Having a blog is one thing. Making it look your own is quite another.

I’m trying to squeeze minutes out of each hour to dig into WP little by little, and figure out how to customize this thing, because I think it’s important that my blog be unique and reflect a bit about me beyond pure text. I looked at several Themes but I had two problems with them: (a) I couldn’t find anything that I thought was ‘me’ and (b) they are all someone else’s themes.

What software geek wants to put someone else’s theme on their own site?

I thought Russel Beattie made a pretty good point about blog designs, since he recently switched from a custom blogging package to WordPress:

The design of the blog says a lot about the author, though, whether we want it to or not. Something that seems super-professionally designed signifies that the content is going to be super-professional. A default WP, Blogspot or MT design signifies a newbie. And something unique many times signifies an old-skool blogger (which is what I think my old design did).

It’s the use of the term newbie that makes me want to tweak this layout. That’s the last thing I want my blog to say. Sure, I’m new to the blogosphere, but I’ve been doing this HTML/Programming/Database/Design/Analysis bit for a while…