular blog engine has a library or directory of themes available to you (like WordPress’ Free Themes Directory).  If, on the other hand, you are using a free service (comparable to WordPress.com or Blogspot.com) then you will be limited to a dozen or so preselected themes. In some cases (Blogspot.com for example) you’ll be allowed to manually update the code of your applied theme through the blog’s admin panel, although chances are you’ll need basic knowledge of HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).

Its so purdy!

And there we go, a quick, hopefully effective crash course on blog themes.  Next week, I’ll try to do an overview on blog plugins, and then I’ll start reviewing all of the plugins currently being used in my different blogs.  As always, feel free to leave any questions or comments in the comments section (or you can send them to me using the Contact Page).