I have been studying themes for the new blog. I was astonished at the versatility of what was available. For less than a hundred dollars, I can buy a theme very similar to that used by Slate, CBS News, or Yahoo!. It was quite a shock. After doing the initial research, it was hard to go back and write on my dinky theme.

Why is it dinky? I have three columns which is as much as you can get with the free WordPress themes but some of the premium ones have more columns and you can go down the page to point you decided and the reset the columns for different topics or pictures.

Sliders!! They have sliders. A slider allows you to create a set of pictures or articles or both and then have a single main article spot and these will then rotate every few seconds, so that someone who is on your blog for more than ten seconds or so see two of your articles – twenty seconds, perhaps three or four, it’s great advertising and it looks classy. One of the ones I looked at, Advanced Newspaper from Gabfire, enables you to put sliders in many locations on the page at the same time. Advanced Newspaper is probably going to be my choice. I think it’s beautiful.

I started my blog in 2009 and one of the things my research has demonstrated to me is that what’s available technology wise changes significantly perhaps dramatically every six months. This means that a good blogger on a small budget had better do continuous self training and a lot of it, if the intent is to stay ahead of the curve.

James Pilant