The main problem for new bloggers is finding the right theme for their weblogs. Identity, as with real life, is important on the net and everyone craves to create a blog that reflects their personality. While using a pre-designed theme from Wordpress is easy enough, putting in your own headers and images may be difficult for the techie-challenged.

I came across this site, called WP-theme generator.

It lets bloggers and site makers put in the exact colors and images they want for their blogs. Everything is menu-ized;

• No codes to put in, no guessing color tags.
• You can insert images on backgrounds, on your header and on the sidebar.
• You can choose to show or unshow your blog title. Unshow, if your header/background image already contains your title.
• You can choose the size of the sidebar, the number of sidebars (1 or 2)
• It’s widget-ready, so arranging and rearranging your sidebar elements is hassle-free.
• You can choose to make the sidebar and the post body
• A pretty preview element let’s you undo mistakes effortlessly, and color scheming is a breeze
• When you’re done, all the elements of your theme are packed in a handy zip file that you can save in your computer and upload to your blog.

My only major concern with using this theme generator is the lay out. The elements of the page look completely disconnected from each other. It’s as if the header, sidebar and post body have a zone of their own. This might be ok to some people, but for people like me who want continuity among the blog elements, and need a compact-look for their blogs, this is a major turn off.

I tried resizing my header to “fit” the overall widths of the sidebar and the post body, and it was fine for a while (because I used a black background that masked the size flaws), but it still did not seem right.

Nonetheless, this is excellent for creating themes for friendster blogs and myspace. The templates (header.php etc.) are all individual elements that you can choose to upload to an existing design.

Have Fun!!!

I tried the new version of dkret, Dkret2 and could i say “amazing” like one hundred times?

The “previous/older posts” link is gone and replaced with numbers.. 1, 2, 3 etc… corresponding to the chronology of your previous posts. The sidebar has been improved also, as it “follows” the reader through all pages and posts, not a single sidebar element is left out (like the previous version).

This is my new “with option page”-favorite theme.

I still like Mandigo for sure, as it is still the best beginner’s theme, but dKret is nice for those with progressing knowledge of blogging and site management.

Love it love it!

The current theme of my main blog is dKret 1.9

This is the second theme I used with an option page, the first was Mandigo. And I am serious when i say: the options page is absolutely addictive!

You don’t have to worry about wrapping your desired image in a code, just click browse and it’s there!

It’s so easy and efficient.

With dKret, however, I had trouble finding the exact size of the header to put in. It says 900 x 140 exactly, but no matter what size I use, it tiles in the actual page! I went as far as copying the exact size of the default image (900 x 160! not 900 x 140) but it still has a problem in the main page. The possible solution for this will have to be using a repeating image (created using MS paint first) and it won’t really matter if it tiles.

A ll in all, dKret 1.9 is great!

Using this theme, Vistered Little, is a nice visual experience.The posts seem to float, and there’s a widget option to put in a minor header below the major one.

However, I noticed that whenever I use this theme, the site lags in loading longer than usual. Perhaps because of the huge selection of background images? Blending the adsense links to the background of the sidebar (I’m using adsense widget plugin) is a challenge as well, but I managed to do so by choosing a background color that is relatively close to the side bar background color.

All in all, customization is great! The flicker photo widget at the main page’s headline looks refreshing and unique.

This theme is a very good practice for looking for and inserting scripts. After the disorientation of opening the sidebar template and discovering that it had nothing there, I tinkered with the header template and I found that some sidebar scripts were present there.

I love the color though, and once you get the hang of the script files, you’ll realize that it’s a good theme to start on, til you’re good enough to tackle the more complicated ones. It should be good as a trial and error template and when you’re sure you know how the header, footer, sidebar and single post templates work, you can re-upload it and have fun.