As noted, I’ve changed my theme on both Ten Keyboards and on Cube Rules. I also promised I’d let you know my checklist for changing themes.
Changing themes is a bit of a risk. You literally have to go in live on the system and make the changes and hope that they turn out OK. And have a plan for if they don’t turn out OK.
So changing themes is a combination of backing up all of your changes in your current theme, knowing what has changed compared to baseline that you will have to install in your new theme, and having a back out plan.
I use WordPress for my blogging software. Your mileage may vary based upon the software you use (Typepad, Squarespace, etc.).
After downloading the theme to my personal PC, I start the transition. Here’s the list:
- Copy current widget order. Open the presentation section of the current theme and go to the ‘widgets’ area. I copy down the order and the column of each widget so I don’t have to remember them with the new theme.
- Telnet the current theme from you blog site to your PC. This gets your latest ‘live’ version backed up onto your PC and enables you to do some comparison and copy and pasting to your new theme later in the process.
- Telnet the new theme to the site. Use your Telnet program to do so. This sounds like another blog article!
- Activate the new theme on the site.
- Reload the widgets onto the new theme. This is why you copied them down in the first place — so you can drag and drop them onto the new theme.
- Justify the widgets based upon the new theme look. For example, in my old theme, my picture was left justified; in the new theme, my picture is centered because it looks better.
- Reinstall advertising code. This involves several steps. However, the basic process is to look in each file of the old theme, copy and paste the code at the right location in the new theme, and verify that it looks like it should on your site. (see step two). I have advertising in three places: my sidebar (this is handled by one of my widgets), my posts on the front page (Main Index Page), and at the end of a single page where comments are placed (Single Page). In each case, I copy and paste the right code into the right place in the file.
- Add Similar Posts function. I have a section for each post on the Main Index Page called “Similar Posts.” There is one line that needs to be copied and pasted into the Main Index Page to have this function occur.
- Overall, after each step, validate the change in Firefox and Internet Explorer to ensure the change works. You MUST check using both browsers. What works in one will not necessarily (and will often not) work in the other. This is especially true in Internet Explorer.
This process takes a couple of hours; not because it is hard, but you always only want to do ONE thing, save it, and then check the site to make sure that the ONE thing you did actually worked.
There is nothing worse than doing three or four things on a site and having the theme break with stuff all over the place — and you with no clue as to which of the things you did caused the problem.
If you do install several items at once and it breaks the code, you have no choice but to take out all of the changes and do them one at a time until you find the thing that broke your theme in the first place. So do ONE thing at a time.
The thing is, you may do everything right — but you are at the mercy of the coding of the theme and there is no guarantee that the free code will work right. Or, for that matter, custom code. Don’t assume that just because the theme says “widget compatible” that widgets — or all widgets — will work right in the theme.
In my case with the new theme, my Google Search box from the code Google provided in my widget broke the theme and the search box went across both of the columns on the right. Not good. So until I got that one thing to work right (I used a different Google Search widget), I didn’t move on.
The key is: You build on that which works. Not do seven things and go back and fix the things that don’t work. That just puts you into a never ending cycle of breaking things.
And if too much doesn’t work…you switch back to your old theme. I’m not very tolerant of trying to figure things out. The new theme should work as advertised in your environment. If it doesn’t, reliability trumps everything else because you want your readers to be able to read your content. A wonderful theme that doesn’t work is simply bad. And a poor reflection on your judgment.
I’m still a bit leery of this theme because it works fine in Firefox, but in Internet Explorer 7 it cuts off the lower part of the letters in the header. For example, it cuts of the lower part of the “y” in Keyboards. It’s something that will grate on me while I use this theme.
In any case, those are the steps I use. Any others out there?
Scot
