Thanks to Jennifer Fink over at Blogging ‘Bout Boys, who pointed me in the right direction, I was able to download this adorable template from Template~Mama. It’s called “Summery Scraps” and I fell in love with it as soon as I saw it. She has a bunch of incredibly cute, FREE templates available for download.
There was a bit of a difficulty, however — WordPress.com doesn’t allow the use of templates other than the handful they offer. Template~Mama‘s templates are all specifically designed for Blogger, so short of transferring my entire blog over there, which would cause a number of difficulties, I decided to play around with it anyway.
WordPress.com has an option where you can mess around with your blog’s CSS and preview it to see how it looks. I pasted in the code from “Summery Scraps” and though it wouldn’t stand up on its own in this program, it combined fairly well with my original theme, MistyLook. So after messing around with it a bit, I coughed up the $14.97/year it costs to be able to change your own CSS and here I am, and quite happy with the result.
If you’re thinking about starting a blog, I’d recommend Blogger if you want flexibility (or just adorable, free themes). WordPress.com is quite limited in many ways, though it’s very intuitive and easy to use. In a way, I’m glad I started with it because it got me used to the whole concept of blogging, but now that I want to take my blog to the next level, WP.com is just too restrictive.
So, the next step is to transfer my blog over to WordPress.org, which is a whole ‘nother ball of wax (and a bit scary). If you’re curious about the differences, read this article, “WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org.”
If you get my posts via email, come on over to my blog site and check it out.
What do you think? Do you like the new look?
Oh, I like it! Very nice!
WordPress is my main blog, but I have one on Blogger, just to play around with and be able to help friends with their Blogger stuff. There are advantages to each platform. As you pointed out, Blogger has a lot more cute/free themes, and you can also just play around with the CSS to really customize the blog — make the margins wider or narrower, or change the colors, as an example. But WP has a lot of advantages, too — I like the interface a lot better.
Thanks, Kathy!
I haven’t messed around much with Blogger, but it definitely seems much more customizable. You’re right though, the interface on WordPress is much simpler. I’m sort of a design/graphic geek though, so I like to goof around with the look more than WP allows.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I like the new look–it’s cute! Love the illustration, too. I used to get updates by email and they don’t come anymore. Did something happen when you redid the site? I can’t even find where to resubscribe on here.
Ok I just found the subscribe by email link and tried to do it, but it says I’m already subscribed. Still not getting updates, and I even checked my spam folder. Weird!!