One of the things I struggle with when it comes to my site is how it looks. Just like any other blogger, I want my site to look professional, clean, polished, and overall inviting. I also want a site that doesn’t take forever to load and is easy to navigate. All of these things encourage site visitors to hang around and come back.
Related read: How You Know It's Time To Change Your Blog Theme
With this in mind, I decided it was time for A Relaxed Gal to have a facelift. I felt my current site design was a little clunky, not very feminine, and overall a little dated. So I took to the internet to find a pre-made design that worked on the Blogger platform and would fit my budget.
Probably six months later, yes six months! I did many Google searches for places with Blogger platform templates and looked at where other bloggers got their site designs. I also searched on Etsy many times.
During these six months, I found several designs that I liked, but there were always one or two things about them I didn’t like that were a deal-breaker. They either cost too much, had too many embellishments, didn’t like the homepage layout, or they had an image slider (which I personally can’t stand).
I finally settled on a free pre-made template from New Blogger Themes that I customized using my brand colors and typography. I have to admit I’m not head over heels in love with it, but I do like it a lot more than the previous template I was using for A Relaxed Gal.
What I like most about my new template is it
- The layout is no longer chopped up, but instead, has a seamless consistent look
- It’s not as in your face with the yellow color
- It looks better on mobile devices
- The search bar is more visible
- The menu is cleaner and easier to navigate
Beautiful Dawn Designs
Tiffany Griffin is the creator of the WordPress blog templates you’ll find on beautifuldawndesigns.com. These pre-made templates are designed with females in mind and can be customized with the fonts and colors you select.The pre-made templates are all responsive and range from $45 to $55 dollars. And if you don’t want to mess with HTML you can get help installing the template for an additional $35.
My favorite template is the Serenity Template. I like the clean design, soft color palette, and that there are five layout options including this grid layout.
Related read: My Fave Blogging And Social Media Tools
Restored 316
Another option for self-hosted WordPress bloggers is Restored 316. Here you can find many beautiful Genesis Framework child templates. And each template seems to be designed around a key blogging objective.For example, the Refined template is perfectly designed for online entrepreneurs who want to build their brands and sell their wares.
There are many blog templates to choose from and all of them are beautiful, can be customized, and are budget-friendly.
Odd Themes
If you’re using the Blogger platform, this site is for you. It houses hundreds of free pre-made templates sourced from various developers that can only be used on the Blogger platform. This is where I got my new template.Because these are free templates you do have to be prepared that some of the coding may be wonky, you may have to mess with your CSS and HTML to customize the template and you probably won’t get any assistance from the template maker.
Where do you go for pretty blog templates?
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