So it is time. I am late to the party, but I want to share my thoughts on this theme that has been out for a while. You may have seen it, and I even tried it out. The Blank Canvas. As the name suggests, it is a “Blank Canvas.” And you have a “little” more control over what you can do. That is the impression I got anyway. It feels like an option for free users to try out.
I have two other themes I want to mention later on. One WordPress theme seems interesting. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I will start with one WordPress theme at a time.
Blank Canvas has three sections to edit. You can think of this as a burger or a sandwich. A top, a middle, and a bottom. You can edit each section almost as if you are writing a blog post on wordpress.com.
The theme does look nice. It is a single column for your blog. There are no widgets for this theme, but I will get back to this later. If you are fine without having widgets to use, this would be a great theme for you. It is clean and simple for users. No header images from what I have seen.
Now I will say this. If you use the new theme and feel it is not your thing. And switch back to the old theme you were using. It can have an odd effect on your widgets. I say this because I used the Blank Canvas and switched back to the Colinear theme to see all the widgets I had set in place were removed/deleted.
Back up your widgets. Put the info into a text pad should something happen when switching back from a Blank canvas series theme.
I mentioned other themes, like Blank Canvas and how they act, and I will cite them now.
Spearhead Blocks, and Pixl. These are the same as Blank Canvas, but most of the work is done and has more features to use/mess around with to see what works for you. And these have their spin, and I’m not 100 % on how much you can edit here, but again, I think these are great new themes.
I am a fan of having widgets for viewers to look at, from Twitter to my Instagram. I enjoy showing off my social media, but maybe it is time to cut back on widgets. And it seems these themes won’t add widgets to use anytime soon.
pros | cons |
It’s free | each page in this theme is akin to making a new blog post |
you can edit each page and add a custom page for missing content | you have more control though it feels limiting |
more control | no widgets |
great for new users | older users may not like this if you enjoy wordpress.com widgets to show off content. |
simple to use | No header images |
Overall, I think the themes are great, and I might even try it out for a month to see how I like it and to go without using widgets. It might be fun, or maybe I will stop after a week. But that was my thoughts on these themes and what I think of them. I don’t know what others think of these themes.