New to theming? Don't know where to start? You're probably staring at a white page for hours, I can imagine. There's a way to do it, the easy way.

Gone are the days when designers spend all their time pondering over their original creative juices for days and days. Now, you can do it systematically, I mean, step by step. I have listed below the general approach in creating a theme.

First

You have to know your priorities - design, budget, time. Plus, understand the scope of the project and with that, you must deliver quality to your work.

Second

You must have materials to work with. Find out what you don't know, your weaknesses, and seek help from the internet - a great place to get almost all what you need like samples, inspirations, articles and more. Invest time on research and collecting materials. It's easier to choose from what you have collected or researched than just thinking and thinking of what to do.

Third

Start assembling your materials. At this stage, you'll see what you can and can't do. Seek help from the experts. Basically, a theme can be broken into different components:

• Layout
• Color Scheme
• Icon Design
• Button Design
• Menu Design

Fourth

You must consider the contents - photos, videos, graphics, etc. - you may start with these, actually. Most of the time, as a designer, you just think of the look of the site and neglect the content. On the contrary, you can get a lot of ideas from the content of your website. You need content to layout your site anyway. Content is the king.

Fifth

Consider effects - animation, out of this world interactivity, ajax, flash. Most newbies are mesmerized with these visual effects on the websites. Yes, they are actually good, but they should not be the priority in creating a website. Why? Effects should only be used if they're necessary, otherwise they will just be a source of annoyance to users. You have to know that most of the dazzling effects are not cross-browsers and take time to load. They also take time to do, which is costly and audience-specific.

Now, you have to decide. You can do it yourself or let us do it for you. Either way, we can help you.

There are many stages in creating a theme; you may need all or just some of them. Depending on your needs and budget, we are offering these services separately or in a package. You can contact us for more details.