WPOutcast New Theme – The Pros & Cons Of The Transition

You may have noticed that we switched to yet another theme but this time, I found a theme I can work with and eventually customize it even more. I’m not going to do anything in the next few months but fix issues and improve the content of each blog post published. Also, focusing on getting more traffic is always on the to-do-list. As with any theme, there are always pros and cons of switching themes. I’m going to talk briefly about both.

Before:

New Design:

The main reason I switched is because of some built-in features this Tesla Theme theme. Similar to the Genesis Framework, Tesla has their own Framework which has a lot of nice features. Here is a view of the framework options panel. Note it will be slightly different for whatever theme that you have purchased.

Now, I want to get down to the pros and cons of switching themes and point out some things I am not thrilled about but can deal with. Let’s start with the good stuff because I hate giving bad news first.

Theme Switch Pros

• A fresh new look is always a good thing. You found a theme you really love and now you just made it live on your blog.

• You gain some built in features that your previous theme never had and able to remove some plugins. I was able to remove 2 plugins after switching to this new theme. Fewer plugins is a positive thing in regards to page speed. Page speed is my focus for the next few weeks with this new theme.

• Tesla has a very good membership package, documentation is good and you can easily import the demo options if you want the exact look of the demo blog. I prefer to customize the theme I want it and not always mimic a demo blog. You need to love your look or you will never be happy with the new theme.

• You get to write a blog post about switching to a new theme and list the pros and cons of switching to potentially answer your subscribers’ questions if they want to do this on their own or hire someone. I am available to install themes and mimic the demo version for a set price. You must purchase the theme yourself though.

• Want to see a cool feature? Highlight 1 word or a phrase in this blog post. You should be able to tweet that word, quote it in our comment box or share the blog post to Facebook.

The Cons of Switching themes

• Did you know that when you install a new theme, each theme has in their theme coding thumbnail sizes and most people do not know this and never update their old images? Of course, the best way to do this removes the old image size’s and insert the new ones. Hear me out, the way I did things gave me a ton of work to do but when done it will be worth it.Install the Force Regenerate Thumbnails plugin and run this plugin. When you are done, your images not everyone will need to be replaced with the new URL. Example image below after the plugin was running.

• The fastest way to replace that image is to edit the blog post, click on the Add Media button and then in that drop down window select the “Uploaded to this post” selection. If you attached your images to the blog post itself, you will see all images uploaded in the blog post and can easily replace the old links with the new links with the best thumbnail size for the new theme. By doing this all your images will look better and very close to the size’s you’d see on your themes demo version. I’m working on doing this with all blog posts but I believe it’s worth it doing this way. Sometimes I just recreate the whole image because I never liked the first one.

• Tesla themes support is horrible but their themes are of great quality and you shouldn’t need to get support on them. They have 1 tech doing support for all their themes which is why they stink and slow at responding. I did 2 test support questions to see If support was good. That’s the only con I have about Tesla themes.

• Old logo image doesn’t fit the new theme. Eventually, I will have one created for our new theme. I am not sure if I’ll keep the current favicon or have a new one created. So there is more investment after buying the theme to get your blog all set up.

Final Thoughts

Overall I am happy with this new theme despite the support stinks and there is room to further develop this theme on my own. With any new theme that you install, there will always be issues you need to address whether it’s a tiny thing or a huge thing like the thumbnails but I want my images to be the best or max size that the new theme allows. That’s what I’m finishing up along with my editor this month of April.

Any thoughts on the new look?