Blog Tipz

The Structure Theme, designed by Muku Solutions and Jeff Milone I recently came across, and I instantly became a fan of it before even beginning to use it. I’ve been using it on one of my other sites, and I believe, with some minor CSS changes, it makes a great theme for bloggers who are interested in promoting their content. While it also features a clean and structured design, it may be “too simple” for some bloggers, despite featuring a back-end panel and different theme styles.

In order to use the theme, all you’ll need to do is provide your email address to the designers. Some may hesitate to do this, but you’ll need to provide it in order to get access to the theme – it is sent to you through your email address provided, and any new updates/new themes will be provided through the theme. It’s completely free, so this is a small cost to begin using the theme.

Out of the box, it works great for anyone using WordPress. Simply upload it to your server, and configure the basic settings of the theme. Of course, the theme is free, so it isn’t meant to be completely customizable from the back-end. You’ll need to edit the CSS for any major changes. The designers/developers of the theme are open to suggestions through their forum or contact page if you need any customizations done to the theme. You shouldn’t have much of a problem customizing the theme, as the theme was professionally coded and is optimized, resulting in a fast-loading site.

Four Styles and Formats

Often, the problem with free themes is the fact that there aren’t other variations, so you’re left using the one or two styles included, which might not suit your personal tastes. However, with this theme, four variations are included, but each maintains the simple and clean look throughout.

The black variation, shown above, as nearly a direct inversion of the white style, offering a dark look ideal for showcasing photographs and other types of content. I’m not as big of a fan of the dark look for blogs, as many readers will find it harder to read long lengths of text.

A two-column area has been setup for the main template, which functions more as a magazine template the way the featured content is displayed at the top than anything else. However, this blog template can be installed as a separate installation, and this is how I am using it on the other site. It makes a great solution, putting the content at the forefront of the site.

As shown above, both the main look (with a large featured image and link to the latest post) and the two-column blog template are available in both white and black color schemes.

Elements of the Theme

Even if a theme has a good structure, it also needs to have good typography. Because this theme was created for the designer and developer in mind, the typography is already great right out of the box.

Below, a screenshot of the typography shows the typography style of the theme. All bullets, headings, and quotes are styled, so you won’t have to customize the CSS in any way. However, my one minor complaint about the typography is that there’s no differentiation between the heading styles/sizes (H3, H4, etc.). It might only take a minute or two to customize them, but is necessary nonetheless, in promoting readable and structured content.

Next, we move onto the footer of the theme, where there is a unique four-column widget-ready area. If you don’t have any content in this area, the footer simply won’t expand, which is ideal, as you can produce an even simpler theme without any customization. The “complete” theme, with the left and right sidebars may be more ideal for users who want to use the theme much like a magazine, as it includes more widget-ready areas for advertisements and links.

The styling of comments is also a big part of all blogs, so the area for leaving comments and replying to comments must be well-designed. In the case of this theme, the perfect amount of spacing is provided, along with separation, between the content and the comments. Gravatars and threaded/reply functionality has also been integrated.

Conclusion

You’ve likely noticed that I like to change the theme of Blog Tipz quite frequently, although in this case, I’ll hold off on it. My current theme is doing the job well at this point (there are some things I don’t necessarily like about after testing and using the Structure Theme, but won’t be changing it for some time.

The main features I find appealing in the Structure Theme is the layout of content and the ability to change the styles, as well as the integrated full-width, blog pages, and archives/sitemap pages. These make it easy to get your site up and running quickly without making a huge amount of code edits.

Personally, this theme compares well to other premium themes aiming to be simple, but well-designed. Take the theme for a demo or let me know what you think of the theme. I am passing it on as I don’t think it’s received the exposure it deserves.